PDA

View Full Version : Changing the "Caster beats Mundane" paradigm



Pages : [1] 2 3 4 5 6

rs2excelsior
2017-11-07, 02:10 AM
So, just throwing some ideas around. It's late at night so no guarantee this will be coherent. Also, this is not "how to fix class balance in X system," as the D&D derivative systems I'm familiar with (Pathfinder as my personal preference) generally have the way magic works so deeply baked into the assumptions it's basically impossible to change it without more or less fundamentally rewriting the system. This is a discussion of how to avoid a situation where one class (or equivalent) does not simultaneously do the job of several other classes better than they can because magic.

There's a general consensus here (and elsewhere) that casters, especially once they reach a certain power level, just beat non-casters, and in a way it makes sense. Magic opens up means of doing stuff that are just not available to people who don't have magic; people who can cast spells can do all the non-casting stuff and more. But this creates games where, as power levels increase, you either invest in magic or you become irrelevant. To use Pathfinder as an example, casters can simply do the job of mundanes better, and have access to options that aren't there (things like fly and the ability to create walls of force out of thin air come to mind). Plus, the game assumes that even people who can't cast magic on their own have access to magic. A level 20 wizard will generally be superior to a level 20 fighter; give the fighter masterwork weapons and armor, and take away his fancy stat-boosting gear, and it gets even worse--even if you do the same to the wizard. This is part of what I meant by magic being so deeply baked into the system that it basically requires a rewrite. A magic sword isn't a mystical quest object (unless it's a particularly powerful magic sword), it's something the fighter needs to stay relevant at level 4. That's perhaps overstating things, but again, by mid-high levels magical items are a dime a dozen.

So my thought experiment is this: what if you want a system/setting where casters and mundanes (for lack of better terms) are both valid options across the entire spectrum of play, whatever that is? Given that magic simply adds options that do not exist for mundanes, how do you make both matter? Some thoughts I've had on the issue:

1) Magic is extremely limited. Generally, magic can only duplicate mundane feats. So you can hit me with a bolt of force, but it won't be any more damaging than an arrow. You can use magic to help you jump, but no more than the best Olympic jumper (perhaps there are diminishing returns as you get to higher "jump checks", for lack of a better term again). Could still run into the problems above when your caster can shoot as well as the best archer, jump as well as the best jumper, etc. when mundanes must specialize to achieve the same thing. Either that, or magic is so limited that it's basically a false choice; it doesn't matter if you can jump well because magic or because you trained yourself to do it physically, it takes the same amount of effort and training time and gives the same result. Neither case is particularly appealing to me.

2) Magic is limited not in effect, but in use. Either in how often it is used, or with some kind of associated, permanent cost. Maybe you can cast your big spell, but it will drain some of your life force which you cannot recover (or can only recover very, very slowly). It would be as if every single spell had an XP cost. Might be an interesting paradigm to try; casters would necessarily limit their casting or fall well behind in level. Perhaps this could be made to work with a system similar to 3.5 where they naturally get more xp if they're behind the party, not putting them permanently behind the level track of everyone else assuming they keep their casting reasonable. Alternatively, although in many ways I hate Vancian casting, what if you had a certain number of spell levels to cast from, generally equal or only slightly more than your highest spell level, but must wait some amount of time before using them again? So your wizard is capable of doing things that the mundane simply cannot, such as suddenly being able to fly, but then is out of magic completely for hours or days and is simply a particularly squishy and unskilled stick-wielder. I think it could be an interesting concept, but there are several reasons why permanent costs for magic don't lend themselves that well to roleplaying games and in either case would probably just exacerbate the "fifteen minute adventuring day" syndrome. Which is largely another discussion, and not wholly related to how magic works.

3) Magic is unreliable. Either in effect or in usability. Perhaps every spell has a failure chance; or perhaps every spell has a chance to operate at reduced effect or even backfire. But this seems overly RNG-dependent in many ways, and again, works better for writing a story than playing a game. "Roll a die to see if your character can be effective this round" doesn't strike me as particularly good game design. One could argue that martials work that way with attack rolls, but the fighter with a greatsword (even moreso the fighter with a glaive and combat reflexes) will still restrict enemy movement and act as a damage sink, something that casters are generally bad at (short of spells). Seems tough to fine-tune so that it's not just a formality that's easily bypassed or something that makes casters basically unusable. But then again... "roll to see if you can do X" is basically the core mechanic of D&D, and most (if not all) dice based RPGs. So maybe there is something to this.

4) Boost mundanes instead of nerfing casters. "You can raise up a wall of stone from the ground? That's cool. I can punch the ground and make the same thing happen." Mundanes can do similar things as casters, if not the same things, but via non-magical means. I'm particularly thinking some of the extraordinary abilities that Monks can get in Pathfinder (though the fluff of several of those is still fairly magical in nature) or some of the Mythic abilities. You're breaking out of what is humanly possible, to what is superhumanly possible. I kind of like this, and I believe high-level D&D makes a lot more sense if you think of ~level 5 as the max for "normal" human beings, but it kind of runs afoul of the same issues as 1. Namely, it restricts the type of story you can tell with your game (arguably true of any system) and it possibly makes the choice moot by rendering mundane and martial equivalent.

5) Hyper-specialized casters. Perhaps, using magic, you can learn nifty tricks that no one without magic can replicate. Sure, you can learn to teleport, which no one without magic can replicate--but in that time the fighter has learned a whole repertoire of tricks. I kind of like this as well, as it encourages mixing the two approaches. If the mundanes are the generalists, capable of responding to a wide variety of situations, it encourages the caster to have their one or two tricks, but also train mundane skills to cover other options. Likewise, perhaps mundanes can dabble a bit to get small skills in magic, or simply continue to improve a wider variety of abilities. It'd require some pretty tight balancing, but I think it could work.

6) Magic is just better, change the "one character" paradigm. I've never played Ars Magicka (sp?), but I've read the book and if I recall correctly this is how they do it. Everyone controls one magic user, plus a handful of mundanes. Sure, the magic users are simply better... but the mundanes still fill their roles, and no one's left out in terms of power level because everyone switches between controlling their casters and their non-casters, depending on the situation. Again, I haven't played it to see how it works in practice, but I like the idea in theory.

So... any thoughts? Any other ways of making whether a character uses magic or not a real choice? Any systems which accomplish this goal out there? Or am I trying to do something that's basically not doable? I personally think a combination of either 2 or 3 with 5 could make for an interesting situation, but I'm not sure how well it'd translate to RPG format.

Sorry for the long, rambling post, and sorry if this isn't clearly stated--it's 2 am here and I really should be in bed rather than philosophizing about magic :smalltongue: If I haven't been clear I'll try and clear it up when I'm more awake.

VoxRationis
2017-11-07, 02:35 AM
1) Extreme magic-mundane symmetry will mostly make magic boring, in my opinion. Part of what makes it magic is the ability to do things which aren't normally possible.

2) I like limited use. There are many ways in which you could do it. I don't like XP penalties as a matter of principle, since making magic generally affords you experiences rather than removing them (Devon Monk's books notwithstanding), but I see their utility for this purpose. I rather like the idea of magical energy being some sort of limiting resource that you don't necessarily have regular access to—your wizard has to go out and seek some somewhere, and it doesn't come back on its own.

3) Volatile magic could work for certain purposes. Certainly having to make some sort of check to cast magic is a reasonable mechanic, though I don't think it's really a good point of balance. After all, the fighter still has to make attack rolls, but we generally get through the game with the assumption that they'll succeed a significant proportion of the time, and usually more often than they fail. Volatility or randomness should carry penalties in cases of failure if it's really going to give wizards pause.

4) The problem with this approach is it basically turns everyone into some flavor of wizard. As such, it doesn't really boost mundanes so much as replace them. I also like having low-key settings, by and large, so I'd rather have worlds and systems where my wizards are fairly mundane than those where my fighters are supernatural (though don't get me wrong, I enjoyed Avatar very much).

5) As you've said, a lot of it would come down to the details. You'd want the specialization to cost something significant if you don't want every character to have a lot of mundane skills and one magical one.

6) Wholly viable as a campaign paradigm.

One thing you didn't suggest, but which could be interesting, is a system where everyone and no one is a wizard, where the system has a cosmology and a metaphysics to it that support magic, but it's not tied in at all to character design or statistics. The players and characters have to gather magical power and/or learn how to use that which is around them through the course of play. The downside of such a system, of course, is that much of the experience would depend on novelty and that even the second campaign would lose a lot of the wonder you had in the first, unless the system had some sort of built-in way of varying the metaphysics campaign by campaign.

Metahuman1
2017-11-07, 03:25 AM
Maybe something where the prescribed way to do it is like this.

"Every Level, Roll a 1d100 on the prescribed table. The DM then takes to pieces of paper, and uses them to show you first the level tables level, so you know it's the right table, and the result you came up on on this throw of the dice. "

Thus, the magic you learn is varied and random but fair as long as there all good options on the tables but also all different options so there's a lot to play with. Which, in turn, means that you never know what your going to learn, so it's a surprise.



Maybe even you write down your resulting number from the die, and the DM doesn't show you the tables till it comes up as a thing that would help or fix a given problem your facing. (fireballs coming out for the first time when a hoard of goblins is charging the village your trying to protect, flight after a troll manages to knock you off the rope you were using to climb the mountain, ext.) to make it even more of a wondrous experience every time it happens.

rs2excelsior
2017-11-07, 12:23 PM
1) Extreme magic-mundane symmetry will mostly make magic boring, in my opinion. Part of what makes it magic is the ability to do things which aren't normally possible.

4) The problem with this approach is it basically turns everyone into some flavor of wizard. As such, it doesn't really boost mundanes so much as replace them. I also like having low-key settings, by and large, so I'd rather have worlds and systems where my wizards are fairly mundane than those where my fighters are supernatural (though don't get me wrong, I enjoyed Avatar very much).

Agreed. I didn't put those up as suggestions that they were good ideas, mostly just things I had thought of while considering this topic. You could make a setting work under these conditions, particularly the latter, but I'm aiming for ways to make the choice meaningful--so that there is a difference depending on the route you go, and that one choice is not obviously superior to the other.


2) I like limited use. There are many ways in which you could do it. I don't like XP penalties as a matter of principle, since making magic generally affords you experiences rather than removing them (Devon Monk's books notwithstanding), but I see their utility for this purpose. I rather like the idea of magical energy being some sort of limiting resource that you don't necessarily have regular access to—your wizard has to go out and seek some somewhere, and it doesn't come back on its own.

Same for XP penalties--it was an easy example cost that was a) permanent and b) recoverable. It would be better to build a system with these assumptions rather than using XP penalties to hack them into a D&D game, I imagine. I like the magical energy thing as well--it'd have to be pretty tightly controlled by the GM though. Otherwise after each short adventure the wizard player says "I spend a week crafting magical runes." Bam, done. Reminds me a bit of how magic worked in Runescape--craftable runes (hence my previous example) that are expended when you cast spells. You can simply make more, but you have to find the temples where they are enchanted and the talismans that let you get there (and the place where you mine raw essence)--some of which are quests in and of themselves to find. Could work, if the GM controlled access to a degree where it wasn't trivial to make more.


One thing you didn't suggest, but which could be interesting, is a system where everyone and no one is a wizard, where the system has a cosmology and a metaphysics to it that support magic, but it's not tied in at all to character design or statistics. The players and characters have to gather magical power and/or learn how to use that which is around them through the course of play. The downside of such a system, of course, is that much of the experience would depend on novelty and that even the second campaign would lose a lot of the wonder you had in the first, unless the system had some sort of built-in way of varying the metaphysics campaign by campaign.

I like this as well. Seems like a lot of computer RPGs go this way, more or less--Skyrim comes to mind. You can specialize toward magic or not, but most characters will have at least some magic regardless of which way they go. A system where the nature of magic varied would be fun, but a lot more work for the GM. The system could give tools to build a system of magic, and let the GM customize it for their campaign--more frontloaded, but also more open to fit different campaign feels. I like this.


Maybe something where the prescribed way to do it is like this.

"Every Level, Roll a 1d100 on the prescribed table. The DM then takes to pieces of paper, and uses them to show you first the level tables level, so you know it's the right table, and the result you came up on on this throw of the dice. "

Thus, the magic you learn is varied and random but fair as long as there all good options on the tables but also all different options so there's a lot to play with. Which, in turn, means that you never know what your going to learn, so it's a surprise.



Maybe even you write down your resulting number from the die, and the DM doesn't show you the tables till it comes up as a thing that would help or fix a given problem your facing. (fireballs coming out for the first time when a hoard of goblins is charging the village your trying to protect, flight after a troll manages to knock you off the rope you were using to climb the mountain, ext.) to make it even more of a wondrous experience every time it happens.

I've got an old RPG system called Heroes of Olympus, where followers of Hermes and Hecate can get magic, but learn new spells based on this system. I haven't decided quite how I feel about it yet. It fits the setting very well--magic comes from the gods directly, and they do not simply hand it out freely to everyone who asks--but it takes away a large degree of player agency. You want to play a blasting caster? Too bad, you rolled nothing but illusion spells. Still, though, with player buy in it'd work. Would still require balancing magic in other ways, I'd imagine. Even if your wizard had to roll for their spells, if the table is full of 8th and 9th level spells (in D&D terms), they're still going to be able to outclass the fighter, even if they don't get to pick.

Something I just thought about. If level 5 in D&D corresponds to roughly the limit of human capacity, what if, past that point, you had to choose whether to advance your physical or magical abilities? I don't think it'd work that well in D&D, but something along the lines of no longer gaining bonuses to ability scores, HP, and maybe physical skills. Probably wouldn't balance things on their own, but it makes a degree of sense. You get to pick between being stronger/faster/etc. than any human, or you get magic. Not both.

VoxRationis
2017-11-07, 01:48 PM
Same for XP penalties--it was an easy example cost that was a) permanent and b) recoverable. It would be better to build a system with these assumptions rather than using XP penalties to hack them into a D&D game, I imagine. I like the magical energy thing as well--it'd have to be pretty tightly controlled by the GM though. Otherwise after each short adventure the wizard player says "I spend a week crafting magical runes."
...
Could work, if the GM controlled access to a degree where it wasn't trivial to make more.
Presumably, magic in such a system would only be found in the environment. You couldn't just create more, regardless of how much downtime you have between adventures, and presumably, magic is mostly available only in locations that would be considered adventures to reach.


I like this as well. Seems like a lot of computer RPGs go this way, more or less--Skyrim comes to mind. You can specialize toward magic or not, but most characters will have at least some magic regardless of which way they go. Skyrim's got it pretty baked-in to character stats, though. Not quite to the same extent as D&D, but a mage is quite different from a fighter on a stats level, at least until level 40 or so, when you've maxed all of your primary skills and started training on other things for the sake of it. No, I'm talking about a system where your character's stats and "build" have little or nothing to do with magic, just like they have little to do with gravity. If they step off a ledge, they fall. If they use a scale, they can weigh a sack of gold coins. If they spit onto a candle three times under the gibbous moon, they summon Substitutus, Understudy of the Demon Lords.

rs2excelsior
2017-11-07, 02:24 PM
Skyrim's got it pretty baked-in to character stats, though. Not quite to the same extent as D&D, but a mage is quite different from a fighter on a stats level, at least until level 40 or so, when you've maxed all of your primary skills and started training on other things for the sake of it. No, I'm talking about a system where your character's stats and "build" have little or nothing to do with magic, just like they have little to do with gravity. If they step off a ledge, they fall. If they use a scale, they can weigh a sack of gold coins. If they spit onto a candle three times under the gibbous moon, they summon Substitutus, Understudy of the Demon Lords.

Fair point. It's on a sliding scale I suppose. In Skyrim, a mage's stats are pretty different from a fighter's, but the fighter can still pick up and learn a spell tome, and the mage can still swing a sword. So on one end you have a system where magic is available but you can choose how much you invest into it vs. other skills, and on the other one where everyone is a "mundane" of some flavor but has some access to magic if they seek it out. I can see benefits to either approach.

That said, I do love ritual magic like that. Magic that requires a specific action, with specific words, at a specific time to work. Mistranslate that dusty tome you found in the ancient ruins? If you're lucky nothing happens. If not... hope you weren't too attached to being alive. Of course, those kinds of consequences aren't required, but I think it fits well with the general feeling of that kind of magic. It would take some work to not feel either trivial or capricious though--either the requirements are easily circumvented (it needs to be during the gibbous moon? we just wait a week or two) or the failure feels too arbitrary (you did the ritual I gave you? did you add an extra candle to your circle? yeah, the ritual was wrong, instead of summoning an imp you just summoned a greater demon, roll initiative). That's more an issue of having a good DM, though.

The more I think about it, the more I think reducing the breadth of magic users' ability might be the way to go. As it stands, in D&D and family, casters have the advantage over mundanes in both breadth and depth of abilities. It makes sense to give magic more depth (else it's not really magic, it's just refluffed everyday stuff), but letting mundanes have greater breadth seems like it might generate some interesting situations.

JBPuffin
2017-11-07, 02:27 PM
In my favorite self-made setting, everyone is born with their specialty pre-programmed; sure, anyone can learn how to shoot an arrow from a bow, but the Sharpshooter by blood can perform feats of archery the laws of physics are somewhat iffy about. Everyone, given enough time, could probably learn to grow crops, but the Green Thumb's yields are almost impossibly rich. Anyone can learn arithmetic, most people can learn algebra and calculus given proper tutoring, and maybe even learn Number Magic, but only the Numerologist by birthright can truly master the art of manipulating the "hidden variables" (true names, but in a numerical light) and learns new uses faster. The idea was to make magic specialized enough that no single mage can do everything, but also ensure that martials have a place, and in a DnD-esque world (plus magi-tech to either improve upon or fill in gaps; it's just beyond modern tech levels as a result), you need both mundanes who can hold their own and mages who can do the impossible.

Maybe it's like this: every mage makes something normally impossible, and makes it impossible. Every mundane reaches the peak of the physically possible in their field.

gkathellar
2017-11-07, 02:49 PM
Given that magic simply adds options that do not exist for mundanes, how do you make both matter?

Really, much more than differences in combat power (that's just math), this is what becomes the issue. Magic tends to provide out-of-context solutions or create out-of-context problems. With the right math, a mundane can hide as well as a casting of invisibility, or read people as well as a detect thoughts spell. The problem arises with your plane shifts, forcecages, polymorphs, summon monsters, major creations, silent images, solid fogs, and more.

You correctly surmise this in your first point, but I think ultimately excising the ability of magic to solve problems altogether tends to leave it feeling rather dry. You run into the 4E problem, where characters out of combat don't feel as dynamic or interesting as they do in combat. The play experience becomes two games that are only tangentially related.

My personal solution is to do away with both the "mundane" and "caster" archetypes entirely. Just say that people all sorts of weird powers that tend to be connected to the things they're good at, not unlike the way Exalted has charms as a magical outgrowth of one's physical faculties. Unfortunately, not a lot of systems accommodate for this. It's also texturally different from the usual fantasy.

Vogie
2017-11-07, 03:03 PM
5) Hyper-specialized casters. Perhaps, using magic, you can learn nifty tricks that no one without magic can replicate. Sure, you can learn to teleport, which no one without magic can replicate--but in that time the fighter has learned a whole repertoire of tricks. I kind of like this as well, as it encourages mixing the two approaches. If the mundanes are the generalists, capable of responding to a wide variety of situations, it encourages the caster to have their one or two tricks, but also train mundane skills to cover other options. Likewise, perhaps mundanes can dabble a bit to get small skills in magic, or simply continue to improve a wider variety of abilities. It'd require some pretty tight balancing, but I think it could work.


I think this is the probably my favorite way to change the paradigm. As long as you lock it in to some sort of theme, this makes perfect sense, especially since people will look at it a lot like someone running a game about mutants or superheroes. A Force- or Telekinetic-themed caster will have a ton of force or telekinetic tricks, but they'll never throw a fireball or make an illusion (unless they're literally moving puppets). The fire-themed caster will have only fire to work with, same goes with water, light, mind, et cetera.

It won't work with most normal spellcasting tables, as they tend to be all over the place thematically, but if you pare things down to only that one theme, your players can then get creative. Increasing in level is sometimes about gaining in power, but also gaining in control and utility.

Depending on the system you use and the flexibility you give the players, you could get some great things. A TK caster could be a Bigby-Style ranged brawler, a Gravity mage, an assassin with a cloak of daggers following them into the fray, or be more of a ranger that happens to triple-wield floating crossbows... but they can't be all of those.

At the same time, expanding on martials' flexibility giving them more utility will balance the scales a bit. Some ideas from a fighter utility fix thread are here (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=22143676&postcount=97).

Frozen_Feet
2017-11-07, 03:36 PM
The paradigm outlined in the title exists because no-one making d20 D&D ever really asked the question "what should magic NOT be able to do, that non-magical means can?"

Hence, as the content for the system expanded, they made a spell or other magical ability for every damn thing, from ale-brewing to midwifing to xenobiology.

Individual spells and abilities have restrictions, but "magic" itself is super vague and basically includes every ability ever under it. Not co-incidentally, the most powerfull classes in d20 D&D are early, modular classes which get to cherry-pick freely from the most expansive lists (wizard, sorcerer) or have free access to entire such lists (clerics, druids).

So before you follow through with any of the other six changes, you must do Step 1: define "magic" and "spellcasting" in a way that does not have perfect overlap with mundane abilities. Once there are things spellcasters cannot do but mundanes can, you have to worry significantly less about which is ultimately superior.

Mr Beer
2017-11-07, 04:23 PM
I would lean to dividing magic into various fields and only allowing mages access to one such field e.g. Elemental, Healing, Divination etc.

Mage power can then be tweaked by defining the breadth of the field, what limitations apply to the effect and the upper level of possible effects.

If I was designing a magic system, I would not use D&D as a model though. Vancian magic is a very arbitrary design choice and appears rarely in fantasy literature, probably because it's not intuitively how people imagine magic would work and it's not particularly fun.

LibraryOgre
2017-11-07, 04:32 PM
In a lot of ways, I think Hackmaster does this... mages certainly contribute, but fighters are essential. They do it in a few ways.

1) Limited endurance. Mages have a fair number of spell points, but one you start spending, you realize they can't cast all day... they have to be careful and spend where they can do so to best effect.

2) Limits. Spells are broken up into more spell levels (20 for clerics, 20 +2 0th levels for mages), which means you have fewer "misleveled" spells. Mages know fewer spells per level (with a 20 Intelligence... the highest possible... you know 5 spells per level, maximum, giving a 20th level mage a maximum of 110 spells known). Clerics have relatively limited lists by religion, and can only cast 1 spell/level/day.

3) Flat spells. This is something you saw in 3.x's XPH, and have seen again in 4e, 5e, and other places... spells that have a given affect, then improve with additional spell points/higher spell slots/other increased resources expenditure. It goes back to limiting the endurance of casters, but also their instant potency. Worthwhile, passable, saving throws also figure into this. 3.x heavily favored casters in saving throws, meaning you were unlikely to make off-class saving throws (e.g. a Will save if you were a fighter). It greatly increases caster potency.

4) Vulnerability. When a wizard casts, they're disabled for the casting time plus 5 seconds. Did the spell take 1 second to cast? Then for that 1 second, plus 6 seconds afterwards, you're dealing with casting fatigue... penalty to defense, penalty to skills, penalty to movement, simply cannot attack. A wizard who casts a spell is likely to get thrashed if he doesn't have support.

These features combine to make it so a wizard, while potent, isn't going to simply win any combat against a fighter.

Knaight
2017-11-07, 04:51 PM
The paradigm outlined in the title exists because no-one making d20 D&D ever really asked the question "what should magic NOT be able to do, that non-magical means can?"

This is pretty key, and there are systems that did a good job with this. One example is REIGN - there's powerful magic there, but there was a very deliberate decision to have magic totally unable to have direct mental effects. The closest you get to a mind effecting spell is using another spell as a carrot or stick in negotiations/intimidation. Meanwhile there are social skills which have some actual clout.

Another fun restriction is time. Magic is able to do all sorts of things, but it's not able to do anything in less than a day, so if you need something done quickly or you have a sudden pressing issue you need nonmagical means.

LibraryOgre
2017-11-07, 06:28 PM
This is pretty key, and there are systems that did a good job with this. One example is REIGN - there's powerful magic there, but there was a very deliberate decision to have magic totally unable to have direct mental effects. The closest you get to a mind effecting spell is using another spell as a carrot or stick in negotiations/intimidation. Meanwhile there are social skills which have some actual clout.

Another fun restriction is time. Magic is able to do all sorts of things, but it's not able to do anything in less than a day, so if you need something done quickly or you have a sudden pressing issue you need nonmagical means.

And, this also relates to something else about D&D... the main magical classes can do anything. Wizards can do anything except heal. Clerics used to be able to do anything but direct damage, but that slowly chipped away. There was never really a consideration of defining magics that might not be available to one of those classes... it's part of why, in 2e, I prefer to run games where all mages are specialists, and, if I can manage it, something closer to uber-specialists, able to excel only in a couple of schools.

Anonymouswizard
2017-11-07, 06:53 PM
I've been consisting this, especially as my favorite retroclone (Lamentations of the Flame Process) suffers from it in weird ways (only magic users get stronger attacks as you increase in level, Fighters are more accurate but not more damaging, and nobody gets extra attacks).

I've come up with the following idea for D&D like systems:
-There are no spell slots, however you get spells known equal to your old spell slots.
-Casters begin with spell points equal to one plus their relevant ability modifier, and gain one spell point per level.
-A requires spell points equal to it's level to cast. (Or level*2-1, if we want to discourage big spells)
-Spell points recover when (X) happens. Depending on the exact setting this could be when you rest for an hour, every X hours, when the moon rises, when you drink a certain potion, or whatever.

Advantages:
-less versatile caters
-more flexible casting (as normal for spell point systems)
-small number of powerful spells before being out of energy
-flexible magic power depending on setting/campaign.

JBPuffin
2017-11-07, 07:05 PM
I've been consisting this, especially as my favorite retroclone (Lamentations of the Flame Process) suffers from it in weird ways (only magic users get stronger attacks as you increase in level, Fighters are more accurate but not more damaging, and nobody gets extra attacks).

I've come up with the following idea for D&D like systems:
-There are no spell slots, however you get spells known equal to your old spell slots.
-Casters begin with spell points equal to one plus their relevant ability modifier, and gain one spell point per level.
-A requires spell points equal to it's level to cast. (Or level*2-1, if we want to discourage big spells)
-Spell points recover when (X) happens. Depending on the exact setting this could be when you rest for an hour, every X hours, when the moon rises, when you drink a certain potion, or whatever.

Advantages:
-less versatile caters
-more flexible casting (as normal for spell point systems)
-small number of powerful spells before being out of energy
-flexible magic power depending on setting/campaign.

This also gets rid of the stupid advantage clerics had in being able to pick from the whole list while wiz and sorcs are stuck with just what they know, which I definitely want to see happen. Also better than most spell point systems which are needlessly bloated. 10/10 a magical experience.

LibraryOgre
2017-11-07, 07:15 PM
This is pretty key, and there are systems that did a good job with this. One example is REIGN - there's powerful magic there, but there was a very deliberate decision to have magic totally unable to have direct mental effects. The closest you get to a mind effecting spell is using another spell as a carrot or stick in negotiations/intimidation. Meanwhile there are social skills which have some actual clout.

Another fun restriction is time. Magic is able to do all sorts of things, but it's not able to do anything in less than a day, so if you need something done quickly or you have a sudden pressing issue you need nonmagical means.

In a way, this is much of what you got with 4e, at least initially. Sure, Wizards threw fire and warriors swung swords, but they were very closely comparable. But Rituals were where the "real" magic was, and those could be learned by anyone.

Guizonde
2017-11-07, 07:20 PM
i've always been partial to "magic is friggin' dangerous! burn the witch!" myself. i come from 40k before hitting pen and paper, and it shows. i hate it that all of a sudden, i can cast a fireball and if i flub my roll, the ball of plasma i summoned goes "poof" like a soap bubble. no, i want that fireball to expand and singe my fingertips off! this has two immediate effects. first, you can make magic so drastically potent you've got a disc-one nuke character. second, are you willing to be a potential walking tpk? if yes, go ahead and prepare another character. if not, you see why people won't be casting willy-nilly. you get to keep the overpowered potential of magic while having a hard limit on how much you cast and how much you want to rely on practical means to solve a problem. namely, you gamble your life and your team. is it worth it making everyone fly but risk increasing gravity a hundredfold when 30ft of rope can help you scale a building more slowly but more reliably? will you risk losing a body part to a flubbed spell or summoning a beast from the warp to eat your soul? just add consequences. iirc, pendragon forces magic users to recuperate for months after a simple healing spell, that's another worthy penalty, since the book explicitely states to force the player to switch to another character during the downtime. it avoids the "cast, rest, repeat" of a lot of dnd players.

i've got a few stories of a wizard in whfrp2e that broke the campaign as often as he broke himself. it was very entertaining, but it conditionned the rest of the team to duck and hide whenever that player loudly announced "i cast a spell!!". the dm played the universe straight, too, meaning there were times when he could cast no questions asked, but most of the time, he had to be really sure of his actions if it was worth having the local peasants grab torches and pitchforks and chase us out of town (spoiler alert: it usually wasn't). that said, he did have crazy luck with his rolls. he may have bucked the trend of kamikaze casters, but he wasn't immune to the ill effects.

rs2excelsior
2017-11-07, 07:49 PM
I think this is the probably my favorite way to change the paradigm. As long as you lock it in to some sort of theme, this makes perfect sense, especially since people will look at it a lot like someone running a game about mutants or superheroes. A Force- or Telekinetic-themed caster will have a ton of force or telekinetic tricks, but they'll never throw a fireball or make an illusion (unless they're literally moving puppets). The fire-themed caster will have only fire to work with, same goes with water, light, mind, et cetera.

It won't work with most normal spellcasting tables, as they tend to be all over the place thematically, but if you pare things down to only that one theme, your players can then get creative. Increasing in level is sometimes about gaining in power, but also gaining in control and utility.

I also think this option is probably my favorite. The typical D&D wizard's spell list is all over the place. When I made my first full caster I was surprised at how difficult it was to maintain a particular theme--I was going for a fire sorcerer, mostly a blaster, but aside from the iconic ones there were levels where there just weren't any fire spells. It makes sense to diversify if you're able to, but limiting that to a single tight theme per caster is better flavor-wise (to me at least) and helps pare down caster power. That's one of the things that intrigues me about Spheres of Power, though it doesn't disallow multi-disciplined casters (short of DM intervention, of course).


The paradigm outlined in the title exists because no-one making d20 D&D ever really asked the question "what should magic NOT be able to do, that non-magical means can?"

Hence, as the content for the system expanded, they made a spell or other magical ability for every damn thing, from ale-brewing to midwifing to xenobiology.

Individual spells and abilities have restrictions, but "magic" itself is super vague and basically includes every ability ever under it. Not co-incidentally, the most powerfull classes in d20 D&D are early, modular classes which get to cherry-pick freely from the most expansive lists (wizard, sorcerer) or have free access to entire such lists (clerics, druids).

So before you follow through with any of the other six changes, you must do Step 1: define "magic" and "spellcasting" in a way that does not have perfect overlap with mundane abilities. Once there are things spellcasters cannot do but mundanes can, you have to worry significantly less about which is ultimately superior.

I hadn't thought about it in that way, but you're entirely right. I think it's partially due to D&D's "fantasy kitchen sink" approach. The spells are all over the place; building a setting from the ground up with limits on what magic is capable of would go a long way toward limiting caster power. Which in many ways ties into my thoughts about making casters specialize--they can do a couple of things that non-casters can't, but they can't do everything.


If I was designing a magic system, I would not use D&D as a model though. Vancian magic is a very arbitrary design choice and appears rarely in fantasy literature, probably because it's not intuitively how people imagine magic would work and it's not particularly fun.

I totally agree regarding Vancian magic. I see how it's convenient for an RPG but I don't think it's a very good basis for magic in general.


In a lot of ways, I think Hackmaster does this... mages certainly contribute, but fighters are essential. They do it in a few ways.

Some interesting ideas here. I particularly like the vulnerability bit, although I feel it discourages "gish" type characters--whether or not that's desirable will depend on the setting, I suppose. I've read through the Hackmaster basic rules, but never played them. They seem a bit clunky to me, from just a single read-through--how does the system play out on the table?


Another fun restriction is time. Magic is able to do all sorts of things, but it's not able to do anything in less than a day, so if you need something done quickly or you have a sudden pressing issue you need nonmagical means.

I like this as well. Better have something other than a fireball to protect yourself from the axe wielding orc, when it'll take you a full minute to cast and he can chop you into tiny little bits in less than half that time.


i've always been partial to "magic is friggin' dangerous! burn the witch!" myself. i come from 40k before hitting pen and paper, and it shows. i hate it that all of a sudden, i can cast a fireball and if i flub my roll, the ball of plasma i summoned goes "poof" like a soap bubble. no, i want that fireball to expand and singe my fingertips off! this has two immediate effects. first, you can make magic so drastically potent you've got a disc-one nuke character. second, are you willing to be a potential walking tpk? if yes, go ahead and prepare another character. if not, you see why people won't be casting willy-nilly. you get to keep the overpowered potential of magic while having a hard limit on how much you cast and how much you want to rely on practical means to solve a problem. namely, you gamble your life and your team. is it worth it making everyone fly but risk increasing gravity a hundredfold when 30ft of rope can help you scale a building more slowly but more reliably? will you risk losing a body part to a flubbed spell or summoning a beast from the warp to eat your soul? just add consequences. iirc, pendragon forces magic users to recuperate for months after a simple healing spell, that's another worthy penalty, since the book explicitely states to force the player to switch to another character during the downtime. it avoids the "cast, rest, repeat" of a lot of dnd players.

i've got a few stories of a wizard in whfrp2e that broke the campaign as often as he broke himself. it was very entertaining, but it conditionned the rest of the team to duck and hide whenever that player loudly announced "i cast a spell!!". the dm played the universe straight, too, meaning there were times when he could cast no questions asked, but most of the time, he had to be really sure of his actions if it was worth having the local peasants grab torches and pitchforks and chase us out of town (spoiler alert: it usually wasn't). that said, he did have crazy luck with his rolls. he may have bucked the trend of kamikaze casters, but he wasn't immune to the ill effects.

I think Warhammer is the posterchild for dangerous/unreliable magic :smallbiggrin: Never played in the setting myself, but I do like the fluff I've been reading through for the universe. Might have to see if I can scrape some people together to try out a game of whfrp. Problem is, I'm not really in a place with a bunch of people who I could convince to try a completely new RPG system anymore. At least not easily.

Darth Ultron
2017-11-07, 08:14 PM
I think Warhammer is the posterchild for dangerous/unreliable magic :smallbiggrin: Never played in the setting myself, but I do like the fluff I've been reading through for the universe. Might have to see if I can scrape some people together to try out a game of whfrp. Problem is, I'm not really in a place with a bunch of people who I could convince to try a completely new RPG system anymore. At least not easily.

I like the dangerous magic myself. D&D before 3X and Pathfinder had lots of dangerous magic. Spellcasters got power...with a price. The best was 2E Forgotten Realms magic by Ed Greenwood; he liked to add things like ''casting this spell does 2d20 damage and drains a point of wisdom" to spells.

Maybe also add:

7)Make some common sense changes to magic. Not like a ''total nerf'', but just ''really it should be this way''. Like to just say ''scrying does not count at all for a teleport destination. Period."

8)The one most often ignored: Change the One Way Everyone plays the game. The big huge problem comes as Everyone only plays the game One Way. Amazingly, if you don't play the game that One Way, the so called problems just are not there anymore.

LibraryOgre
2017-11-07, 08:48 PM
Some interesting ideas here. I particularly like the vulnerability bit, although I feel it discourages "gish" type characters--whether or not that's desirable will depend on the setting, I suppose. I've read through the Hackmaster basic rules, but never played them. They seem a bit clunky to me, from just a single read-through--how does the system play out on the table?


I find that, after a session or two, it plays very well. You get used to the count-up and movement by second, rather than by round. They weapon speeds make combat more dynamic, but slower, longer-reached weapons can still keep a short-sword user from carving them up. A common refrain is "I miss it when I go to other games".

It does discourage the traditional gish, to an extent, but the addition of talents means that a gish can invest in reducing their spell fatigue... it's expensive, but fighter/mages get Diminish Spell Fatigue (which reduces the amount of time you spend fatigued) and Mitigate Spell Fatigue (which reduces the penalties of spell fatigue) for half cost. But the vulnerability also has gishes considering other spells... they may favor utility spells which help them outside of combat (where spell fatigue is largely unimportant), or require some caginess to use their spells well... Feat of Strength can give you an 18/00 Strength for a single action or Feat of Strength roll, though it will exhaust them for 6 seconds... perhaps just enough of a boost to ToP someone, and keep them down for 20 seconds.

rs2excelsior
2017-11-07, 09:12 PM
I find that, after a session or two, it plays very well. You get used to the count-up and movement by second, rather than by round. They weapon speeds make combat more dynamic, but slower, longer-reached weapons can still keep a short-sword user from carving them up. A common refrain is "I miss it when I go to other games".

It does discourage the traditional gish, to an extent, but the addition of talents means that a gish can invest in reducing their spell fatigue... it's expensive, but fighter/mages get Diminish Spell Fatigue (which reduces the amount of time you spend fatigued) and Mitigate Spell Fatigue (which reduces the penalties of spell fatigue) for half cost. But the vulnerability also has gishes considering other spells... they may favor utility spells which help them outside of combat (where spell fatigue is largely unimportant), or require some caginess to use their spells well... Feat of Strength can give you an 18/00 Strength for a single action or Feat of Strength roll, though it will exhaust them for 6 seconds... perhaps just enough of a boost to ToP someone, and keep them down for 20 seconds.

Fair enough. I do like that it seems to be a more realistic take on things in many ways. It's another RPG that's on my list of things to try at some point, if I can manage it.

Pleh
2017-11-07, 10:17 PM
2) Magic is limited not in effect, but in use. Either in how often it is used, or with some kind of associated, permanent cost. Maybe you can cast your big spell, but it will drain some of your life force which you cannot recover (or can only recover very, very slowly). It would be as if every single spell had an XP cost. Might be an interesting paradigm to try; casters would necessarily limit their casting or fall well behind in level. Perhaps this could be made to work with a system similar to 3.5 where they naturally get more xp if they're behind the party, not putting them permanently behind the level track of everyone else assuming they keep their casting reasonable. Alternatively, although in many ways I hate Vancian casting, what if you had a certain number of spell levels to cast from, generally equal or only slightly more than your highest spell level, but must wait some amount of time before using them again? So your wizard is capable of doing things that the mundane simply cannot, such as suddenly being able to fly, but then is out of magic completely for hours or days and is simply a particularly squishy and unskilled stick-wielder. I think it could be an interesting concept, but there are several reasons why permanent costs for magic don't lend themselves that well to roleplaying games and in either case would probably just exacerbate the "fifteen minute adventuring day" syndrome. Which is largely another discussion, and not wholly related to how magic works.

3) Magic is unreliable. Either in effect or in usability. Perhaps every spell has a failure chance; or perhaps every spell has a chance to operate at reduced effect or even backfire. But this seems overly RNG-dependent in many ways, and again, works better for writing a story than playing a game. "Roll a die to see if your character can be effective this round" doesn't strike me as particularly good game design. One could argue that martials work that way with attack rolls, but the fighter with a greatsword (even moreso the fighter with a glaive and combat reflexes) will still restrict enemy movement and act as a damage sink, something that casters are generally bad at (short of spells). Seems tough to fine-tune so that it's not just a formality that's easily bypassed or something that makes casters basically unusable. But then again... "roll to see if you can do X" is basically the core mechanic of D&D, and most (if not all) dice based RPGs. So maybe there is something to this.

5) Hyper-specialized casters. Perhaps, using magic, you can learn nifty tricks that no one without magic can replicate. Sure, you can learn to teleport, which no one without magic can replicate--but in that time the fighter has learned a whole repertoire of tricks. I kind of like this as well, as it encourages mixing the two approaches. If the mundanes are the generalists, capable of responding to a wide variety of situations, it encourages the caster to have their one or two tricks, but also train mundane skills to cover other options. Likewise, perhaps mundanes can dabble a bit to get small skills in magic, or simply continue to improve a wider variety of abilities. It'd require some pretty tight balancing, but I think it could work.

I personally think a combination of either 2 or 3 with 5 could make for an interesting situation, but I'm not sure how well it'd translate to RPG format.

Combination is my favorite concept. There are elements of this in D&D that aren't implemented very well mechanically.

Basically, you'd hope that a caster's general options are 2) and 5) if they have any sort of moral compass: either work really hard to get diminishing results (as with most skills) or min max your training to be really good at this one type of magic for optimal results.

Then offer a "blood magic" alternative for 3) so that wizards can be tempted by "the dark side" where power is easier to obtain, but at a terrible cost. The real problem in RPGs with this is mechanically communicating this dark trade so that players understand unambiguously that what they are doing is wrong and their character is going to hell for it.

Quertus
2017-11-08, 12:04 AM
Only skimmed the thread, probably even doing that biased me more than I wanted.

As I read it, the question is, how can you design a system such that Mage and Muggle are both playable archetypes? Here's a few rambling examples off the top of my head:

Make magic and mundane equal. This makes everyone a reskinned Muggle, and is boring.

Make magic and mundane equal. This makes everyone a reskinned Mage, and really isn't to some tastes.

Make magic stronger, but limited by scope. Mages only know Fire magic, or only Teleporting magic. This is usually either boring, or very exploitable. Done just right, it produced one of my favorite characters.

Make magic stronger, but with a limited number of uses compared to activity cycle. D&D tried this, and the 5-minute workday is the players pressing back against this artificial restraint.

Make magic stronger, but of limited applicability. Is the target in direct sunlight - if so, my cleric of Helios can affect him; if not, he's powerless. Is the target a Golem? If so, my artificer can affect it; if not, he's powerless. IMO, this is usually the worst possible solution, but some players seem to like it.

Make magic stronger, but a gamble. The sword deals 10 damage; my spell deals 5 damage, or 30 damage 20% of the time.

Make magic stronger, but with consequences. Warhammer, WoD, and deals with the Devil all fall into this (overly broad) category.

Make magic stronger, but random. Earlier editions of D&D certainly had one implementation of this, where Wizards gained 0 spells by class features.

(EDIT: Make magic stronger, but random. Mages only have one action: "Magic!", which allows them to cast one spell chosen at random.)

Make magic stronger, but slower. Ritual magic can summon a juggernaut tomorrow, but you need to survive the mugger today.

Make magic stronger, but less versatile. As a bad example, the Mage can know spells of Archery 7 and Jump 7 and Teleport 7, plus mundane skills of Haggle 3 and Hide 3, whereas the Muggle has mundane abilities of Archery 3 and Jump 3 and Run 3 and Climb 3 and Endure 3 and Haggle 3 and Hide 3 and Befriend 3 and Craft 3 and Ride 3 and Masonry 3 and...

Make magic weaker, but more versatile. Prestidigitation from D&D is a great example, if perhaps a bit too limited for balance in most systems / settings.

Make magic weaker, but faster. Old D&D psionic combat was one horrible example of this balance paradigm.

Anyway, as you can see, there are lots of options (more than I listed) that you can create by varying power, versatility, reliability, cost, speed, side effects, scope, and even agency.

There are several Archetypes to consider when building the system:

The Gish: the character who can both fight/muggle and cast spells.

The Physical Adapt / CoDzilla: the character who can fight because magic.

And, why not, I'll call this one The Quertus: the character who is always magical, usually useless, but occasionally able to pull out big guns. This could involve combining something like Prestidigitation and Ritual magic, or Reserve Feats and very limited spell slots.

Tanarii
2017-11-08, 01:24 AM
Older editions of D&D, arcane magic features included:
- glass cannon hit points and AC
- very limited uses per day until high levels
- slow XP table
- could not cast effectively in melee

Playing a Wizard was playing the game on hard mode, unless you had a wall of Fighters and Clerics in front of you for defense. Your role was artillery for very dangerous situations.

Even so this broke down around or about level 10, but the game breaking down at higher levels due to magic in general is true for most editions of D&D. You either accept the silliness as all in good fun and plough on, or don't like it and reset with new characters. Or make an E6-like mod.

Of course, in older edition getting a character to name level was quite hard unless your DM just handed out treasure like candy, which was unfortunaltey common. One of the issues with D&D's recent editions current rapid advancement is they didn't slow the progress to gaining higher level spell leveling up in the process. Getting access to level 6 spells used to take years of play, not less than a year.

--------------

Warhammer FRP, or 40k DH/Only War Psykers (I've read but not played the latter), as mentioned above, also makes for hard mode casters, since magic is a crap shoot. like playing a D&D Wild Mage, you have a passable chance of ass-ploding your own party. And in there's the added social hostility, which also featured in D&D's Dark Sun.

Guizonde
2017-11-08, 02:33 AM
Warhammer FRP, or 40k DH/Only War Psykers (I've read but not played the latter), as mentioned above, also makes for hard mode casters, since magic is a crap shoot. like playing a D&D Wild Mage, you have a passable chance of ass-ploding your own party. And in there's the added social hostility, which also featured in D&D's Dark Sun.

i haven't had direct contact with the dark heresy/40k ffg universe, but if you can, look at their tables again: you can just as easily destroy the plot with a good roll as you can annihilate your character with a bad one. i love it. same goes for their crit tables, which i've unashamedly stolen for my homebrew d100 system. nothing quite like getting a double kill by exploding a guy and killing his buddy with his own femur.

Komatik
2017-11-08, 04:50 AM
Combination is my favorite concept. There are elements of this in D&D that aren't implemented very well mechanically.

Basically, you'd hope that a caster's general options are 2) and 5) if they have any sort of moral compass: either work really hard to get diminishing results (as with most skills) or min max your training to be really good at this one type of magic for optimal results.

Then offer a "blood magic" alternative for 3) so that wizards can be tempted by "the dark side" where power is easier to obtain, but at a terrible cost. The real problem in RPGs with this is mechanically communicating this dark trade so that players understand unambiguously that what they are doing is wrong and their character is going to hell for it.

Warhammer does it really nicely. Magic can be safe, but safe magic is specialized (for humans, anyway, not for experienced Elves). Any living being not using specific purifying methods will be driven insane, guaranteed. It's a question of when, not if.

More on Warhammer World magic for the unfamiliar"]More on Warhammer World magic for those unfamiliar with it. (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=22427762&postcount=184)

Frozen_Feet
2017-11-08, 05:15 AM
Related, let me renumerate the four laws of magic which I feel will 1) lead to comprehensible magic system with clear limits and 2) feel magical to players in the real world.

1st rule: rule of symbolism: a thing which appears similar to a thing, can be used to affect that thing, AKA manipulation of symbols manipulates reality.

2nd rule: law of contagion: things which have been in contact, remain connected. You can use part of a whole to affect the whole.

3rd rule: mind over matter. Thoughts and emotions have direct impact on reality. Corollary to this is that a mage must be thinking of the effect they desire and fully intend it for magic to work. Rule of thumb: "there are no accidents in magic".

4th rule: no ontological inertia. Effects of magic only remain as long as the caster is focusing their thoughts and emotions, or, if the target is another conscious being, as long as the target can focus their thoughts and emotions.

Let me also give you a few example spells which adhere to these rules:

Example spell A: the Voodoo doll.

First, you acquire a symbol of the target person: a doll in their likeness. Second, you create a connection to that person, by acquiring a piece of their body: a strand of hair, a drop of blood, a toenail etc. Third, you must harm the doll with the intent of harming the real person. If your intentions are true, the person will now suffer pain. After this, two things can happen. If the target is unaware of the curse, the pain will cease once your attention on the doll ceases. If you get the target to believe they are cursed, then their own belief will keep the curse going even when your attention is elsewhere.

Things which can go wrong with the spell:

- your symbol is lackluster; it does not bear resemblance to the right person
- you lack real connection to the target person; the hair, the blood, the nail, is from someone else
- you lack real intent to harm. Again: "there are no accidents in magic". If you don't truly wish to stab a person with a needle, it does not matter how many needles you stab in your doll.
- the target refuses to believe they are cursed. You can still affect them when your full attention is on the doll, but you cannot make the curse "stick" to cause a lasting change in the target's life.

How to break the spell:

- destroy the doll without intending harm to the person the doll is made of. This destroys the symbolic connection between the doll and the target. To be on the safe side, it helps if you at the same time proclaim and honestly believe the doll has no connection to the person it is made of. If you feel at any level that harming the doll equates to harming the person, this is obviously very dangerous. You might want to get a complete stranger to do this. It's easier to think a doll's just a doll if you don't know it's off a real person.
- remove the body part from the doll. This breaks the connection between the target and the doll.
- make the spellcaster feel pity towards the target. They cannot cause them harm if they do not honestly wish that. It also helps if the target believes the spellcaster does not honestly wish them harm.
- convince the target that they aren't, and can't, be cursed. This makes it impossible to make a curse "stick", and provides resistance to the spellcaster's tricks.
- if the target's own belief is upholding the curse, give them the doll so they can themselves remove the pins and destroy the doll, hence verifying the curse is over.
- kill the spellcaster, preferably in sight of the target.
- if the target's own belief is fueling the curse, make them suffer amnesia.

Example spell B: shapeshifting

First, you make yourself into a symbol of the thing you wish to change into. Second, you place upon yourself or consume ("you are what you eat") a piece of the thing you wish to turn into. For example, for turning into a wolf, dressing in a wolf pelt serves both purposes. Now, while honestly wanting to be the thing you wish to change into, act like that thing. You change back once you honestly wish to be human again and cease to act like the thing you changed into.

Things which can go wrong with this spell:

- your symbol is lackluster; neither you nor your actions bear resemblance to the thing you wanted to change into.
- the thing you consumed or placed upon yourself is of the wrong creature, so you don't have a connection to it. Do n't use a bear pelt if trying to turn into a wolf.
- you don't actually know what the thing is really like, so you can't honestly intent to become it either. If you know nothing of how real wolves act, you can't change into one either.
- the thing you turned into does not or cannot have a comprehension of what it's like to be human; a human may know both what it's like to be human and what it's like to be a wolf, but a wolf might only know what it's like to be wolf. This makes it difficult to change back on purpose. (One of the few corner cases of a spell being "permanent". Pro tip: don't turn yourself into an inanimate object!)
- the thing you turned into would not want to turn into your past form. For example, dragons are arrogant creatures and see humans as inferior. Not in a million years would a dragon want to be a human, a dragon just wants to be dragon.

How to break the spell:

- kill or destroy who has been changed. This, at latest, ends the spell and restores the thing to its original form.
- convince the changed thing that they'd really be better off in some other form, hence breaking the intentionality upholding the spell. For example, if the spellcaster-turned-wolf is faced with reality of a human they loved now scorning or fearing them, they may wish to not be wolf again.
- countespell: disbelieve the transformation really hard, acting like its all smoke and mirrors, and convince all others to follow suit. Note: this is dangerous if even little doubt remains in your heart. It is hard to disbelieve a wolf when its biting your throat. Usually only works if you know the thing is really under a spell, such as through witnessing the initial transformation.

Glorthindel
2017-11-08, 05:42 AM
My preferred methods are either 3) or 5)

I am a big Warhammer fan, and a tenet of the setting is that magic is dangerous. It is meddling with forces way beyond your understanding, and the chances of things going out of control in a tense moment, or of you drawing the attention of something from the realms of magic is high. The various RPG systems set in that setting have a chance that something could go wrong whenever you cast a spell, with a greater chance the more power you put into manifesting the spell (in WFRP for example, you have to achieve a certain 'score' to manifest a spell, and can roll a number of D10 to achieve that score, but if any dice comes up a 9, a mishap occurs, with more dangerous mishaps the more 9s you rolled). This turns magic from being something you just spam continually (such as in D&D), into something you need to seriously consider whether you really need to use in any given round, and to how desperately you need the spell to work, so how much added risk you are willing to pile up.

Probably better for D&D (and more appealing to those who dislike randomness of mishaps) would be specialisation. Where the current system goes wrong is that every wizard can do every thing. Sure, specialisation exists (in the form of the schools) but that specialisation doesn't cost anything. In older editions, being specialised in one school barred you from several others, and that strikes me as a much more balanced approach (granted, in older systems you could still be a generalist, but I like the idea of forcing all wizards to be a specialist). Again, using WFRP as an example, that splits all magic into multiple schools, and WFRP wizards could only access their chosen school - if you wanted to fly (found only in the Celestial College) you couldn't turn invisible (as that was in the Grey College), or cast a forcecage (that was in the Gold College list) and were limited to light/lightening damage (fire being the domain of Bright).

Why I like specialisation as a solution is it removes the swiss army knife wizard who can do everyone elses jobs. The Wizard becomes someone who can occupy another characters niche, but not everyones at once. Right now, a Wizard can take fly, invisibility, and knock, and basically obsolete the Rogue, whilst taking a bunch of monster/undead summoning spells that obsoletes the Fighter, and all without losing any of its combat effectiveness as a long-range damage dealer. If those schools of spells cost the Wizard in other areas, then the Wizard goes back to occupying a place in a team, rather than being able to be the whole team.

The ones I don't particularly like is 1) and 4). The former because people who play Wizards want to be powerful, and magic should be. By bringing it down to just things doable without magic, it takes away the mystique.

In the case of the latter, most people who like mundanes, want to be mundane, not just "a spellcaster by another name". By allowing mundanes to create magical effects without magic, you are killing a swath of archetypes that appeal to the players you are trying to help. Sure, it works for people wanting to create anime-style heroes, but it goes completely contrary to the image of more western-style martial heroes - Sir Galahad, Robin Hood, Conan, Maximus Decimus Meridius, Saladin - players wanting to style a character on heroes like these will find themselves frustrated by "powers" that have no place in the character they want to play. I think this is one of the things that turned people off 4th ed.

Pleh
2017-11-08, 05:44 AM
Warhammer does it really nicely. Magic can be safe, but safe magic is specialized (for humans, anyway, not for experienced Elves). Any living being not using specific purifying methods will be driven insane, guaranteed. It's a question of when, not if.

More on Warhammer World magic for those unfamiliar with it. (More on Warhammer World magic for the unfamiliar)

Thanks! I'll have to look into it. (Though your link doesn't work.)


Related, let me renumerate the four laws of magic which I feel will 1) lead to comprehensible magic system with clear limits and 2) feel magical to players in the real world.

1st rule: rule of symbolism: a thing which appears similar to a thing, can be used to affect that thing, AKA manipulation of symbols manipulates reality.

2nd rule: law of contagion: things which have been in contact, remain connected. You can use part of a whole to affect the whole.

3rd rule: mind over matter. Thoughts and emotions have direct impact on reality. Corollary to this is that a mage must be thinking of the effect they desire and fully intend it for magic to work. Rule of thumb: "there are no accidents in magic".

4th rule: no ontological inertia. Effects of magic only remain as long as the caster is focusing their thoughts and emotions, or, if the target is another conscious being, as long as the target can focus their thoughts and emotions.

My problem with these definitions is that they seem to preclude one of my favorite Magic tropes: "magic as an existential force."

These laws would seem to imply that magic never spontaneously imposes on the environment naturally. While an understandable limitation, it seems boring to me.

Now, if you meant these four laws dictated "spellcasting" rather than "magic," then the problem disappears as these laws now only have power over a mortal's ability to interface with and influence the effects of magic.

Mutazoia
2017-11-08, 05:55 AM
Older editions of D&D, arcane magic features included:
- glass cannon hit points and AC
- very limited uses per day until high levels
- slow XP table
- could not cast effectively in melee

Playing a Wizard was playing the game on hard mode, unless you had a wall of Fighters and Clerics in front of you for defense. Your role was artillery for very dangerous situations.

Even so this broke down around or about level 10, but the game breaking down at higher levels due to magic in general is true for most editions of D&D. You either accept the silliness as all in good fun and plough on, or don't like it and reset with new characters. Or make an E6-like mod.

Of course, in older edition getting a character to name level was quite hard unless your DM just handed out treasure like candy, which was unfortunaltey common. One of the issues with D&D's recent editions current rapid advancement is they didn't slow the progress to gaining higher level spell leveling up in the process. Getting access to level 6 spells used to take years of play, not less than a year...

Older editions also didn't have meta-magic feats that only wizards could take, didn't have "defensive casting" or "5 foot steps" that would prevent a caster from being interrupted, casters lost their spell if they took damage while casting, spells had casting times that added to the casters initiative (Initiative of 15 and a casting time of 4, you START casting on 15, and your spells goes off on 11, leaving plenty of time to be interrupted), casters didn't have infinite capacity, always full component pouches, casters had to roll to see if they could even learn a new spell, rather than having them just spontaneously "poof" into their spell book, casters had to rest a full day to re-memorize used spells....

The problem isn't that mundane characters are too weak, the problem is that 3.x plus casters got a huge buff that they really didn't need. Couple that with the unlimited multi-classing mechanic of 3.x and things start to get really messy.

Plus, pre 3.x, each class had its own XP table. Some classes would need less XP than others to advance...the more powerful the class, the more XP it needed. Casters generally needed more XP per level than the Fighter did, but then the Fighter couldn't kill an entire room of orcs in a split second either.

Anonymouswizard
2017-11-08, 06:54 AM
Older editions also didn't have meta-magic feats that only wizards could take, didn't have "defensive casting" or "5 foot steps" that would prevent a caster from being interrupted, casters lost their spell if they took damage while casting, spells had casting times that added to the casters initiative (Initiative of 15 and a casting time of 4, you START casting on 15, and your spells goes off on 11, leaving plenty of time to be interrupted), casters didn't have infinite capacity, always full component pouches, casters had to roll to see if they could even learn a new spell, rather than having them just spontaneously "poof" into their spell book, casters had to rest a full day to re-memorize used spells....

The problem isn't that mundane characters are too weak, the problem is that 3.x plus casters got a huge buff that they really didn't need. Couple that with the unlimited multi-classing mechanic of 3.x and things start to get really messy.

Agreeing here, 3.X made magic much more easy. Now high level mages were always powerful, but they could be countered much more easily.


Plus, pre 3.x, each class had its own XP table. Some classes would need less XP than others to advance...the more powerful the class, the more XP it needed. Casters generally needed more XP per level than the Fighter did, but then the Fighter couldn't kill an entire room of orcs in a split second either.

Although it's nowhere near perfect.

Frozen_Feet
2017-11-08, 08:54 AM
My problem with these definitions is that they seem to preclude one of my favorite Magic tropes: "magic as an existential force."

These laws would seem to imply that magic never spontaneously imposes on the environment naturally. While an understandable limitation, it seems boring to me.

Yes, you can interprete the rules in such a way that there can be no magic without a magician. Please ignore the man behind the curtain. It's not as much as a problem as you probably think if your setting is full of intentional actors, whether those be gods, spirits, demons, faeries or just other humans. These can create the feeling of spontaneous, "natural" magic well enough.


Now, if you meant these four laws dictated "spellcasting" rather than "magic," then the problem disappears as these laws now only have power over a mortal's ability to interface with and influence the effects of magic.

I do prefer to make a distinction between "magic" and the supernatural, yes, in which case the former only governs "The art or practice of using charms, spells, or rituals to attempt to produce supernatural effects or control events in nature", while the latter governs any event which lies outside rules of the natural world. I further make a distinction between "supernatural" and "superhuman", to make clear that the latter doesn't necessarily entail the former. So, for example, a Kryptonian who is superhuman by virtue of absorbing energy from the Sun, is neither magical nor supernatural. A ghost is supernatural, but is not magic, nor is the ghost's supernatural ability to walk through walls an example of magic.

Somewhat tangentially, "magic as a (singular) force" is one of my most hated cliches of fantasy. :smalltongue:

Bruno Carvalho
2017-11-08, 09:24 AM
2) Magic is limited not in effect, but in use. Either in how often it is used, or with some kind of associated, permanent cost. Maybe you can cast your big spell, but it will drain some of your life force which you cannot recover (or can only recover very, very slowly). It would be as if every single spell had an XP cost. Might be an interesting paradigm to try; casters would necessarily limit their casting or fall well behind in level. Perhaps this could be made to work with a system similar to 3.5 where they naturally get more xp if they're behind the party, not putting them permanently behind the level track of everyone else assuming they keep their casting reasonable. Alternatively, although in many ways I hate Vancian casting, what if you had a certain number of spell levels to cast from, generally equal or only slightly more than your highest spell level, but must wait some amount of time before using them again? So your wizard is capable of doing things that the mundane simply cannot, such as suddenly being able to fly, but then is out of magic completely for hours or days and is simply a particularly squishy and unskilled stick-wielder. I think it could be an interesting concept, but there are several reasons why permanent costs for magic don't lend themselves that well to roleplaying games and in either case would probably just exacerbate the "fifteen minute adventuring day" syndrome. Which is largely another discussion, and not wholly related to how magic works.

5) Hyper-specialized casters. Perhaps, using magic, you can learn nifty tricks that no one without magic can replicate. Sure, you can learn to teleport, which no one without magic can replicate--but in that time the fighter has learned a whole repertoire of tricks. I kind of like this as well, as it encourages mixing the two approaches. If the mundanes are the generalists, capable of responding to a wide variety of situations, it encourages the caster to have their one or two tricks, but also train mundane skills to cover other options. Likewise, perhaps mundanes can dabble a bit to get small skills in magic, or simply continue to improve a wider variety of abilities. It'd require some pretty tight balancing, but I think it could work.



In my own FFRPG (link in sig), I went with an hybrid solution, combining 2) and 5). Combat magic is handled by hyper-specializing casters. A mage will have only a handful of spells, each with very specific uses (deal damage, heal, buff, etcetera), and their combat role is fixed based on the spells they know, so you'll have to occupy a specific niche and work together with the mundanes in your party.

Out-of-combat magic (utility spells) is handled with method 2). Instead of having "spell per day", utiilty spells costs a metacurrency called Destiny Points (akin to fate points or other RPG metacurrency), so if you're using a spell as a "win button", you do it because you spend your DP for it. To earn more DP, either you must roleplay accordingly to your quirks, or put yourself in trouble, so there is no "5-min workday", as you'll only recharge your "win button" spells if the fiction dictates that, not simply by having time pass by.

Pleh
2017-11-08, 09:27 AM
Yes, you can interprete the rules in such a way that there can be no magic without a magician. Please ignore the man behind the curtain. It's not as much as a problem as you probably think if your setting is full of intentional actors, whether those be gods, spirits, demons, faeries or just other humans. These can create the feeling of spontaneous, "natural" magic well enough.

I do prefer to make a distinction between "magic" and the supernatural, yes, in which case the former only governs "The art or practice of using charms, spells, or rituals to attempt to produce supernatural effects or control events in nature", while the latter governs any event which lies outside rules of the natural world. I further make a distinction between "supernatural" and "superhuman", to make clear that the latter doesn't necessarily entail the former. So, for example, a Kryptonian who is superhuman by virtue of absorbing energy from the Sun, is neither magical nor supernatural. A ghost is supernatural, but is not magic, nor is the ghost's supernatural ability to walk through walls an example of magic.

Somewhat tangentially, "magic as a (singular) force" is one of my most hated cliches of fantasy. :smalltongue:

I approve of everything that I see here. Well done and good show, sir. :smallsmile:

Tanarii
2017-11-08, 10:10 AM
Agreeing here, 3.X made magic much more easy. Now high level mages were always powerful, but they could be countered much more easily.And low level mages were, as I said, (very limits ammo) artillery. Very dangerous when they went off, but vulnerable as all get out and

Even a mid to high level Mage was in serious danger unless they'd prepared lots of contingencies (which a smart wizard of course does), if you could get in a skilled warriors into melee range.

I think the new edition does an okay job of balancing low level mages despite lacking quite so much the glass artillery feeling. The problem is people still complain it breaks down a bit at higher levels, because casters still quickly get access to serious reality-bending in the form of higher level spells. And that serious reality-bending actually WILL come up in a decently hung together campaign, unlike old editions, because it doesn't make 5 years (or skipping ahead) to get to level 14 any more.


Although it's nowhere near perfect.By no means are any of my comments meant to imply oD&D (which I've never played), AD&D or BECMI ways of doing things are anywhere near perfect. I'm commenting on what the limitations were on wizards before. And they were stripped out almost completely by 3e. Which was overall a system that was hugely innovative and fixed all sorts of things in D&D-land.

But that massive destruction of caster balance by 3e between casters and martial was not a small factor in why 4e happened in the first place. I liked both those systems at the time, so don't take that as editions warring. And the bounce back from that to 5e, which is a bring-back-old-school-feel edition, still didn't try to reintroduce those limitations. It's stuck with a bunch of new, and conflicting with old school feel, sacred cows:
- levels up to 20 including spells up to 9th level
- same XP table and (optional) atomic level Multiclassing
- lightning fast level advancement
- mages that aren't uselessly out of spells in no time (Cantrips in 5e)
- mages that aren't useless in melee

Overall it's done a pretty good job considering what it's balancing. But it's hard to balance a class that was designed to be a low ammo glass cannon, close to useless in melee, that would hit epic levels spells (6-7) after 5 years of play vs decent ammo fairly resilient can-cast-in-melee cannon that hits epic level spells in a year of play.

PhoenixPhyre
2017-11-08, 10:11 AM
I'm late to this conversation, but I strongly prefer solving this by narrowing the day-to-day versatility of casters (as well as letting mundanes have nice things by drop-kicking the "guy at the gym" mentality out the proverbial window). I don't mind that there's versatility, but you should have to build for that, and a blaster caster should have to make trade-offs with other spells. Not "oh, I'm not quite as good at them" or ("oh, give me a day, I'll prepare something else") but "I don't know that type of spell."

I made an attempt along the lines of narrowing the versatility for 5e D&D. IMO, 5e is close enough to balance that my primary concern wasn't balance per se--it was thematicity. Basically, I wanted to drastically increase the number of spell lists and reduce the number of spells on each list. In part, I wanted a resource for NPC spell lists, but also as a thought experiment for PCs.

Here's the google doc I created with the changes. (https://docs.google.com/document/d/1AU6QqpZOSi8nrnBytp21wQmg3Ref2zI6Zu_pecVrKwE/edit?usp=sharing) I must stress that it's a WIP, proof of concept, least-change (so not rewriting anything I didn't have to) and not anywhere near finished or balanced. But I think the idea's sound, especially for NPCs. (Feedback would be welcome!)

The essence was that I took all ~400 spells I had (PHB + the free sources) and redistributed them between 30 or so "themes". Classes determine which themes a character has access to (including some that can go "off list"). Each character has a primary theme where they pick most of their spells from. They may have one or more secondary theme (where they occasionally pick spells from) or may have another way of accessing other spells. For example, sorcerers don't get a secondary theme, but can cast one spell (of the appropriate level) from almost any list each day--each day it can be something different. Bard have a narrow primary theme selection, but get to poach spells from any other list periodically. Clerics get different secondary lists by domain, but have a relatively small choice of primary lists.

This helps clerics (for example) feel unified but also differentiated. It's not just 2 spells of each level that are set by the domain--it's about half their list that'll be different between different domains.

A particular attempt was made to spread the spells out--there are no spells unique to a single list. Yes, even iconic spells.

In essence, I made each caster a limited-list caster (like a fixed list, but you might have a choice at character-creation/level-up to choose between two narrow lists). You could go even further and kill off/make up a lot of spells, but this serves my purpose.

Waar
2017-11-08, 12:23 PM
There are a few concepts that help to balance magic that I have seen succefully implemented over the years. There is no need to implement all of the below in the same game, that would be a bit much.

1) Make sure that skilled users of weapons are more reliable and efficient in combat (this is easier if combat is not the only primary focus of the game), in such instances magic is valued more for adaptability, support and as a different way to solve problems.

2) Make magic unreliable: DnD is fairly alone in making magic always work (sure the target might resist the spell, but the spell still went off with no unforseen sideffects, targets still takes half damage from fireball even if they save, for instance), In many games there is some form of roll to activate a spell in the first place, and this roll might fail or even backfire, depending on the game.

3) Make the cost of magic unreliable: This ties in to the possibility of a backfiring spell, but can be separate. If you don't know how much using magic in this instant will cost you, you take the risk that the spell you are trying to cast will have more side effects than expected, perhaps tiring you character, or more random side effects. This can either happen as a result of trying to cast the spell, or you might get the option to avoid the side effects and let the spell fail.

4) Make magical abilities special: If each spell or other magical ability has a cost to learn it, and perhaps costs to master it as well, a mage can have very powerfull and varied abilities, without covering everything.

5) Make magic need preparation to truly shine: This can be a way to regulate the power of magic while in the game, but it can have side effects on how players play the game.

6) Make magic attract attention/be tracable: If many magical abilities are in the same subtlety category as rocket launchers, you can let those abilities compete with rocket launchers, while still letting more subtle alternatives be very usefull.


Note that having these things do not neccesarily make a mage less powerfull than other pcs, often these disadvantages are compensated for by advantages in some form.
For instance:

Mages in shadowrun are extremely powerfull if they have just a little time to prepare, but their spells tire (or sometimes harm) them and leave behind evidence.
Psykers Dark Heresy 2 (iirc the most recent WH 40k rpg) can have very powerfull abilities, but getting these to work reliably or without a small risk of massive side effects is hard and impossible, respectively.
While Jedi in FFGs star wars rpgs can use their force powers as often as they want, and in some cases guarantee their succesfull use (at a cost), but truly mastering even a single force power requires a major investment.

2D8HP
2017-11-08, 12:29 PM
I've only briefly skimmed this thread, so I may be echoing others but that won't lessen my craving to bloviate (LUCKY YOU )!

:amused:

The OP seems most familiar with Pathfinder (which I have never played, but looks to me something that I might enjoy playing at low levels), since Pathfinder is based on earlier WotC D&D, I will speak on that and similar games.

Balance issues have been there at the start of D&D.
I can very much remember how in 70's early 80's it was hard to get anyone to play a "Magic User" (even when the Intelligence score roll was higher their Strength), simply because at low levels they had the least they could do (and the lowest hit points).
Most everyone played "Fighting-Men" to start, but those few who played for "the long game" found that "Magic Users" vastly overpowered other classes at high levels. Thematically and for "world building" it made sense, magicians should be rare, and "the great and powerful Wizard" should be more fearsome then the "mighty Warrior". But as a game? Having separate classes each doing their unique thing is more fun, and always hanging in the back while another PC does everything isn't.

While it ruins my "old school cred" I am in the tank for balance. So far in play (low levels so far) 5e seems to hit it about right, but I find high level play confusing and a bit dull, plus I lack the mental agility to effectively play a spell-caster anyway, plus I want to play Captain Sinbad the hero,

https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/M/MV5BMTczOTk3NDU3Ml5BMl5BanBnXkFtZTcwOTYzNDQyNA@@._ V1_UY218_CR14,0,150,218_AL_.jpg

not the villainous Sokurah the Magician!

http://www.aveleyman.com/Gallery/ActorsT/17009-17024.gif

I bought and read the 3e PHB over a decade ago, and have glanced at it, 2e AD&D, 3.5, and 4e but I never played those versions of D&D, so grab a shovel full of salt..

I've played B/X and 5e D&D recently, Oe D&D and 1e AD&D decades ago, and some other RPG's, so those are what I base my responses on.

While in theory Magic-Users became the most powerful characters (it even suggested so in the rules:

1974 - Dungeons & Dragons Book 1: Men & Magic,
(Page 6)

"Magic-Users: Top level magic-users are perhaps the most powerful characters in the game, but it is a long hard road to the top, and to begin with they are very weak, so survival is often the question, unless fighters protect the low-level magical types until they have worked up."...)

IIRC, in practice Mages were so weak that no one I knew played them long. We only did it when we rolled badly or (briefly) wanted a challenge, so I never saw any Mages past second level that weren't NPC's at my usual tables.

I did encounter some higher level Magic User PC's at DunDraCon around 1980 or so, but the players were bearded college student jerks, who thought they were all that because they could drive and vote!

So what if my character is "Just another imitation Conan", is your Gandalf/Merlin/Thulsa Doom expy that much better?

*rant* *rave* *grumble* *fume*

....anyway, it was such a long slog before a Magic User PC became less weak than the other classes that if they survived to become poweful it seemed like a just reward in old D&D.

Unlike D&D, in Stormbringer, on the other hand, you became a Sorcerer when you had really lucky rolls (high POW), which made the other PC's sidekicks, which for a player was LAME!

But as a Gamemaster I loved the Stormbringer magic system, which involved summoning and attempting to bind Demons (just so METAL!)..

One of my favorite games to play is Pendragon in which all but the 4th edition the spell-casters are all NPC's and all the PK's (player Knights) rock!

The "magic system" is a list of trope suggestions for the GM (unless you use the 4th edition in which magic use involves astrology, so you cast spells "when the stars are right", the 5th edition went back to magic use being NPC).

!In the WotC 5e D&D I play now, there's more than one class that can cast spells at 1st level, and they seem to be at least equal to the non-spell-casting classes so the fun is more evenly divided.

Many even suggest that Spell-casters are too powerful compared to non-casters which may be true, but that seems to be a just reward for how many rules their players need to keep track of in 5e D&D.

I'm still having fun playing Barbarians, Fighters, and Rogues so it's cool.

Did I mention the Pendragon magic system?

I did?

That's because it's AWESOME!

Like the 1st and 3rd, the 5th edition of Pendragon has rules for Knight (including women Knights), Lady, and Squire PC's, but only the 4th edition had rules for PC Spell Casters, though IIRC correctly the 1st and 3rd editions had the possibility of some "Lady" PC's being able to brew a magic potion (I never saw a "second edition" and I don't think it was ever published).

But really if you want to play a Spell-caster Pendragon probably isn't for you, I would look into Ars Magica instead.

I went as far as to find Greg Stafford (the author), and tell him just how impressed I was with it.

Sadly, when I tried to convince those I played D&D with (some of whom wanted to convince me to play Ars Magica), there were no takers (one said "Britain in the Dark Ages just isn't fun", and he never gave me back my copy of Katharine Briggs "Dictionary of Fairies". It was a loan not a gift , it's been nearly 30 years, give it back dammit! :furious:).

As sublime as Pendragon looked to be, I don't think that it would be as fun to play as the mix of D&D, AD&D, Arduin, and All the World's Monster's that I played in the very late 1970's and early 80's was (I don't think anything will be, fun was just more fun as a near teenager).

Now let me please speak on a game with a BADASS! magic system (why thank you).


http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-CUGACO3WRXE/To5KSQ7_8_I/AAAAAAAAguo/aLnlf1ehXgg/s400/rpg-Stormbringer.jpg

Chaosium's old Stormbringer! (http://siskoid.blogspot.com/2011/10/rpgs-that-time-forgot-stormbringer.html?m=1) game had a "magic system" based on summoning and attempting to control demons and elementals. It was completely BADASS! and I thought it was truer to Swords and Sorcery than D&D.

The main flaw as a game was that it's random character typically generated made PC's with very wide power-levels (more so than D&D) so you'd wind up with a party of one mighty sorcerer and four drooling begger "sidekicks".

I believe that Chaosium's latest version of
Basic Roleplaying (http://www.chaosium.com/basic-roleplaying/)
has a point buy option that you can drop in.

If I'm ever forced to DM/GM again going that route would be in my top three picks.

Come to think of it, if I could somehow combine '70's rules D&D, 5e D&D, Pendragon, and Stormbringer! it would be ONE GAME TO RULE THEM ALL!

Both Stormbringer and Pendragon are descended from the Runequest rules (as is the more popular Call of Cthullu).

Call of Cthullu had a magic system that I admire, the more you know of magic the more likely you'll go insane!

Combine that with Stormbringer!

In Stormbringer Instead of casting spells Stormbringer you summon demons and elementals to make magic. For more poweful magic you have to summon more powerful beings and they need to be persuaded!

Couldn't demons just decide to eat you up yum-yum or rend your psyche and soul instead?

Damn straight!

What part of "secrets man was not meant to know" didn't you understand?!

Practicing magic is a dangerous act, otherwise every Tom, Rick, and witch Hazel would do it!

Magic as tool box "Levels to move the world" is LAME!

Magic should be more like fire, specifically hellfire!

Yes you may boil your tea (and incinerate your enemies!), but you run the risk of dooming yourself.

Now that's genre!

malachi
2017-11-08, 12:38 PM
@OP
One thing you can do is make offensive magic deal comparable damage to non-magical options and make utility magic useful for new options, but not overpowering and setting defining.
An example of this is the Iron Kingdoms Full Metal Fantasy RPG (not the d20 Iron Kingdoms):
-A moderately optimized spellcaster will do roughly comparable damage to a moderately optimized ranged character, but less than a moderately optimized melee character - and further optimization rarely gives spellcasters additional damage (and when it does, its from their non-spellcasting actions).
-Most spells have little to no out of combat application. The few spells that do give out of combat benefits either enhance existing capabilities (the Occultation spell gives benefits to the Sneak skill) or are only accessible to very niche careers (the two spells that allow characters to walk through a wall can only be accessed by 3 of the 15 spellcasting careers).
-Spells have a duration of 1 round or "as long as I concentrate on it and stay within 200 feet of the target". This limitation is made up for by the fact that characters are not limited in how many spells they can cast a day, but by what they can cast/concentrate on in a given round.



I'm late to this conversation, but I strongly prefer solving this by narrowing the day-to-day versatility of casters (as well as letting mundanes have nice things by drop-kicking the "guy at the gym" mentality out the proverbial window). I don't mind that there's versatility, but you should have to build for that, and a blaster caster should have to make trade-offs with other spells. Not "oh, I'm not quite as good at them" or ("oh, give me a day, I'll prepare something else") but "I don't know that type of spell."

I made an attempt along the lines of narrowing the versatility for 5e D&D. IMO, 5e is close enough to balance that my primary concern wasn't balance per se--it was thematicity. Basically, I wanted to drastically increase the number of spell lists and reduce the number of spells on each list. In part, I wanted a resource for NPC spell lists, but also as a thought experiment for PCs.

Here's the google doc I created with the changes. (https://docs.google.com/document/d/1AU6QqpZOSi8nrnBytp21wQmg3Ref2zI6Zu_pecVrKwE/edit?usp=sharing) I must stress that it's a WIP, proof of concept, least-change (so not rewriting anything I didn't have to) and not anywhere near finished or balanced. But I think the idea's sound, especially for NPCs. (Feedback would be welcome!)

The essence was that I took all ~400 spells I had (PHB + the free sources) and redistributed them between 30 or so "themes". Classes determine which themes a character has access to (including some that can go "off list"). Each character has a primary theme where they pick most of their spells from. They may have one or more secondary theme (where they occasionally pick spells from) or may have another way of accessing other spells. For example, sorcerers don't get a secondary theme, but can cast one spell (of the appropriate level) from almost any list each day--each day it can be something different. Bard have a narrow primary theme selection, but get to poach spells from any other list periodically. Clerics get different secondary lists by domain, but have a relatively small choice of primary lists.

This helps clerics (for example) feel unified but also differentiated. It's not just 2 spells of each level that are set by the domain--it's about half their list that'll be different between different domains.

A particular attempt was made to spread the spells out--there are no spells unique to a single list. Yes, even iconic spells.

In essence, I made each caster a limited-list caster (like a fixed list, but you might have a choice at character-creation/level-up to choose between two narrow lists). You could go even further and kill off/make up a lot of spells, but this serves my purpose.

One issue I see is that for some classes, it is almost impossible to get spells from their secondary theme on certain spell levels.
For instance, if a bard chooses Illusion as their primary theme (which has fewer spells at every level than the Mesmerism school), they have to learn 3 lvl 1 Illusion spells beyond their starting spells before they can learn a second spell from their secondary theme.
The only way that they can learn a 2nd level spell from their secondary theme is by replacing their singular secondary-themed spell they learned at level 1 with a lvl 2 spell from the same theme.
The earliest that a bard can learn a spell from their secondary theme without wasting magical secrets on something that should be available to them is level 6 (and then, it has to be their 3rd lvl 3 spell known). For a Mesmerist Bard, that would be level 14 (and must be their 4th level 6 spell known).
Bards will never be able to learn a secondary-theme cantrip. (I think; the document doesn't list how bards learn cantrips)
Bards do have magical secrets, but what is the point of giving them secondary themes if they have to use class abilities that literally ignore the themes in order to get those spells?

Maybe a better way to do it would be to say that at each level, at least X of your spells known must be from your primary theme, and you can only have primary theme spells known for your highest level spell slots?

Komatik
2017-11-08, 03:34 PM
Thanks! I'll have to look into it.

Oops!

Fixed it. Just yours truly ranting about how it's awesome ^^' (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=22427762&postcount=184)

Talakeal
2017-11-08, 03:34 PM
Balance is pretty easy, you just have to limit what casters can do, either organically or artificially. Plenty of MMOs can do it, and even D&D can manage it in some editions (particularly 4E); heck, if you limit your class selection to Tome of Battle and the Miniature's Handbook even 3.5 can swing in the opposite direction with martials dominating casters.

I personally like casters to be a bit stronger than martials, but not unbeatably so. I like casters to feel rare, mysterious, and dangerous, and to be a challenge to overcome. In my game I handle this by strictly forbidding the "15 minute adventuring day" for PC casters, so that they can be awesome if they go nova, but need to ration out their power and give the other characters a chance to shine. Meanwhile the villains begin the fight at full strength, making an enemy wizard a truly terrifying foe as they can go nova all day long.


Also, keep in mind that in 3.X a lot of the spells themselves are broken, and nothing you can do to the core rules or the class chassis is going to fix that. You could play with a AD&D mage, but if you give him nothing but the 3.X versions of either the shape-changing chain (Alter Self, Polymorph, Baleful Polymorph, Polymorph any Object, Shape-change) or the Summoning Chain (Summon Monster, Planar Ally/Binding, Gate) they will still utterly break the game do to the open ended nature of those spells as well as the ability to use them to break magical thermodynamics and get more spell slots out of them than you put in.

LibraryOgre
2017-11-08, 03:39 PM
I personally like casters to be a bit stronger than martials, but not unbeatably so. I like casters to feel rare, mysterious, and dangerous, and to be a challenge to overcome. In my game I handle this by strictly forbidding the "15 minute adventuring day" for PC casters, so that they can be awesome if they go nova, but need to ration out their power and give the other characters a chance to shine. Meanwhile the villains begin the fight at full strength, making an enemy wizard a truly terrifying foe as they can go nova all day long.

This was another 3.x change that empowered casters... reduced memorization/preparation time. Recovering spells for a high-level caster in AD&D could take days. No matter your level in 3.x, it takes an hour. "Going Nova" in AD&D was much more costly... it took more time to recover from it, and, because saving throws were more weighted on the defensive side at high levels, it was less effective.

2D8HP
2017-11-08, 03:57 PM
This was another 3.x change....


The more I learn of it, the more 3.x sounds like "The caster edition", and "Not for me".

FWLIW, if I'm invited to play five sessions WotC 5e D&D is my choice, but if I'm invited to play fifty sessions TSR D&D is my choice
(Assuming 2e AD&D plays like 1e AD&D, I already know B/X and RC play close enough to oD&D).

As to the thread topic, if spell-casting is powerful, make it dangerous to the caster and/or what the caster loves.

Elric had a very powerful magic sword....

....which had a habit of consuming the lives and souls of Elric's loved ones.

Make magic have a price, or make it NPC only (the Pendragon model), or make everyone a caster (the Ars Magically model).

flond
2017-11-08, 10:00 PM
I've always favored the Glorantha method of "everyone's a caster." It puts a fairly big impetus on finding/earning your magic, but once you have it, it's fairly reliable (though sometimes one-shot). Also, unless you're a sorcerous wierdo, powerful magic is usually clerical, so getting it involves a lot of sucking up to the priests (lots of plot hooks there!) or shamanistic (requiring you to play spiritual pokemon).

Pleh
2017-11-09, 08:47 AM
The more I learn of it, the more 3.x sounds like "The caster edition", and "Not for me".

FWLIW, if I'm invited to play five sessions WotC 5e D&D is my choice, but if I'm invited to play fifty sessions TSR D&D is my choice
(Assuming 2e AD&D plays like 1e AD&D, I already know B/X and RC play close enough to oD&D).

As to the thread topic, if spell-casting is powerful, make it dangerous to the caster and/or what the caster loves.

Elric had a very powerful magic sword....

....which had a habit of consuming the lives and souls of Elric's loved ones.

Make magic have a price, or make it NPC only (the Pendragon model), or make everyone a caster (the Ars Magically model).

It really isn't so bad until you get past about 6 level or so. Hence the E6 mod

rs2excelsior
2017-11-09, 03:08 PM
So it seems like a lot of other people are also onboard with increasing the specialization of casters. I think that's probably the best single way to try and go about it. Keeps the fact that magic can do things that mundanes can't, without making once class invalidate several others. Regardless of the number of spells, the fact that casters have the advantage in both breadth and depth seems to be largely why they are simply better in 3.5 and company. Giving the breadth advantage to non-casters seems like an interesting way to invert that.


I personally like casters to be a bit stronger than martials, but not unbeatably so. I like casters to feel rare, mysterious, and dangerous, and to be a challenge to overcome. In my game I handle this by strictly forbidding the "15 minute adventuring day" for PC casters, so that they can be awesome if they go nova, but need to ration out their power and give the other characters a chance to shine. Meanwhile the villains begin the fight at full strength, making an enemy wizard a truly terrifying foe as they can go nova all day long.

This is also part of the issue, I think--people think of magic as something mysterious, terrifying, and awesome (in the biblical sense). Which works great for a story, with the wise old wizard who you really don't want to annoy, but less well for a game where that wizard will be adventuring alongside someone who hits stuff with a stick. The 15-minute adventuring day is, I agree, largely responsible, so giving players a situation where they can't just rest and recover after every fight is useful.

Quertus
2017-11-09, 08:28 PM
The more I learn of it, the more 3.x sounds like "The caster edition", and "Not for me".

3e was definitely the "casters get nice things" edition. 3.5 was the "and let's take nice things away from the mundanes" edition. :smallannoyed:

Even so, a "mundane" Fighter can deal enough damage to one-shot an ancient dragon, so it's not like 3e mundane characters are weak or anything.

But 2e is definitely my favorite edition, for having just the right feel of everyone being useful, but Fighters more so, so that the all-Fighter party is a thing, my Wizards are blessedly rare, and the all-wizard party is all but inconceivable.


So it seems like a lot of other people are also onboard with increasing the specialization of casters. I think that's probably the best single way to try and go about it. Keeps the fact that magic can do things that mundanes can't, without making once class invalidate several others. Regardless of the number of spells, the fact that casters have the advantage in both breadth and depth seems to be largely why they are simply better in 3.5 and company. Giving the breadth advantage to non-casters seems like an interesting way to invert that.

Personally, I really love the old-school D&D model of the wizard who delves into ancient ruins in search of fragments of lost knowledge. As such, for that D&D archetype, I'm not a fan of such specialization.

Although, personally, I would love if the balance point was "use your spells at will (just like mundane abilities), but acquire fewer of them than the more versatile mundane abilities".


This is also part of the issue, I think--people think of magic as something mysterious, terrifying, and awesome (in the biblical sense). Which works great for a story, with the wise old wizard who you really don't want to annoy, but less well for a game where that wizard will be adventuring alongside someone who hits stuff with a stick. The 15-minute adventuring day is, I agree, largely responsible, so giving players a situation where they can't just rest and recover after every fight is useful.

"Guy who hits stuff with a stick" really doesn't sound terribly interesting, regardless of who he's adventuring with. :smalltongue:

Talakeal
2017-11-09, 08:47 PM
3e was definitely the "casters get nice things" edition. 3.5 was the "and let's take nice things away from the mundanes" edition. :smallannoyed::

Is it really? Aside from moving some of the class abilities to second level to prevent dipping I can't think of any significant nerfs to martial characters between 3.0 and 3.5. Care to elaborate?


Even so, a "mundane" Fighter can deal enough damage to one-shot an ancient dragon, so it's not like 3e mundane characters are weak or anything

Technically yes, although it requires some serious optimization using multiple non core books, and requires the dragon to be in just the right circumstances as well as not being similarly optimized. A more "generic" fighter takes a lot longer to kill a dragon than his AD&D counterpart did.

Meanwhile, the core only wizard can utterly break the game in a plethora of ways just using the core only spells in a relatively straightforward manner.


Although, personally, I would love if the balance point was "use your spells at will (just like mundane abilities), but acquire fewer of them than the more versatile mundane abilities".

Good news! There is a class for that, it is called the warlock, and generally considered to be one of the best balanced classes in 3.5. Personally I feel it is a little bit too weak and predictable to do a wizard justice, but it works well enough from a game balance perspective. I just wish they would make a martial class that followed the same design philosophy.



"Guy who hits stuff with a stick" really doesn't sound terribly interesting, regardless of who he's adventuring with. :smalltongue:

I think if this were actually the case Hollywood would have spent the last 50+ years making a hell of a lot less action movies about tough guys who solve their problems with violence.

Tanarii
2017-11-09, 09:21 PM
I think if this were actually the case Hollywood would have spent the last 50+ years making a hell of a lot less action movies about tough guys who solve their problems with violence.
I assume you meant "wouldn't have".

But yeah, even in stories (movie or novel) that include magic, the protagonist is often a warrior-ish character with either a magic item, or who uses magic to fight better. Even when their magic is eventually insanely more powerful used directly, they'll often be or become skilled warriors too.

Less physically oriented 'wizardly' characters tend to either be advisors, allies, or enemies.

Talakeal
2017-11-09, 09:55 PM
I assume you meant "wouldn't have".

Pretty sure I said it right. If martials were completely uninteresting, Hollywood would have spent less time making movies about them.

Tanarii
2017-11-09, 10:43 PM
Pretty sure I said it right. If martials were completely uninteresting, Hollywood would have spent less time making movies about them.
Totally didn't read it right. "Making a lot less", not "making". /doh

Pleh
2017-11-10, 06:32 AM
I think if this were actually the case Hollywood would have spent the last 50+ years making a hell of a lot less action movies about tough guys who solve their problems with violence.

But yeah, even in stories (movie or novel) that include magic, the protagonist is often a warrior-ish character with either a magic item, or who uses magic to fight better. Even when their magic is eventually insanely more powerful used directly, they'll often be or become skilled warriors too.

To be fair, movies and video games are a much more visually based medium. While you can add all the visuals you want to a TTRPGs, they have more in common with books than movies.

It is exciting to see a guy cut off a goblin's head with an axe. It is dramatically less so to only hear it said to have happened.

On the other hand, creating magical visuals in video games and movies takes a mountain more work than having an actor swing a prop at another actor. When it works, it's at least as interesting as a guy swinging a sword for visual stimulation, if not more so. But describing magic verbally through a book or TTRPG leaves the audience imagining the magical effect, which usually creates an actually more powerful impression of the magical effect than trying to be imaginative enough to show someone your vision and wow them with your creativity (instead of asking them to help you by using their own).

Quertus
2017-11-10, 06:50 AM
Is it really? Aside from moving some of the class abilities to second level to prevent dipping I can't think of any significant nerfs to martial characters between 3.0 and 3.5. Care to elaborate?

Oh dear deity, where to start? Off the top of my head,


Crit stacking
Vorpal
Rhino Hide Armor
Partial charge
Flurry of Blows ż
Slower class feature acquisition
Limited abilities (like Int to AC) to class level
Haste*
Persist*
Monster HP
DR ż
Item costs** ż

*Yes, nerfing buff spells is a hit to the mundane characters, both in general, and as they are the optimal targets for such spells.
** especially flight, but all price increases reduce how much other gear the Fighter can afford.
ż admittedly, these also saw some improvements over 3e - namely, getting to count BAB from other classes, better enchantment stacking rules (sorry for your bad luck that your GM doesn't allow custom items) and lower overall DR. But that doesn't change the fact that there were also nerfs here.


Technically yes, although it requires some serious optimization using multiple non core books, and requires the dragon to be in just the right circumstances as well as not being similarly optimized. A more "generic" fighter takes a lot longer to kill a dragon than his AD&D counterpart did.

A generic fighter isn't playing the game. We call that an NPC. A heroic Fighter is bloody awesome!


Good news! There is a class for that, it is called the warlock, and generally considered to be one of the best balanced classes in 3.5. Personally I feel it is a little bit too weak and predictable to do a wizard justice, but it works well enough from a game balance perspective. I just wish they would make a martial class that followed the same design philosophy.

The Warlock gets his powers through an infernal contract. The Warlock does not explore ancient ruins in search of lost scraps of arcane knowledge.

Of course, the 3e Wizard gets 2 (or more) spells automatically every time he levels, and just walks down to the corner Magic Mart to buy more spells, so I don't really find him interesting, either. :smallannoyed:

No, 3e saw the end of the interesting archetype of "D&D Wizard" that I enjoy.

Now, if someone wanted to bring that back, but balance it with learning fewer at-will spells than the at-will abilities of the Combat Master, Skill Monkey, or Wuxia class, I could probably be reasonably happy.

Pleh
2017-11-10, 07:14 AM
The Warlock gets his powers through an infernal contract. The Warlock does not explore ancient ruins in search of lost scraps of arcane knowledge.

Come on, now. A warlock could still be exploring ancient ruins in search of lost scraps of arcane knowledge. Maybe that's how they figured out how to make an infernal pact in the first place?

Now that their soul belongs to some devil, maybe they have more reason to seek to learn more arcane knowledge, hoping to find some loophole to win back their soul without giving up their power (ever seen Constantine)? They don't know how much time they have left to work with.

Your problem lies only in the setting provided as well as your own self-imposed creative limitations.

After all, the common advice to "my monk sucks at wuxia hero" is "build unarmed swordsage and call it a monk."

A personal quest for arcane knowledge is independent of your class.

Quertus
2017-11-10, 07:33 AM
Come on, now. A warlock could still be exploring ancient ruins in search of lost scraps of arcane knowledge. Maybe that's how they figured out how to make an infernal pact in the first place?

Now that their soul belongs to some devil, maybe they have more reason to seek to learn more arcane knowledge, hoping to find some loophole to win back their soul without giving up their power (ever seen Constantine)? They don't know how much time they have left to work with.

Your problem lies only in the setting provided as well as your own self-imposed creative limitations.

After all, the common advice to "my monk sucks at wuxia hero" is "build unarmed swordsage and call it a monk."

A personal quest for arcane knowledge is independent of your class.

The Warlock does not gain power and abilities more or less exclusively by searching for scraps of arcane lore in abandoned ruins of lost civilizations in a normal game, the way a 2e or earlier Wizard did. Better?

hifidelity2
2017-11-10, 09:00 AM
For No 2 – limiting casting

We use GURPs a bit and there are a number of options – Low Manner is one that makes it a lot harder to cast spells

However one I quite like is the unlimited Manne Mage

In the standard system you have X amount of FT and spells cost FT to caste (and that cost reduces as you get better). You recover the FT quite quickly

For unlimited manner Mages you have a much higher FT pool (often 3 times plus “the normal” ) BUT you recover FT at only a few points a day. That way casting a spell is something you think about. It also lets you specialise by becoming a “Jonny 1 spell” where you get really good at one spell so its free to cast

Pleh
2017-11-10, 10:13 AM
The Warlock does not gain power and abilities more or less exclusively by searching for scraps of arcane lore in abandoned ruins of lost civilizations in a normal game, the way a 2e or earlier Wizard did. Better?

Fine enough, if that's how you like your games.

I guess my point is that 3.x and later editions seem actually better to me because they do nothing to prevent a wizard from functioning exactly as if they were in the earlier editions (as you prefer) while allowing other players to run their Wizard arcs differently.

All you have to do to enjoy 3.5 is ask your DM to establish your setting so that wizards have to get more spells by searching for arcane secrets. Problem solved.

Meanwhile, players who prefer their wizards in other forms of character progression can still use 3.5 to have it their way, too.

I only see their flexibility as a benefit to the system, since it could accommodate your preference in addition to others.

Tanarii
2017-11-10, 12:13 PM
But describing magic verbally through a book or TTRPG leaves the audience imagining the magical effect, which usually creates an actually more powerful impression of the magical effect than trying to be imaginative enough to show someone your vision and wow them with your creativity (instead of asking them to help you by using their own).Then why are fantasy book protagonists very commonly also warriors with powerful magic items, warriors that use magic to enhance their fighting with magic (ie GISH), or directly mages that still become warriors anyway and regularly fight despite their magic being a magnitude of power greater than mundane fighting? (Rand Al-Thor comes to mind as a great example of the last.)

Even in novels, 'hit things with sticks' is rarely treated as boring or something the protagonists aren't skilled at.

The problem is that most of the time, physical combat breaks down in TRPGs as one of two things:
- hit targets defensive value
- hit a static value, target either dodges or parries

It's entirely on the game master and players to turn this into exciting fights with descriptions. But for most players and DMs, it gets tedious round after round after round.

That's why 4e tried to spice it up with powers. IMO as a player, that was absolutely genius, but unfortunaley it didn't fly with the General D&D gaming populace.

5e I use a different tactic: speed. Players have to declare what they're doing as soon as their turn starts. They need to know all the details of their move and more importantly casts. Even with a battle bat there is no slowly counting squares on your turn. Tell me where you move and what you do and what you target. Physical attackers have a solid fallback default action, they can hit something for very solid numbers, which feels good. Casters need to be on their A game, because they need to be able to pick from a bunch of options on the fly, and not make silly mistakes. They can (and often do) fall back on a cantrip, but that does significantly less damage (about 1/2) than a physical attacker.

This has the advantages of making combat stressful, which enhances verisimilitude of sudden eruptions of violence. As well as getting them resolved quicker (about 15 minutes for most combats), and adding pacing to the game. Slow careful exploration, tense social negotiations/interactions, fast and scarier than they actually are combats.


A generic fighter isn't playing the game. We call that an NPC. A heroic Fighter is bloody awesome!
They were in AD&D, which is what you compared them to.

And in 5e, they are heroic and awesome.

3e was definitely a low point. But that's because Fighters were not buffed, and casters lost most of their limitations without having the power of magic rebalanced properly to compensate.


The Warlock gets his powers through an infernal contract. The Warlock does not explore ancient ruins in search of lost scraps of arcane knowledge.They are in 5e. Says so right on the can. They just don't do it in the direct form of "find scroll --> spell book". But they find magic times, and their gaining of class levels & associated features incorporates power they've gained by finding lost scraps of arcane knowledge. It's indirect, in that gained XP = new class features. But the class itself says that's how some of the features come about, not just granted from their patron.

Quertus
2017-11-10, 02:05 PM
Fine enough, if that's how you like your games.

I guess my point is that 3.x and later editions seem actually better to me because they do nothing to prevent a wizard from functioning exactly as if they were in the earlier editions (as you prefer) while allowing other players to run their Wizard arcs differently.

All you have to do to enjoy 3.5 is ask your DM to establish your setting so that wizards have to get more spells by searching for arcane secrets. Problem solved.

Meanwhile, players who prefer their wizards in other forms of character progression can still use 3.5 to have it their way, too.

I only see their flexibility as a benefit to the system, since it could accommodate your preference in addition to others.

2e had both, via Skills & Powers. But I don't recall anyone bring willing to nerf their Wizard even further to pay for the benefit of automatic spell acquisition.

Whereas in 3e, it's bad enough that my signature character is tactically inept - I imagine I might get books thrown at me if I tried to convince the GM to nerf my automatic spell acquisition.

Even if there was an ACF that would let me sacrifice automatic spell acquisition, I can't see a way to build a character to avoid being able to buy scrolls, while still being able to acquire new spells from scrolls found in loot. And I can just imagine the riots that would start if I tried to convince the GM to remove magic item shops from the world to prevent spell acquisition via that avenue.

No, my Wizard archetype no longer exists. :smallfrown:


They were in AD&D, which is what you compared them to.

And in 5e, they are heroic and awesome.

3e was definitely a low point. But that's because Fighters were not buffed, and casters lost most of their limitations without having the power of magic rebalanced properly to compensate.

Well-built fighters one-shotting ancient dragons was Fighters' low point. Now that's what I'm talking about. That's Heroic! That's what a PC's low point should look like!


They are in 5e. Says so right on the can. They just don't do it in the direct form of "find scroll --> spell book". But they find magic times, and their gaining of class levels & associated features incorporates power they've gained by finding lost scraps of arcane knowledge. It's indirect, in that gained XP = new class features. But the class itself says that's how some of the features come about, not just granted from their patron.

The mechanics not matching the fluff is not in any way encouraging here. I want a chocolate cake. 2e had chocolate cake. 3e has a solid block of chocolate in a cake box. 5e has strawberry cake that they label chocolate cake. Somehow, that just isn't satisfying.

Pleh
2017-11-10, 02:29 PM
Then why are fantasy book protagonists very commonly also warriors with powerful magic items, warriors that use magic to enhance their fighting with magic (ie GISH), or directly mages that still become warriors anyway and regularly fight despite their magic being a magnitude of power greater than mundane fighting? (Rand Al-Thor comes to mind as a great example of the last.)

Even in novels, 'hit things with sticks' is rarely treated as boring or something the protagonists aren't skilled at.

The problem is that most of the time, physical combat breaks down in TRPGs as one of two things:
- hit targets defensive value
- hit a static value, target either dodges or parries

It's entirely on the game master and players to turn this into exciting fights with descriptions. But for most players and DMs, it gets tedious round after round after round.

That's why 4e tried to spice it up with powers. IMO as a player, that was absolutely genius, but unfortunaley it didn't fly with the General D&D gaming populace.

5e I use a different tactic: speed. Players have to declare what they're doing as soon as their turn starts. They need to know all the details of their move and more importantly casts. Even with a battle bat there is no slowly counting squares on your turn. Tell me where you move and what you do and what you target. Physical attackers have a solid fallback default action, they can hit something for very solid numbers, which feels good. Casters need to be on their A game, because they need to be able to pick from a bunch of options on the fly, and not make silly mistakes. They can (and often do) fall back on a cantrip, but that does significantly less damage (about 1/2) than a physical attacker.

This has the advantages of making combat stressful, which enhances verisimilitude of sudden eruptions of violence. As well as getting them resolved quicker (about 15 minutes for most combats), and adding pacing to the game. Slow careful exploration, tense social negotiations/interactions, fast and scarier than they actually are combats.

Points well made. I didn't mean to suggest beat stick heroism was boring in written form. I was going to make that same point about round based combat being the real killer of beatstick (beatstick: "I charge directly at them and smashy smashy" caster: *takes 5 to 10 real world minutes calculating and strategizing* "... okay, all monsters in this area save or are paralyzed.") and I forgot to do so, but you brought it right back around.

I agree on all points here, but I didn't see much success in 4e. The idea to use more powers was nice, but they needed to differentiate the powers between classes more. If swinging your sword in a circle is barely different than the wizard using a spell that blasts adjacent targets, something just feels wrong.

Kind of like that one time I had tacos from a dormitory cafeteria and the chicken and beef tacos tasted exactly the same.

Talakeal
2017-11-10, 03:10 PM
Crit stacking
Vorpal
Rhino Hide Armor
Partial charge
Flurry of Blows ż
Slower class feature acquisition
Limited abilities (like Int to AC) to class level
Haste*
Persist*
Monster HP
DR ż
Item costs** ż

.

Good point about the crit stacking and vorpal, I had forgot about those.

I agree with some of the others, others I do not, for example the haste changes and loss of Int to AC hurt casters far more than they do martials.

But I am really curious about Partial Charge. How exactly did it change? I don't have access to the 3.0 books to verify, but it seems the same to me aside from the name.



A generic fighter isn't playing the game. We call that an NPC. A heroic Fighter is bloody awesome!

And that is a problem unique to 3.X. Other editions work just fine out of the box.

I personally have never had the inclination to go digging through a pile of books trying to make a competitive character out of a busted chassis, and I have never been in a game where we had access to all the books either because they hadn't been printed yet, we lacked the money or space to get them, or the DM didn't want to deal with all the work and declared the game core only.



The Warlock gets his powers through an infernal contract. The Warlock does not explore ancient ruins in search of lost scraps of arcane knowledge.

Of course, the 3e Wizard gets 2 (or more) spells automatically every time he levels, and just walks down to the corner Magic Mart to buy more spells, so I don't really find him interesting, either. :smallannoyed:

No, 3e saw the end of the interesting archetype of "D&D Wizard" that I enjoy.

From a fluff perspective this should be fairly easy to rework.

On a mechanical level though, that class would be a real problem. If you can cast your spells at will but have access to an unlimited number of spells you are really going to be breaking the game; you will have a "quadratic" character on a whole new level, and the DM has to be super careful with how many spells they allow you to access.

As is such a character would probably break the game (although a warlock who had access to every invocation would still be weaker than the default wizard / sorcerer) by being far to weak early on and far too strong near the end, like a 2E wizard on steroids.


Well-built fighters one-shotting ancient dragons was Fighters' low point. Now that's what I'm talking about. That's Heroic! That's what a PC's low point should look like!.

A specifically optimized fighter could on shot an unoptimized dragon in certain situations, most of which were pretty easy to foil. But that meant playing the game in a really weird way that the designers never intended that breaks the fun of the game IMO. Its like saying a video game with a completely broken difficulty curve is awesome because you can just play with the cheat codes on.

To use a mechanical analogy:

Say monsters have a power rating that averages out to 5 stars out of 10.
In AD&D you might say a normal fighter is a 5 star class and an optimized fighter a 6 star class.
In 3.Xa normal fighter might be a 1 star class and an optimized wizard an 8 star class.
Meanwhile a normal AD&D magic user might be a 6 star class and an optimized wizard a 7 star class.
Then a normal 3.X wizard is a 6 star class and an optimized one a 999 star class.

AD&D clearly has a much better balance, both between classes and monsters, members of the same class, and one class and the other.

Now, some people might like a game with a completely wild difficulty curve they can feel superior to the "noobs", but imo tighter variations are almost always better, and I would much prefer a game like chess where actual skill in play was the deciding factor in power rather than which archetype you enjoy or how many books you can afford.


No, my Wizard archetype no longer exists. :smallfrown:

Did a wizard who had to hunt down their spells but could then use them at will ever exist?

Tanarii
2017-11-10, 05:10 PM
The mechanics not matching the fluff is not in any way encouraging here. I want a chocolate cake. 2e had chocolate cake. 3e has a solid block of chocolate in a cake box. 5e has strawberry cake that they label chocolate cake. Somehow, that just isn't satisfying.Mechanics / fluff is a false dichotomy.

In this case, you're apparently wedded to the idea that "find x" = "new ability X". It sounds to me like you've missed the entire point of XP and gaining levels. They reflect that you're learning stuff based on your in-game experiences. Like I said, it's indirect. But it's there.

Edit: if your complaint is you wanted to go into dungeons to find more magical power .... isn't that why every class goes into dungeons? To find riches and magical power.

But I do get that it's kinda nice to learn a new spell because you found magical scroll. That's a warm fuzzy all right.



I agree on all points here, but I didn't see much success in 4e. The idea to use more powers was nice, but they needed to differentiate the powers between classes more. If swinging your sword in a circle is barely different than the wizard using a spell that blasts adjacent targets, something just feels wrong.I've never understood this complaint. Playing a Fighter vs a Rogue vs a Wizard felt drastically different. Even playing a Fighter vs a Paladin vs a Warden was hugely different, and they were all defenders.

To use you analogy, when people complain that a beef taco is just like a vegetarian lasagna because they're both food, I'm going to look at them funny. And think they're just looking for a way to complain without actually trying them out.

Cluedrew
2017-11-10, 08:06 PM
For me the standard* solution is two part:

Thematic Casters: D&D wizards might have been flavourful and interesting once, but they aren't any more. The things that could make them interesting have been abstracted ways as a matter of convenience. I think that focusing casters (at least as individuals) would go along way to fixing that as well as the balance issues people have already covered.

Awesome Martials: Martials need more cool things. Casters master the mind, martials should master the body. People complain about that making them like casters and I've got to say: Your doing it wrong. Make them a different type of awesome. (Generally, I will agree in D&D where the caster's abilities are "all", it can be hard to add anything to the fighter without bringing them closer together.) What sort of types of awesome depends on what you are going for. "Hit with stick" becomes "goes to way" and you have tactics, allies and diplomacy on the table right away.

I use ideas like these in my work, most of the time I feel it works out pretty well. But then again, I'm biased.

* Non-standard solutions also valid, but if we try to solve this in a way that has a generic feel to it.

Quertus
2017-11-10, 09:34 PM
Good point about the crit stacking and vorpal, I had forgot about those.

I agree with some of the others, others I do not, for example the haste changes and loss of Int to AC hurt casters far more than they do martials.

But I am really curious about Partial Charge. How exactly did it change? I don't have access to the 3.0 books to verify, but it seems the same to me aside from the name.

Int to AC was obviously a bad example :smalltongue: But, as you said, many things are less dip-friendly now.

Partial charge + haste was 3e pounce. IIRC, 3.5 doesn't have a standard action charge action.


And that is a problem unique to 3.X. Other editions work just fine out of the box.

I personally have never had the inclination to go digging through a pile of books trying to make a competitive character out of a busted chassis, and I have never been in a game where we had access to all the books either because they hadn't been printed yet, we lacked the money or space to get them, or the DM didn't want to deal with all the work and declared the game core only.

Keen, Vorpal, Improved Crit, Mounted Combat, Spirited Charge, Rhino Hide Armor, and Lance were all core. As was 5.5K for fight, 8K for Haste (10r/day), and 12K to store 6 spell levels.

And, no, the 2e 15th level Fighter who dealt 1d4 damage really wasn't heroic PC material either. It's not just a 3e issue.


From a fluff perspective this should be fairly easy to rework.

On a mechanical level though, that class would be a real problem. If you can cast your spells at will but have access to an unlimited number of spells you are really going to be breaking the game; you will have a "quadratic" character on a whole new level, and the DM has to be super careful with how many spells they allow you to access.

As is such a character would probably break the game (although a warlock who had access to every invocation would still be weaker than the default wizard / sorcerer) by being far to weak early on and far too strong near the end, like a 2E wizard on steroids.

Sorry, I'm presenting 2 different ideas (although I suppose that they could be merged...).

One is the idea of the 2e Wizard, who hunts through ancient ruins for scraps of arcane lore, and turns those quite directly into power. As their only real source of power. That is an archetype that I sorely miss.

The other is a balance issue of (mundane) versatility vs (magical) power, and placing those both on even footing; i.e., both being "at will".

Putting those together... Hmmm... if the spells are stronger, then the Wizard should have fewer spells known than the mundane characters have skills / techniques. And gathering scraps of arcane lore should... hmmm... add options to which spells the Wizard could choose to learn when they get the option.

Although, honestly, I'm probably just as happy with at will magic being weaker but more versatile than at will mundane skills. The Combat Master can learn "Vorpal", the "no save, just die" chop someone's head off technique, while the Wizard can choose which save and which special effects they want to apply to their "save or die" spell, for example.


A specifically optimized fighter could on shot an unoptimized dragon in certain situations, most of which were pretty easy to foil. But that meant playing the game in a really weird way that the designers never intended that breaks the fun of the game IMO. Its like saying a video game with a completely broken difficulty curve is awesome because you can just play with the cheat codes on.

To use a mechanical analogy:

Say monsters have a power rating that averages out to 5 stars out of 10.
In AD&D you might say a normal fighter is a 5 star class and an optimized fighter a 6 star class.
In 3.Xa normal fighter might be a 1 star class and an optimized wizard an 8 star class.
Meanwhile a normal AD&D magic user might be a 6 star class and an optimized wizard a 7 star class.
Then a normal 3.X wizard is a 6 star class and an optimized one a 999 star class.

AD&D clearly has a much better balance, both between classes and monsters, members of the same class, and one class and the other.

Now, some people might like a game with a completely wild difficulty curve they can feel superior to the "noobs", but imo tighter variations are almost always better, and I would much prefer a game like chess where actual skill in play was the deciding factor in power rather than which archetype you enjoy or how many books you can afford.

Let's try that again. IMO, the power rating of even remotely competent characters looks like this after a few months of play:

Normal 2e Wizard: *
Normal 2e Fighter: *****
Normal 3e Wizard: *** (lower at low levels)
Normal 3e Fighter: ** (higher at low levels)

Whereas an optimized character after several months or more might look more like this:

Optimized 2e Wizard: ***** ***
Optimized 2e Fighter: ***** **
Optimized 3e Wizard: ***** ***** *****
Optimized 3e Fighter: ***** *****


Did a wizard who had to hunt down their spells but could then use them at will ever exist?

Again, me not being clear, and my two separate ideas being conflated. But if someone built that, I'd probably not mind. :smallwink:


Mechanics / fluff is a false dichotomy.

In this case, you're apparently wedded to the idea that "find x" = "new ability X". It sounds to me like you've missed the entire point of XP and gaining levels. They reflect that you're learning stuff based on your in-game experiences. Like I said, it's indirect. But it's there.

Edit: if your complaint is you wanted to go into dungeons to find more magical power .... isn't that why every class goes into dungeons? To find riches and magical power.

But I do get that it's kinda nice to learn a new spell because you found magical scroll. That's a warm fuzzy all right.

Hmmm... I believe there have been discussions where certain Playgrounders have expressed a dislike for disassociated mechanics, no? Consider this the... Contrapositive? I'm expressing a like (perhaps even a preference?) for strongly associated mechanics. XP is fine as far as it goes, but I'd love to have the more directly associated "find X scrap of knowledge, gain potential to learn Y spell".


I've never understood this complaint. Playing a Fighter vs a Rogue vs a Wizard felt drastically different. Even playing a Fighter vs a Paladin vs a Warden was hugely different, and they were all defenders.

To use you analogy, when people complain that a beef taco is just like a vegetarian lasagna because they're both food, I'm going to look at them funny. And think they're just looking for a way to complain without actually trying them out.

To most people, 4e characters felt very much the same. Anyone who can't see that should not be in game development, especially not of D&D.

That having been said, someone who cannot also see how they are different is also someone I don't want designing games for me.

Just like the 8... What did Angry rename the 8 "aesthetics" to again?... Anyway, just like not everyone is attuned to the same "aesthetics" of play, and most people who haven't researched it just can't "get" those who are attuned differently, so, to, is 4e on completely different drugs than previous editions.


For me the standard* solution is two part:

Thematic Casters: D&D wizards might have been flavourful and interesting once, but they aren't any more. The things that could make them interesting have been abstracted ways as a matter of convenience. I think that focusing casters (at least as individuals) would go along way to fixing that as well as the balance issues people have already covered.

Awesome Martials: Martials need more cool things. Casters master the mind, martials should master the body. People complain about that making them like casters and I've got to say: Your doing it wrong. Make them a different type of awesome. (Generally, I will agree in D&D where the caster's abilities are "all", it can be hard to add anything to the fighter without bringing them closer together.) What sort of types of awesome depends on what you are going for. "Hit with stick" becomes "goes to way" and you have tactics, allies and diplomacy on the table right away.

I use ideas like these in my work, most of the time I feel it works out pretty well. But then again, I'm biased.

* Non-standard solutions also valid, but if we try to solve this in a way that has a generic feel to it.

How about bringing back awesome casters, to adventure beside awesome martials?

Cluedrew
2017-11-10, 10:29 PM
To Quertus: I'm doing that as well in my current homebrew project, but that isn't what this thread is about. (Although I am not switching it to "Martial beats Caster" either.)

LibraryOgre
2017-11-10, 11:41 PM
For me the standard* solution is two part:

Thematic Casters: D&D wizards might have been flavourful and interesting once, but they aren't any more.

...
Awesome Martials: Martials need more cool things.

I did work on that, actually. I made a version of D&D without Magic-Users or Clerics... only reworked Druids and Illusionists. I also worked on expanding the OA martial arts rules so they could be used by anyone... especially fighters, since they had more WPs.

It lead to warriors who could do really neat things and spellcasters who were more thematically limited.

Talakeal
2017-11-10, 11:50 PM
And, no, the 2e 15th level Fighter who dealt 1d4 damage really wasn't heroic PC material either. It's not just a 3e issue.

Not talking about intentionally gimped characters.

Talking about the basic guy with a high strength and decent dex and con who wears the heaviest armor he can afford, wields a long sword and shield, and takes direct fighter abilities like weapon specialization.

In 2E that guy will be a beast, especially if he gets decent magic items, in 3E he will get his but handed to him by equal CR beat stick monsters, let alone casters.


Sorry, I'm presenting 2 different ideas (although I suppose that they could be merged...).


IIRC You said you wanted an at will caster, to which I replied you should try a warlock, to which you replied that a warlock doesn't fit your concept of a guy who hunts down spells. Not sure where I miscommunication was.


Partial charge + haste was 3e pounce. IIRC, 3.5 doesn't have a standard action charge action.

It does, although you can't use it along with a move action. But IMO this is more about the change to haste than the change to charges, which is really more of a nerf to casters than martials.



Normal 2e Wizard: *
Normal 2e Fighter: *****
Normal 3e Wizard: *** (lower at low levels)
Normal 3e Fighter: ** (higher at low levels)

Whereas an optimized character after several months or more might look more like this:

Optimized 2e Wizard: ***** ***
Optimized 2e Fighter: ***** **
Optimized 3e Wizard: ***** ***** *****
Optimized 3e Fighter: ***** *****

You really think a normal 2E fighter is better than a normal wizard in any edition? I am rather skeptical of that claim.


Also, keep in mind that if you are allowed to play an optimized fighter you are likely going against optimized monsters as well, so you are really just kind of running in place at that point.

Quertus
2017-11-11, 04:04 AM
Also, keep in mind that if you are allowed to play an optimized fighter you are likely going against optimized monsters as well, so you are really just kind of running in place at that point.

Buy a module. Run it as written. 3e optimized Fighter rocks house.

EDIT: actually, apply that logic of going against published modules to all discussions of character strength. Because anything else is an unfair moving target, and not a real measure of their actual strength.

In 2e, far too many modules had, "and this is where the party dies" moments, where massive AoE damage was all but unavoidable. From dragon breath to invisible casters to positive and negative energy explosions to bloody 7(!) Flame Strikes. A Fighter who rolled well for HP and made his Saves was often the only one conscious at that point; sometimes, even Wizards who made their saving throws were dead.

And I believe the last 2e module I ran, an unwary party would have had to make somewhere in the neighborhood of 20 saves vs poison or die. Guess which 2e class was most likely to survive?

Now, optimize that Wizard, level him to the point where he can cast Contingency, and/or apply heavy cheese, and, if you play him just right, and use your spells just right (cheating and reading the module ahead of time, for example), and you'll do really well. Mess up, and there's a good chance you're dead you're probably a saving throw away from being dead, and/or you're pulling a Duncan and never have the right spell prepared.

In 3e, a reasonable Fighter can do reasonably well against most modules, IME. Whereas "My First Wizard", not so much.

A 3e optimized Fighter, as I said, is one-shotting ancient dragons. That a Tainted Sorcerer / Incantrix unholy monstrosity has a few more choices as to how to totally wreck house and make the module beg for mercy is just fluff.

Knaight
2017-11-11, 04:18 AM
Buy a module. Run it as written. 3e optimized Fighter rocks house.

So does 3e optimized Commoner. This says more about the balance in 3e than anything else.

Frozen_Feet
2017-11-11, 10:29 AM
It doesn't really tell you anything, actually. Modules are generally designed to be winnable, so of course optimization tends to lead to victory. For such scenarios it is more telling if non-optimal commoner can't win but a non-optimal Fighter/Wizard/whatever can.

Talakeal
2017-11-11, 03:27 PM
Keen, Vorpal, Improved Crit, Mounted Combat, Spirited Charge, Rhino Hide Armor, and Lance were all core. As was 5.5K for fight, 8K for Haste (10r/day), and 12K to store 6 spell levels.

Let's look at this build for a moment, shall we?

Now, I no longer have my 3.0 books so I may get a few things wrong, but:

This guy still has terrible fighter saving throws, if the dragon goes first it can simply cast a save or lose spell on him (or his mount!) and end the fight right there. And if he makes his save the dragon can probably then fly away and outpace the fighter and repeat, dragons have insane fly speeds.

This guy is wearing +2 hide armor, so he is super squishy for a guy who is usually considered to the party's front line tank.

Vorpal weapons have been Russian roulette in every edition. They are slightly more reliable in 3.0 than others, but the odds are still against it working in a short fight, and that is assuming the enemy isn't immune to it. I would personally not sink five points of enchantment into a weapon for this effect. Also, it isn't really great with a charge build as you need a lot of attacks to really bring up the odds of that crit, and furthermore I believe vorpal does not work with a lance; I am not sure about the 3.0 version but the 3.5 version only applies to slashing weapons which lances are not.

What spells are in the ring? True Strike? Now, I am not sure about the 3.0 version, but the 3.5 ring of spell storing is always a standard action to use so quickened spells don't work. Also, this requires a wizard to donate the spell slots to you, so it is questionable as to whether it really counts for helping the fighter class.

Ok, so this guy does x2 damage for lance, x2 for rhino hide, x2 for spirited charge, and x3 on a crit. Let's assume he automatically hits (although I am fairly certain 3.X dragons ACs scale better with attack bonuses than their 2E counterparts) and has a 15% chance of a crit. So this is one attack that auto hits, deals 4x damage, and has a 15% chance of critting which does x7 damage and auto kills with vorpal, but let's just say he has a +5 weapon instead for the sake of this analysis.

So, assuming he can get the charge of, which is likely with flight and haste but not garunteed, he will deal, lets say, 4.5 base, +5 for enhancement, +15 for strength (we will give the guy a 31 strength, about the max a fighter can have short of innate bonuses), +2 for weapon specialization, and let's say a +5 miscellaneous damage bonus. This hits for 126 damage (220.5 on a crit), and an extra 31.5 for his haste attack. That's off of a dragon with 660hp, so a little over a sixth of its life (a third on a crit).

Now, if the dragon for some reason started out in close range of the fighter, but for some reason isn't in melee range of him, he also gets a full attack after his partial charge, but the guy really isn't built to do a let of damage on a full attack. If you were hoping on the vorpal I don't know why you built a lancer instead of committing to a crit fishing build by duel wielding scimitars or something.

Your charger is now in melee range of an ancient dragon with only his +2 hide armor to protect him, and unless he has something really amazing in that ring of spell storing isn't going to get the opportunity to charge again, especially if the dragon takes out the mount.

Speaking of the mount, is it a Pegasus or does it have an item which gives it flight as well?



Lets compare this to a generic 2E fighter:

Let's give him a +5 long sword, a belt of frost giant strength, a decent ring of protection, and a flying carpet to close with the dragon. He is going to be getting three attacks (again lets say auto hit, which is more likely iirc, especially when he doesn't have to deal with iterative attack penalties) which deal 6.5 base damage, +5 for magic, +2 for specialization, and +10 for strength. This is 70.5 damage to a creature with 104 HP, or over two thirds of its life. And unlike our 3E charger the 2E fighter will hit almost as hard the next round and is almost certain to finish the beast off. Plus, with his proportionally much much higher saving throws he is a lot less likely to be taken out in turn.




Buy a module. Run it as written. 3e optimized Fighter rocks house.

EDIT: actually, apply that logic of going against published modules to all discussions of character strength. Because anything else is an unfair moving target, and not a real measure of their actual strength.

In 2e, far too many modules had, "and this is where the party dies" moments, where massive AoE damage was all but unavoidable. From dragon breath to invisible casters to positive and negative energy explosions to bloody 7(!) Flame Strikes. A Fighter who rolled well for HP and made his Saves was often the only one conscious at that point; sometimes, even Wizards who made their saving throws were dead.

And I believe the last 2e module I ran, an unwary party would have had to make somewhere in the neighborhood of 20 saves vs poison or die. Guess which 2e class was most likely to survive?

Now, optimize that Wizard, level him to the point where he can cast Contingency, and/or apply heavy cheese, and, if you play him just right, and use your spells just right (cheating and reading the module ahead of time, for example), and you'll do really well. Mess up, and there's a good chance you're dead you're probably a saving throw away from being dead, and/or you're pulling a Duncan and never have the right spell prepared.

In 3e, a reasonable Fighter can do reasonably well against most modules, IME. Whereas "My First Wizard", not so much.

A 3e optimized Fighter, as I said, is one-shotting ancient dragons. That a Tainted Sorcerer / Incantrix unholy monstrosity has a few more choices as to how to totally wreck house and make the module beg for mercy is just fluff.

In my opinion judging a variable like optimization level against a static point like a module doesn't really say anything. When the bar for the module is set so low (or the bar for optimization set so high) that even the worst class can stomp the module, that doesn't make for a fun game, and it still doesn't say anything about the quality of the fighter compared to other classes.

I am not interested in playing a character who is all powerful, I am interested in playing a character who has the tools to overcome a wide variety of legitimate challenges.

Also, I am not sure a fighter would have such an easy time in most modules. Sure, they could win fights which occur on their terms, but if they have to deal with, say, sneaky foes with lots of save or lose effects, they are going to be pretty screwed. That's the thing about fighter optimization, they tend to be very good in a very narrow area, not so great all around.

Tanarii
2017-11-11, 06:17 PM
Ah yes,mid forgotten about saving throws. That's another thing the AD&D to d20 change fubared for Fighters (specifically) vs magic. They went from being the best at all of them, nigh invulnerable even at highest levels, to being sub-par in the ones magical assaults tend to use.

While at the same time overall, creatures successfully Saving vs spells become less likely, not more likely, as casters went up in levels.

Knaight
2017-11-11, 06:37 PM
Ah yes,mid forgotten about saving throws. That's another thing the AD&D to d20 change fubared for Fighters (specifically) vs magic. They went from being the best at all of them, nigh invulnerable even at highest levels, to being sub-par in the ones magical assaults tend to use.

While at the same time overall, creatures successfully Saving vs spells become less likely, not more likely, as casters went up in levels.
This is a huge change too - while some of the changes to saving throws were good ideas (Fort, Ref, Will is a good set of categories) fighters and other martials getting screwed wasn't among them. Plus, it's not like there is any shortage of warriors shrugging off mental effects through sheer determination in the source literature - Iron Heart Surge is basically just Conan uttering a "primal scream" or "savage yell" or other "[indicator of tribal heritage] [non-verbal vocalization]".


Vorpal weapons have been Russian roulette in every edition. They are slightly more reliable in 3.0 than others, but the odds are still against it working in a short fight, and that is assuming the enemy isn't immune to it. I would personally not sink five points of enchantment into a weapon for this effect. Also, it isn't really great with a charge build as you need a lot of attacks to really bring up the odds of that crit, and furthermore I believe vorpal does not work with a lance; I am not sure about the 3.0 version but the 3.5 version only applies to slashing weapons which lances are not.
Once iteratives start stacking up the odds get pretty good. A 17-20 crit has a 59% chance of going off at least once per round given four attacks that hit on 17+. That's one round of attacks, a second round brings that up to 83%. This does ignore crit confirmations, mostly because I don't remember if it needs them (and because the math gets a bit trickier).

Talakeal
2017-11-11, 06:48 PM
Once iteratives start stacking up the odds get pretty good. A 17-20 crit has a 59% chance of going off at least once per round given four attacks that hit on 17+. That's one round of attacks, a second round brings that up to 83%. This does ignore crit confirmations, mostly because I don't remember if it needs them (and because the math gets a bit trickier).

Yeah, it isn't a bad strategy, especially in 3.0 where you could make a character who threatened on a 12+ IIRC. IMO its just an incompatible strategy with a charger who is only getting a single attack that is at best critting on an 18+ IIRC.

I still don't much care for vorpal weapons, they make combat overly swingy, and if you are fighting an enemy who is immune to decapitation (a surprisingly high number of them) your +5 bonus is suddenly worthless.

Tanarii
2017-11-11, 07:09 PM
This is a huge change too - while some of the changes to saving throws were good ideas (Fort, Ref, Will is a good set of categories) fighters and other martials getting screwed wasn't among them. yeah, insert an image of me /faceplaming that I previously focused on the fragibility of wizards (in particular), plus the speed of advancement to high level spells then vs now, and left this part out.

Save spells were still nice vs hordes, but vs a big monster (or high level enemy Fighter), it was all about your Fighters going to town with their magic swords. Or digging out those no-save spells for clever use.

Pleh
2017-11-11, 09:49 PM
Partial charge + haste was 3e pounce. IIRC, 3.5 doesn't have a standard action charge action.

I thought this was true as well, but just a moment ago, I was looking at charging rules during a session and found this:


Movement During a Charge:.... You must move at least 10 feet and may move up to double your speed directly toward the designated opponent.... If you are able to take only a standard action or a move action on your turn, you can still charge, but you are only allowed to move up to your speed (instead of double your speed). You can't use this option unless you are restricted to taking only a single standard action or move action on your turn (such as during a surprise round).

Probably still not the 3e pounce you were looking for, but matches the description of "standard action charge action."

Snowbluff
2017-11-11, 10:54 PM
THE simple fact of the matter is that if you can just be equivalent without magic or if magic was too inconvenient to use, magic wouldn’t be used or developed.

So as magic is suicidal to use in combat, all mages are now non combat characters and cannot participate in combat or adventures in general.

Ergo the conceit of an adventuring game has broken down.

Tanarii
2017-11-11, 11:27 PM
So as magic is suicidal to use in combat, all mages are now non combat characters and cannot participate in combat or adventures in general.

Ergo the conceit of an adventuring game has broken down.
That's suck if the game is D&D, obviously. But there's no reason that can't hold true for non-D&D fantasy games.

As well as all the other ways already discussed that magic-casters can still be for adventurers even if magic is very dangerous and nigh-suicidal in melee combat range, and not have to be universally superior to non-magic-casters, of course.

Arbane
2017-11-12, 12:01 AM
THE simple fact of the matter is that if you can just be equivalent without magic or if magic was too inconvenient to use, magic wouldn’t be used or developed.


Not necessarily. You just need magic to handle things that either can't be done or would be a massive pain without magic. Foretelling the future, controlling the weather, cursing people, raising the spirits of the dead to ask them questions, shapeshifting...the sort of things magicians in myth and folklore did.

Knaight
2017-11-12, 12:45 AM
THE simple fact of the matter is that if you can just be equivalent without magic or if magic was too inconvenient to use, magic wouldn’t be used or developed.

So as magic is suicidal to use in combat, all mages are now non combat characters and cannot participate in combat or adventures in general.

Ergo the conceit of an adventuring game has broken down.

Going from "in combat" to "adventures in general" is a pretty huge jump. On top of that, the inability to use a particular skill set in combat doesn't mean that someone isn't a combatant - the engineers of the Roman legion didn't do a great deal of engineering after fights had broken out (as in during the fray, not during general battles), yet they still fought.

Quertus
2017-11-12, 01:46 AM
Let's look at this build for a moment, shall we?

It's not a build, it's a list of a few key items that got noticeable more expensive in 3.5.

You want a build. Fine. I don't publish my builds online, but core only is pretty pathetic, and this will only be a build stub. Or two. And I'm AFB, so this may not work anyway.

First off, it's not a ring, it's an ioun stone. You get the party wizard to put Contingency into the stone. You put True Strike into your Contingency. Which means we're looking at the core übercharger first.

You get the party Cleric to give you standard CoDzilla buffs, using his Bead of Karma to give you +4 BAB, boost your armor & weapons, etc. If, you know, he had the spells left after buffing the much better Rogue chassis. Let's pretend he does.

Even Core only, full power attack, you should have a minimum attack bonus of hmmm... 20(True Strike)+5(Wpn)+4+6+1(Str)+5(Luck)+1(WF), and that's before higher ground, charging, and your animated object's held action to flank. All in all, you should be sporting at least a +47 at level 12. Custom items to grant other bonus types can improve that further, as custom items are in core.

So, at level 12, you're power attacking for 16, doubled if you wield your lance 2-handed. That's +32(PA)+11(str)+5(wpn)+2(WS)=50 damage, so over 200 base damage in a hit by a level 12 core only Fighter.

Obviously, those numbers can go much higher once you get out of core, as the real übercharger attests.

Even using Haste to move and full attack, the Improved Crit Keen Vorpal core only build is getting 4 attacks which crit on a 12-20. Admittedly, you've almost got to use custom items to go above a +40 on your first attack. So it's not perfect for killing bosses or for killing minions in core only, but it is a no save just die to around 2 "lieutenant"-class monsters per round, sustainable.

Outside core, you're critting on a 2, and great cleaving as many monsters as you can reach.


This guy still has terrible fighter saving throws, if the dragon goes first it can simply cast a save or lose spell on him (or his mount!) and end the fight right there. And if he makes his save the dragon can probably then fly away and outpace the fighter and repeat, dragons have insane fly speeds.

The übercharger can afford the cloak of resistance. The Vorpal build is hurting for money until higher levels (unless they apply maximum cheese), so, yes, probably didn't have great saves.

However, if a supposedly intelligent dragon a) targeted the Fighter in the party, let's call that a win for the party; b) left its hoard unguarded for the party to loot, let's call that a win for the party. This is where that cheap portable hole comes in.


This guy is wearing +2 hide armor, so he is super squishy for a guy who is usually considered to the party's front line tank.

It's +5, thank you party Cleric. But, no, the übercharger is traditionally something of a glass cannon, at least at my tables.


What spells are in the ring? True Strike? Now, I am not sure about the 3.0 version, but the 3.5 ring of spell storing is always a standard action to use so quickened spells don't work. Also, this requires a wizard to donate the spell slots to you, so it is questionable as to whether it really counts for helping the fighter class.

Probably Heal. Or Teleport. But it's what spells were in the ring stone that matters.


(although I am fairly certain 3.X dragons ACs scale better with attack bonuses than their 2E counterparts)

Sure do. But I wasn't limiting myself to core only when describing just how amazingly awesome Fighters can be.


Speaking of the mount, is it a Pegasus or does it have an item which gives it flight as well?

Pegasus isn't bad. A bit squishy, though. Depends on the campaign. I can't remember if the flying horseshoes (Horseshoes of a Zephyr, maybe?) were super cheap, or if that was just the Horseshoes of Speed.

But, again, I didn't really play core only (after Y2K, at least), so my parties had a lot more options for mounts.

But, yes, if the dragon's random spell selection includes dispel effects, and it sees something flying that shouldn't be able to, it's certainly smart enough to be able to target the item. So that's a definite vulnerability of the build. If the dragon gets to go, that is. And chooses to target an item on the Fighter's mount. When facing a 3e party.


Lets compare this to a generic 2E fighter:

Let's give him a +5 long sword, a belt of frost giant strength, a decent ring of protection, and a flying carpet to close with the dragon.

Sure, he might have those. Or he might have a Sunblade, a Ring of Fire Resistance, a Figurine of Wondrous Power (goat), Dust of Disappearance, and an Amulet of Caterpillar Control. 2e items were completely random - there were no magic item marts.

Mind you, that's the way I personally prefer it - I hate this whole build mentality. I just bring it up to point out that the 2e Fighter was randomly awesome.


He is going to be getting three attacks (again lets say auto hit, which is more likely iirc, especially when he doesn't have to deal with iterative attack penalties) which deal 6.5 base damage, +5 for magic, +2 for specialization, and +10 for strength. This is 70.5 damage to a creature with 104 HP, or over two thirds of its life. And unlike our 3E charger the 2E fighter will hit almost as hard the next round and is almost certain to finish the beast off. Plus, with his proportionally much much higher saving throws he is a lot less likely to be taken out in turn.

A 2e Fighter who randomly has nearly optimal gear, compared to a 3e Fighter limited to core only? This doesn't seem quite fair.

The optimal 3.x Übercharger is dealing 1000+ damage to the 660 HP dragon. The optimal 3e Vorpal build is beheading as many dragons as it can reach. The optimal 2e Fighter is an archer, and, AFB and haven't done the math, but can probably roughly kill the Dragon in one salvo. If it's an elf, he is probably willing to lose a year to the party Mage casting Haste, at which point he definitely kills the dragon, and its little dog, too.

The least optimized 2e Fighter compared to the least optimized 3e Fighter will a) kill his dragon faster, due to the massive difference in Dragon HP; b) survive most things much longer, due to low monster attack bonuses (also due to lower HD) and great saving throws; but c) die to a Dragon about as fast, due to high dragon attack values and breath weapon damage.


In my opinion judging a variable like optimization level against a static point like a module doesn't really say anything. When the bar for the module is set so low (or the bar for optimization set so high) that even the worst class can stomp the module, that doesn't make for a fun game, and it still doesn't say anything about the quality of the fighter compared to other classes.

Why would you compare yourself to other classes? You can build a Fighter who can be awesome in the module. If the GM is toning you back, but not toning other classes back to your reduced level, that's on them. I'm not seeing the problem here. 3e Fighters can be bloody awesome. What stops them?


Also, I am not sure a fighter would have such an easy time in most modules. Sure, they could win fights which occur on their terms, but if they have to deal with, say, sneaky foes with lots of save or lose effects, they are going to be pretty screwed. That's the thing about fighter optimization, they tend to be very good in a very narrow area, not so great all around.

I haven't really run across module x Fighter combinations where there was a significant issue, barring one particularly unoptimized Fighter running through something I wrote.

Not saying it can't happen, just that I haven't seen it.


I still don't much care for vorpal weapons, they make combat overly swingy, and if you are fighting an enemy who is immune to decapitation (a surprisingly high number of them) your +5 bonus is suddenly worthless.

That is a good point. I remember one module where a Vorpal build would have been sad, and another where a mounted charge build would have been sad. Happily, those weren't the builds that ran through those modules.


I thought this was true as well, but just a moment ago, I was looking at charging rules during a session and found this:

Probably still not the 3e pounce you were looking for, but matches the description of "standard action charge action."

Huh. Not sure if I was misremembering, or if we were playing that wrong / with houserules. I'll want to look into that. Still works as pounce if you just use Haste to move, at least.

Tanarii
2017-11-12, 01:55 AM
Huh. Not sure if I was misremembering, or if we were playing that wrong / with houserules. I'll want to look into that. Still works as pounce if you just use Haste to move, at least.
IIRC it was very common for people used to 3e to think Partial Charge was just gone in 3.5, since it was buried in Charge.

Talakeal
2017-11-12, 03:31 AM
snip

I guess we had another misunderstanding, I thought those were elements of an optimized 3.0 fighter that was restricted to core only; if it was merely a list of nerfs then I don't disagree with you.

A couple of things though:

Putting haste in a ring of spell storing is a brilliant idea, but I am not entirely sure if it is RAW legal or is in the spirit of an advantage in the fighter's court as it requires a friendly wizard to supply them with the spells.

Even with a cloak of resistance a 3E fighter's saving throws are pitiful compared to the 2E fighter's, who also usually had a ring of protection boosting them as well.

My sample fighter didn't have tailored magic items to give him the best odds, just fairly generic high end gear, I could have made a much better one if I was actively going through my DMG trying to cherry pick the things an aspiring dragon slayer would need. I never played with a DM who used purely random treasure, they almost always customize it to the character and/or allow some form of crafting, trading, or buying magic items.





But really, it just comes down to a gut feeling based on experience and a rough understanding of all the numerical factors.

In AD&D fighter's always felt awesome and DMs always felt the need to tone them down for fear that they would break the game. In 3E fighters are always struggling to contribute, both in and out of combat, or being incapacitated but an errant save or lose spell.

Its not that you can't make a fighter who isn't good in combat, its just hard to make one who is good outside of combat and who can participate in all types of combat, both defensive and offensive, as most fighter builds are more or less one trick ponies that can trivialize a very specific set of encounters but are more or less dead weight outside of them.

Snowbluff
2017-11-12, 09:08 AM
Going from "in combat" to "adventures in general" is a pretty huge jump. On top of that, the inability to use a particular skill set in combat doesn't mean that someone isn't a combatant - the engineers of the Roman legion didn't do a great deal of engineering after fights had broken out (as in during the fray, not during general battles), yet they still fought.

Well, two things.

You make a good point for LARGE combat if you have LEGION between your caster and their enemy. But in a lot of games the skill investment or level investment precludes any ability to train for fighting. Since of a lot of games don't have mechanics to keep people from just shooting your caster or pummeling them, casters become worse as the scale of fights gets smaller.

Given that, the skill investment for casting also reduces the number of useful adventuring skills they can have as well. Combined with the lack of ability for a small group to defend them, they are the load.

Guizonde
2017-11-12, 09:36 AM
Well, two things.

You make a good point for LARGE combat if you have LEGION between your caster and their enemy. But in a lot of games the skill investment or level investment precludes any ability to train for fighting. Since of a lot of games don't have mechanics to keep people from just shooting your caster or pummeling them, casters become worse as the scale of fights gets smaller.

Given that, the skill investment for casting also reduces the number of useful adventuring skills they can have as well. Combined with the lack of ability for a small group to defend them, they are the load.

i think i fail to understand something. are you saying "casters aren't as versatile in a fight" or are you talking theoretical applications here? i'm currently in a party with only one full caster, and the rest are half-casters. i can say without shame that the load in the party is the bard during fights. the oracle, the inquisitor, the paladin, and the cleric are quite active in the fray, and the monk covers the oracle who's the only ranged combattant. my character, the inquisitor, is more of a skill monkey than the bard in terms of skills opened, and it may be playstyle, but i regularly use skill checks in combat to move around as much as class features or spells.

then again, the cleric is heavily coached by the more experienced players (who've all played cleric at least once), and the bard is a total newbie unfit for a "face" role, so players are indeed a factor.

Psikerlord
2017-11-12, 07:49 PM
There's a general consensus here (and elsewhere) that casters, especially once they reach a certain power level, just beat non-casters.
Not since 5e there isnt. In 5e, almost every subclass has magic anyway, and spells are weaker and full casters overnerfed with concentration (one spell at a time, and can be broken- should have been one or the other). Also, anyone can pick up rituals or cantrips via a feat.

Having said that, I prefer to partly balance magic by making it somehwat unpredictable/dangerous to everyone in the vicinity (not just the caster, but often moreso). Something like: https://lowfantasygaming.com/2016/05/29/dark-dangerous-magic/

Pex
2017-11-12, 10:58 PM
Whatever you do, I'm against the very notion of punishing a PC for doing what he's supposed to be doing. No PC should suffer a penalty for using an ability. What constitutes a penalty/punishment could be subjective, but to put a definition on it it's anything that makes it easier for the character to suffer injury/death or be useless. For example, losing hit points, risk insanity, suffer long lasting minuses to game statistics, flat out can't do anything for a round or more. If some effect is too powerful for your aesthetic taste don't blame the PC for using it. Either don't have it exist at all or limit how often it can be used and let the PC do something else useful.

Talakeal
2017-11-12, 11:46 PM
Whatever you do, I'm against the very notion of punishing a PC for doing what he's supposed to be doing. No PC should suffer a penalty for using an ability. What constitutes a penalty/punishment could be subjective, but to put a definition on it it's anything that makes it easier for the character to suffer injury/death or be useless. For example, losing hit points, risk insanity, suffer long lasting minuses to game statistics, flat out can't do anything for a round or more. If some effect is too powerful for your aesthetic taste don't blame the PC for using it. Either don't have it exist at all or limit how often it can be used and let the PC do something else useful.

So is this an absolute line even if it is up to player choice?

Things like the shocktrooper feat which lets you (iirc) trade AC for to hit or a hypothetical feat which let you trade HP for more spell slots?

Also, if you look at this from far enough back, trading HP for the ability to cast spells is a core feature of the wizard class and their d4 HD.


Edit: And to pull the camera back even further, difference between a defensive option and no action and an action with a harmful consequence are effectively identical accept for phrasing. For example, any attack NOT made fighting defensively effectively penalizes AC, and any spell slot not used as a heal / defensive buff is effectively harming the character in exchange for a positive benefit; for example if an injured cleric decides to cast Inflict Light Wounds instead of Cure Light Wounds they are in effect trading their own HP for the ability to damage an enemy.

Pleh
2017-11-13, 06:02 AM
Whatever you do, I'm against the very notion of punishing a PC for doing what he's supposed to be doing. No PC should suffer a penalty for using an ability. What constitutes a penalty/punishment could be subjective, but to put a definition on it it's anything that makes it easier for the character to suffer injury/death or be useless. For example, losing hit points, risk insanity, suffer long lasting minuses to game statistics, flat out can't do anything for a round or more. If some effect is too powerful for your aesthetic taste don't blame the PC for using it. Either don't have it exist at all or limit how often it can be used and let the PC do something else useful.

Yeah, I have problems with this, too.

I'd tell the player complaining (say for example, suffering insanity) "it's not a punishment, you are being allowed to do magic. Did you think such powers come without some kind of tradeoff?"

It's really more about the Setting than anything. If magic is just abilities like anything else people do, then in your setting either Everyone's a Magician (because anyone has access and there is no great cost to using magic) or a small few just happen to be Superhuman (because the freebie magic just hasn't become popular yet...).

But if there is a more substantial cost to magic, like alignment shifts and insanity, it starts invoking different fantasy tropes. Spellcasters are now dangerous outlaws playing with fire or else wise sages that use minimal magic to guide and protect villages.

It's not about penalizing abilities. It's about weighting the natural market price markup to establish thematic tones where it makes sense to use a sword instead of a spell.

In freebie magic, it's kind of a bad investment to use a sword when you could be buying spell components with that same money.

Frozen_Feet
2017-11-13, 07:32 AM
Whatever you do, I'm against the very notion of punishing a PC for doing what he's supposed to be doing. No PC should suffer a penalty for using an ability. What constitutes a penalty/punishment could be subjective, but to put a definition on it it's anything that makes it easier for the character to suffer injury/death or be useless.

Yeah, this doesn't hold up even under most trivial of scrutiny.

Let's forget all about magic for a moment. What is a Fighter "supposed to do"? Well, they're "supposed to" get into fights. And what is getting into fights liable of causing to you? Pain, injury, incapacitation, death.

What is a Thief "supposed to do"? They're supposed to steal, to break into places, to be where they aren't meant to be, to take things they're not meant to have, to learn what they're not supposed to know. And what are they risking when doing this? Traps, adverse reaction from guards, nevermind all penalties and punishments prepared by the Law should they ever slip up.

The most mundane of archetypical "adventurers" are very much defined by specializing in, and getting into high-risk situations. Their primary abilities are only usefull for situations where there is increased risk of punishment, injury, incapacitation and death, and to use their abilities proactively means intentionally getting into such situations. If you can't live with that thought, you shouldn't become a fighter, a thief, or any other sort of "adventurer".

Darth Ultron
2017-11-13, 08:17 AM
Whatever you do, I'm against the very notion of punishing a PC for doing what he's supposed to be doing. No PC should suffer a penalty for using an ability. What constitutes a penalty/punishment could be subjective, but to put a definition on it it's anything that makes it easier for the character to suffer injury/death or be useless. For example, losing hit points, risk insanity, suffer long lasting minuses to game statistics, flat out can't do anything for a round or more. If some effect is too powerful for your aesthetic taste don't blame the PC for using it. Either don't have it exist at all or limit how often it can be used and let the PC do something else useful.

But why have only Ban or Use Limits? Why not have Power with a Price?

For example, in my game when a character polymorphs/changes shape there is a good chance that they might ''loose their mind'' in the form they have taken and think and act like they were that form. This is a great way to put a dead stop to any and all polymorph wacky stuff...it is simply too much of a risk.

PhoenixPhyre
2017-11-13, 08:18 AM
Yeah, this doesn't hold up even under most trivial of scrutiny.

Let's forget all about magic for a moment. What is a Fighter "supposed to do"? Well, they're "supposed to" get into fights. And what is getting into fights liable of causing to you? Pain, injury, incapacitation, death.

What is a Thief "supposed to do"? They're supposed to steal, to break into places, to be where they aren't meant to be, to take things they're not meant to have, to learn what they're not supposed to know. And what are they risking when doing this? Traps, adverse reaction from guards, nevermind all penalties and punishments prepared by the Law should they ever slip up.

The most mundane of archetypical "adventurers" are very much defined by specializing in, and getting into high-risk situations. Their primary abilities are only usefull for situations where there is increased risk of punishment, injury, incapacitation and death, and to use their abilities proactively means intentionally getting into such situations. If you can't live with that thought, you shouldn't become a fighter, a thief, or any other sort of "adventurer".

This seems a misreading of Pex's point. Adventurers take penalties for failing (being hit, getting caught, not evading a trap, etc). He's opposing the idea that you take a penalty as a direct consequence of succeeding. Imagine if that thief had to pay with HP or exhaustion to pick a lock. Imagine if hitting someone with a sword hurt you as well (directly). That's the type of thing he's pointing out.

On one level, I agree. Find another way of balancing magic other than making it risky (in-game) to use. Not from a fictional level, but from a game level. Making any ability "risky" directly, especially when that risk is shared carries risk itself:

a) if the risk is small and the magic powerful, it's just an annoyance that will be built around. Examples are the Hellfire Warlock (3.5e D&D) whose abilities gave small CON penalties. First step to building a Hellfire Warlock--find one of the many ways to be immune to that damage. All the benefits, none of the risks.

b) If the risk is great and the magic powerful, magic will either be ignored or broken (depending on the details). People are risk averse--one of the least-played subclasses in 5e is the Wild Magic Sorcerer, whose abilities have the risk of turning the caster into a potted plant or dropping a fireball at their feet. At level 1. The risk of fireballing your party is too great for most people.

c) If the risk is minimal and the magic weak, few will be willing to put up with the risk for the marginal benefits. Why even have the risk?

d) If the risk is high and the magic is weak, then you might as well not include magic at all. Leave that for NPCs.

Balancing this is a hard, fragile task. Small changes in-game can destroy the balance utterly.

I still prefer the reduction of versatility approach personally, combined with the "everyone's at least partially magic (even if they don't cast spells)--no Guys at the Gym allowed" approach.

Pex
2017-11-13, 08:38 AM
This seems a misreading of Pex's point. Adventurers take penalties for failing (being hit, getting caught, not evading a trap, etc). He's opposing the idea that you take a penalty as a direct consequence of succeeding. Imagine if that thief had to pay with HP or exhaustion to pick a lock. Imagine if hitting someone with a sword hurt you as well (directly). That's the type of thing he's pointing out.

On one level, I agree. Find another way of balancing magic other than making it risky (in-game) to use. Not from a fictional level, but from a game level. Making any ability "risky" directly, especially when that risk is shared carries risk itself:

a) if the risk is small and the magic powerful, it's just an annoyance that will be built around. Examples are the Hellfire Warlock (3.5e D&D) whose abilities gave small CON penalties. First step to building a Hellfire Warlock--find one of the many ways to be immune to that damage. All the benefits, none of the risks.

b) If the risk is great and the magic powerful, magic will either be ignored or broken (depending on the details). People are risk averse--one of the least-played subclasses in 5e is the Wild Magic Sorcerer, whose abilities have the risk of turning the caster into a potted plant or dropping a fireball at their feet. At level 1. The risk of fireballing your party is too great for most people.

c) If the risk is minimal and the magic weak, few will be willing to put up with the risk for the marginal benefits. Why even have the risk?

d) If the risk is high and the magic is weak, then you might as well not include magic at all. Leave that for NPCs.

Balancing this is a hard, fragile task. Small changes in-game can destroy the balance utterly.

I still prefer the reduction of versatility approach personally, combined with the "everyone's at least partially magic (even if they don't cast spells)--no Guys at the Gym allowed" approach.

Bingo!
:smallbiggrin:

Cosi
2017-11-13, 10:44 AM
I think risky magic is a fine thing for the game to include. The Hellfire Warlock is an interesting class, and having a character where your big abilities caused backlash in various forms is potentially interesting.

But it is, in my view, very obviously not how all magic should work.

Most obviously, there are a bunch of characters who manifestly do magic without assuming the risk of going crazy or turning into demons in the source material. Harry Potter never has to worry that casting too many Summoning Charms will cause him to go insane. Gandalf's magic is limited, but not because he's worried that going all out will cause reality to break down. Even settings that do take the "magic is inherently dangerous" stance often allow protagonists to somehow avoid that danger (see: the Laundry Files). There are definitely people who are worried that if they do too much magic, demons will eat their brains. But there are also people who don't worry that, and if you hardcode "magic makes demons eat your brains" into the game, you've cut out all of those characters.

But there are also problems with most of the implementations I've seen suggested.

Sometimes the suggestion is that magic has a low risk of some terrible consequence. You make a Spellcraft check, and on a natural 1, demons eat your face. That might be balanced in the abstract, but what happens practically is that casters stomp on mundanes for a while (which isn't fun for the mundanes), and then get killed randomly (which isn't fun for the casters). I guess that's better than having casters stomp on mundanes the whole game, in that you have now spread around the suffering, but it seems like stretch to call it "good".

Sometimes the suggestion is that magic attracts demons or other monsters. That's something you can do, but again the practical effect isn't what you want. Now in addition to having powers that (potentially) obsolete mundanes, they also generate adventure hooks. In your effort to reduce the power of casters, you've put them in the spotlight more.

Sometimes the suggestion is that magic somehow makes you crazy or evil. Again, tempting, but it functionally means that casters eventually stop being PCs, which is the same as having a level limit, except it is less fun for the people playing casters.

I just don't see how "magic hurts you" is supposed to work in a way that actually achieves the nominal goal of making casters less dominant.

There are two possible solutions here. You cap character power, or you let mundanes get things that are "magic". Everything else is a distraction.

LibraryOgre
2017-11-13, 10:48 AM
Whatever you do, I'm against the very notion of punishing a PC for doing what he's supposed to be doing. No PC should suffer a penalty for using an ability. What constitutes a penalty/punishment could be subjective, but to put a definition on it it's anything that makes it easier for the character to suffer injury/death or be useless. For example, losing hit points, risk insanity, suffer long lasting minuses to game statistics, flat out can't do anything for a round or more. If some effect is too powerful for your aesthetic taste don't blame the PC for using it. Either don't have it exist at all or limit how often it can be used and let the PC do something else useful.

I disagree with this. The penalty for using the ability is baked in to it... if someone has the ability to do X, but with Y consequences, then choosing to do X is choosing to take Y consequences. Are you playing a Paladin? Then you're choosing to accept certain restrictions on your actions. Are you playing a Force User? Then you know by taking that unasked for Force Point, you're accepting the Dark Side. If the ability says "You can do X, but you will take 5 points of damage", then you know that doing X will result in 5 points of damage. Or a knockdown. Or what have you.

The game becomes about choices and what cost you're willing to pay.

PhoenixPhyre
2017-11-13, 10:54 AM
I think risky magic is a fine thing for the game to include. The Hellfire Warlock is an interesting class, and having a character where your big abilities caused backlash in various forms is potentially interesting.

But it is, in my view, very obviously not how all magic should work.

Most obviously, there are a bunch of characters who manifestly do magic without assuming the risk of going crazy or turning into demons in the source material. Harry Potter never has to worry that casting too many Summoning Charms will cause him to go insane. Gandalf's magic is limited, but not because he's worried that going all out will cause reality to break down. Even settings that do take the "magic is inherently dangerous" stance often allow protagonists to somehow avoid that danger (see: the Laundry Files). There are definitely people who are worried that if they do too much magic, demons will eat their brains. But there are also people who don't worry that, and if you hardcode "magic makes demons eat your brains" into the game, you've cut out all of those characters.

But there are also problems with most of the implementations I've seen suggested.

Sometimes the suggestion is that magic has a low risk of some terrible consequence. You make a Spellcraft check, and on a natural 1, demons eat your face. That might be balanced in the abstract, but what happens practically is that casters stomp on mundanes for a while (which isn't fun for the mundanes), and then get killed randomly (which isn't fun for the casters). I guess that's better than having casters stomp on mundanes the whole game, in that you have now spread around the suffering, but it seems like stretch to call it "good".

Sometimes the suggestion is that magic attracts demons or other monsters. That's something you can do, but again the practical effect isn't what you want. Now in addition to having powers that (potentially) obsolete mundanes, they also generate adventure hooks. In your effort to reduce the power of casters, you've put them in the spotlight more.

Sometimes the suggestion is that magic somehow makes you crazy or evil. Again, tempting, but it functionally means that casters eventually stop being PCs, which is the same as having a level limit, except it is less fun for the people playing casters.

I just don't see how "magic hurts you" is supposed to work in a way that actually achieves the nominal goal of making casters less dominant.

There are two possible solutions here. You cap character power, or you let mundanes get things that are "magic". Everything else is a distraction.

The bold section is something I strongly agree with. I'm in the "Why not both?" camp.


I disagree with this. The penalty for using the ability is baked in to it... if someone has the ability to do X, but with Y consequences, then choosing to do X is choosing to take Y consequences. Are you playing a Paladin? Then you're choosing to accept certain restrictions on your actions. Are you playing a Force User? Then you know by taking that unasked for Force Point, you're accepting the Dark Side. If the ability says "You can do X, but you will take 5 points of damage", then you know that doing X will result in 5 points of damage. Or a knockdown. Or what have you.

The game becomes about choices and what cost you're willing to pay.

In principle, true, but in practice I have yet to see a balance system that works this way and does so well. I think that you'd have to do it as the central feature of the ability system (for all classes/paradigms/archetypes) as opposed to using it as a balancing feature. Otherwise, things that allow you to avoid some of the consequences become absurdly strong.

CharonsHelper
2017-11-13, 11:25 AM
There are two possible solutions here. You cap character power, or you let mundanes get things that are "magic". Everything else is a distraction.

I think that's only if you have both defined very broadly.

I think that an easy way to balance magic is to have it work normally on NPCs & most monsters, but have PC classes & special monsters (dragons etc.) have an inherent resistance where they can take a penalty and/or reduce their resistance pool - which could either be separate or combined with HP.

After all - as you level in D&D HP gives you inherent and undefeatable resistance to being stabbed through the throat and being killed in one shot like you can be at low levels, why shouldn't the same be true of resistance to SoD and/or SoS spells?

Though - to make that balance you would still have to avoid the 3.x power levels where casters can do things like create pocket dimensions and various craziness. But it could easily balance SoD & SoS spells etc.

PhoenixPhyre
2017-11-13, 12:09 PM
I think that's only if you have both defined very broadly.

I think that an easy way to balance magic is to have it work normally on NPCs & most monsters, but have PC classes & special monsters (dragons etc.) have an inherent resistance where they can take a penalty and/or reduce their resistance pool - which could either be separate or combined with HP.

After all - as you level in D&D HP gives you inherent and undefeatable resistance to being stabbed through the throat and being killed in one shot like you can be at low levels, why shouldn't the same be true of resistance to SoD and/or SoS spells?

Though - to make that balance you would still have to avoid the 3.x power levels where casters can do things like create pocket dimensions and various craziness. But it could easily balance SoD & SoS spells etc.

Or just not include SoDs or SoS. They either don't work (save) or they work too well (die). Binary, encounter-trivializing abilities are fundamentally boring to a lot of players. Especially if one class (or meta class like spellcasters) has a virtual monopoly on such things.

CharonsHelper
2017-11-13, 12:17 PM
Or just not include SoDs or SoS. They either don't work (save) or they work too well (die). Binary, encounter-trivializing abilities are fundamentally boring to a lot of players. Especially if one class (or meta class like spellcasters) has a virtual monopoly on such things.

That was sort of my idea mechanically without removing them from the setting. It would eliminate them from working on PC foes but still work on NPC style classes.

Against NPCs they would simply work, while against PCs they would deal damage to the resistance pool and a minor effect; they would only have their full effect if the resistance pool is gone.

Edit: NPC here is in reference to my previous post and intended as shorthand for "NPC classes" which I should have explained to mean mooks.

PhoenixPhyre
2017-11-13, 12:27 PM
That was sort of my idea mechanically without removing them from the setting. It would eliminate them from working on PC foes but still work on NPC style classes.

Against NPCs they would simply work, while against PCs they would deal damage to the resistance pool and a minor effect; they would only have their full effect if the resistance pool is gone.

But even against NPCs, they still trivialize encounters. And that's bad. If non-casters had the same spread of SoD (against more than just combat things, but the same "one-ability = one victory" type of thing), it might be better. But then it's either a waste of an action (they saved) or a complete victory (they didn't). I'd rather remove them entirely. No character should be routinely removed from play with a single ability unless the power disparity is huge.

Max level PC vs mook? Sure. Run narrative combat, cleaving through whole hordes of things.

Equivalent power levels--no one-hit kills. From anything. That includes uberchargers and mailman sorcerers.

CharonsHelper
2017-11-13, 12:34 PM
But even against NPCs, they still trivialize encounters. And that's bad.

I think that I explained myself badly.

I didn't mean that they should work normally against all NPCs.

I meant that they should work normally against mooks. NPC classes in the style of Star Wars Saga Edition where the NPC classes don't get significant HP or abilities. Many systems have similar sort of roles built into the system.

So - sure a SoD could pop a mook, but if an encounter is only one mook it isn't much of an encounter anyway.

So - I think we're agreeing and I just didn't explain my terms as well as I should have.

Pex
2017-11-13, 12:35 PM
I disagree with this. The penalty for using the ability is baked in to it... if someone has the ability to do X, but with Y consequences, then choosing to do X is choosing to take Y consequences. Are you playing a Paladin? Then you're choosing to accept certain restrictions on your actions. Are you playing a Force User? Then you know by taking that unasked for Force Point, you're accepting the Dark Side. If the ability says "You can do X, but you will take 5 points of damage", then you know that doing X will result in 5 points of damage. Or a knockdown. Or what have you.

The game becomes about choices and what cost you're willing to pay.

The devil in the details is the degree of consequences. Let's go with 5E. Paladin smites. Cost - uses up a spell slot. That's nothing. Wild Sorcerer casts a spell. Cost - Become a potted plant and do nothing for the rest of the combat. That's devastating.

Other ideas:

Warrior: Benefit: Get extra hit points and attack bonuses for the combat. Cost: Be tired when combat is over limiting what you can do but the danger is passed. (3E Barbarian rage and fatigue.)
Worrisome if another combat happens soon after but mostly harmless.

Spellcaster: Benefit: Cast a spell. Cost: Spell has a chance of not doing what you want. Instead it summons a Demon that immediately attacks you. (GURPS roll an 18 on 3d6 for example) Your character is likely now dead.

My argument is not to make the consequences so severe it punishes the player for the audacity of using it.

PhoenixPhyre
2017-11-13, 12:39 PM
I think that I explained myself badly.

I didn't mean that they should work normally against all NPCs.

I meant that they should work normally against mooks. NPC classes in the style of Star Wars Saga Edition where the NPC classes don't get significant HP or abilities. Many systems have similar sort of roles built into the system.

So - sure a SoD could pop a mook, but if an encounter is only one mook it isn't much of an encounter anyway.

So - I think we're agreeing and I just didn't explain my terms as well as I should have.

Yeah, but I'd rather approach that "resistance" that things have in terms of the mechanic that's already there. Hit Points. Blasting should be a good strategy (or at least not a horrible one). PCs and major foes already have more hit points, so that allows spells to do something other than "nothing" or "everything." Mooks are mooks. I like 4e's minion approach--any damage kills them, but they're not affected by misses (some abilities did 1/2 damage on a miss). That allows for hordes of little guys who can hamper and deal damage, but allows blasters and aoe types scythe through them and feel epicly powerful without being OP vs the big guys.

Tinkerer
2017-11-13, 12:40 PM
The devil in the details is the degree of consequences. Let's go with 5E. Paladin smites. Cost - uses up a spell slot. That's nothing. Wild Sorcerer casts a spell. Cost - Become a potted plant and do nothing for the rest of the combat. That's devastating.

Other ideas:

Warrior: Benefit: Get extra hit points and attack bonuses for the combat. Cost: Be tired when combat is over limiting what you can do but the danger is passed. (3E Barbarian rage and fatigue.)
Worrisome if another combat happens soon after but mostly harmless.

Spellcaster: Benefit: Cast a spell. Cost: Spell has a chance of not doing what you want. Instead it summons a Demon that immediately attacks you. (GURPS roll an 18 on 3d6 for example) Your character is likely now dead.

My argument is not to make the consequences so severe it punishes the player for the audacity of using it.

I do think that in the example of the Wild Mage(s) that one is supposed to be intentionally off the normal charts. The class is supposed to be an outlier extreme risk class not necessarily falling into normal risk/reward rules.

PhoenixPhyre
2017-11-13, 12:45 PM
I do think that in the example of the Wild Mage(s) that one is supposed to be intentionally off the normal charts. The class is supposed to be an outlier extreme risk class not necessarily falling into normal risk/reward rules.

And that one is one of the least played (sub)-classes, in large part because that risk doesn't come with compensating power.

What are the gains in terms of game-play of adding "risk" to an ability (beyond using replenishable, fungible resources like mana or spell slots)? There's already trade-offs--do I use this ability or that ability? Which will be more effective? This one does more damage, but can miss more; that one is more reliable but less powerful. Will I need those resources later?

CharonsHelper
2017-11-13, 12:46 PM
I like 4e's minion approach--any damage kills them, but they're not affected by misses (some abilities did 1/2 damage on a miss). That allows for hordes of little guys who can hamper and deal damage, but allows blasters and aoe types scythe through them and feel epicly powerful without being OP vs the big guys.

I'm with you. Minions were one of the things which I actually really liked about 4e. But I didn't like how it made all of the classes feel much more 'samey' than other editions. It took the lazy way out to balance - bring them much closer to symmetry.


Yeah, but I'd rather approach that "resistance" that things have in terms of the mechanic that's already there. Hit Points. Blasting should be a good strategy (or at least not a horrible one). PCs and major foes already have more hit points, so that allows spells to do something other than "nothing" or "everything." Mooks are mooks.

Maybe. I think that a second pool can add depth to play. Or perhaps below 1/2 HP SoS could work normally and under 1/4 SoD work. So - they could be worth bringing, but they'll just bounce off a badass PC class unless you wait until they're already weakened and use them to finish them off.

This could add depth to play, both offensively and defensively as you would need to worry about both keeping HP high enough to stay alive and hopefully high enough to resist SoS and SoD spells.

Cosi
2017-11-13, 01:28 PM
I think that an easy way to balance magic is to have it work normally on NPCs & most monsters, but have PC classes & special monsters (dragons etc.) have an inherent resistance where they can take a penalty and/or reduce their resistance pool - which could either be separate or combined with HP.

That is a power cap. That is a specific decision not to create certain types of powers. I don't necessarily think it's unreasonable to do that, but you should understand that's what you're doing.


Though - to make that balance you would still have to avoid the 3.x power levels where casters can do things like create pocket dimensions and various craziness. But it could easily balance SoD & SoS spells etc.

Yes. You haven't solved the core problem -- casters are conceptually less limited than mundanes. People want their casters to summon demon, travel to other planes, and turn into dragons. At least, I do, and I don't think I'm alone in that. And for that to happen (if any notion of balance is to be preserved), mundanes need to get something that is at least as useful as whatever casters happen to be doing. At low levels, that's fairly easy. A 1st level party probably has lots of problems that mundane characters can solve with talents like "being very strong" or "having thumbs". An 11th level party probably doesn't because, if nothing else, they can hire people who are strong and have thumbs. Also, their obstacles are now things like "we want to get to another plane" instead of "we want to get across that chasm".

Really, if you look at 3e (the prototypical example of the problem), building a mundane that is at least fairly useful in combat is the easy part. An Ubercharger is at least a threat in a high level combat. Probably not as much of one as a Wizard, but you care that he's there. Outside combat, the Ubercharger may as well not exist.


Yeah, but I'd rather approach that "resistance" that things have in terms of the mechanic that's already there. Hit Points. Blasting should be a good strategy (or at least not a horrible one). PCs and major foes already have more hit points, so that allows spells to do something other than "nothing" or "everything." Mooks are mooks. I like 4e's minion approach--any damage kills them, but they're not affected by misses (some abilities did 1/2 damage on a miss). That allows for hordes of little guys who can hamper and deal damage, but allows blasters and aoe types scythe through them and feel epicly powerful without being OP vs the big guys.

My preferred solution is that you let people who have above half HP take 15 (or maybe 10 or 20) on saves. So you can blow up mooks (because they still fail even on a 15), but you have to beat up boss monsters (because they will pass).

PhoenixPhyre
2017-11-13, 02:32 PM
My preferred solution is that you let people who have above half HP take 15 (or maybe 10 or 20) on saves. So you can blow up mooks (because they still fail even on a 15), but you have to beat up boss monsters (because they will pass).

I still don't get the benefit of having SoD spells. Mooks get blown away by the damage alone, so there's no significant benefit there. It just makes boss monsters and players have effectively half as much HP as is on their sheet--as soon as they go under half, a single SoD can knock them out. Maybe if you had a bonus to saves that depended on HP more linearly, but that's loads of extra work for (what seems to me to be) a very small benefit.

In my opinion, hard control (total action denial effects like stuns) should last 1, 2 rounds max, on anyone or be breakable in some other common way. Soft control can be harder to break or longer lasting, but only limits actions (slow, movement reductions, etc).

Knaight
2017-11-13, 03:02 PM
You make a good point for LARGE combat if you have LEGION between your caster and their enemy. But in a lot of games the skill investment or level investment precludes any ability to train for fighting. Since of a lot of games don't have mechanics to keep people from just shooting your caster or pummeling them, casters become worse as the scale of fights gets smaller.

You're missing my point here. One is that a character doesn't have to be a combatant to be a useful adventurer - someone who can't fight but is a capable guide and medic can be very useful, as can a mage who only has ritual magic*. Secondly the idea that magic doesn't necessarily prevent fighting doesn't need to apply across all games, and absolutely doesn't fit in a lot of them. Your ritual alchemist from Regime Diabloique can still whomp on a bandit or three with sword and musket, as just one example. Magic getting in the way of fighting is usually a deliberate design choice for when magic is useful in a fight, and shouldn't be expected outside of that condition.

*They're unlikely to work in D&D, but that's because D&D is absurdly combat focused.

CharonsHelper
2017-11-13, 03:08 PM
I still don't get the benefit of having SoD spells. Mooks get blown away by the damage alone, so there's no significant benefit there. It just makes boss monsters and players have effectively half as much HP as is on their sheet--as soon as they go under half, a single SoD can knock them out.

If they fail their save. At that point it's a tactical decision whether to attempt the SoS/SoD or just continue to deal damage.

It's benefit is that it adds tactical depth and variety to play.

Cosi
2017-11-13, 03:09 PM
I still don't get the benefit of having SoD spells. Mooks get blown away by the damage alone, so there's no significant benefit there.

I think there are several reasons to have SoDs, ordered from most subjective to most objective.

First, it's cool. Letting Darkseid have Omega Beams that kill on contact is cool, and it establishes that Darkseid is a Serious Badass who you have to take seriously (as opposed to someone like Killer Croc or Bane, who is just a bruiser).

Second, there are lots of abilities that make the most sense as SoDs. Medusas and Basilisks turn people into stone. They don't slightly weaken people they fail to turn into stone.

Third, it's a distinction you can make between high and low levels. At low levels, you hit people until they fall down. At high levels, you hit people for a while, then you get to pull out Armageddon Blast or Nature's Judgment or Mental Pinnacle or whatever your Moral Kombat style finishing move is. That's a different play pattern, which helps emphasize that high level characters are different from low level ones, which I at least think is important.

Fourth, it creates more tactical variety. If there are paths to victory that don't run through hit point damage, you can have enemies who are interesting because hit point damage is not effective against them. For example, monsters that have a big pile of DR and AC, but low saves are roadblocks for the Knight and Warmage (who want to win by dealing a big pile of HP damage), but easy targets for the Beguiler and Assassin (who want to win by crippling their enemies with status conditions).

Fifth, you want fights to end fairly quickly once the outcome is relatively inevitable. If both sides hope to win by grinding down the other's HP total, battles can last a very long time even when the result is not in doubt (particularly if HP is much larger than damage -- this kind of padded sumo was one of the issues with 4e's early combat math). However, if getting a decisive advantage means you can then end the fight, fights don't drag on.

In summary, save or dies:

1. Allow for evocative moments where characters can demonstrate their power.
2. Add tactical and conceptual variety.
3. Prevent combat from dragging on.


It just makes boss monsters and players have effectively half as much HP as is on their sheet--as soon as they go under half, a single SoD can knock them out.

Can, not will. They can still make their save, or have other defenses, or just be one of several enemies.

Zanos
2017-11-13, 03:58 PM
1) Not a fan of this. I do think magic should be capable of accomplishing things that you can't do without it; that's why it's magic.

2) Ow. Even with daily magic people often run into the "I fire my crossbow" while playing lower level casters. Magic having permanent, irrecoverable costs is one way to make playing a magic user not very magical. Honestly that sounds more like a soft ban on people playing casters than anything else.

3) You have to be careful with this, because usually magic in games is already set up so it might not work. Some kind of attack roll or saving throw or spell resistance generally applies anyway, so before you know it you've got a 50% chance to fail to penetrate SR, a 50% chance for the enemy to make the save, and a 50% chance to actually do what you want, and you've got a 1/8 chance of actually contributing. The other aspect I've seen to this is random rolls for magical backfire which is a dangerous thing to use too. The mage accidentally invoking powers beyond their comprehension and dragging the entire party screaming to hell is a good narrative element, but it's terrible for a cooperative RPG. The first thing you want to do with the guy who is actually a magical ticking hellbomb is shove him out the airlock, preferably into the nearest sun. I'd argue that in games with such a system magical backfires should be able to be mitigated by casting spells at lower strengths, or by intelligent investment in a skill or ability that is used to control magic. It's also just super hard to balance in general. Magic being riskier than "normal" combat means that it has to be more powerful than mundane combat when it works, which means every encounter is either a stomp because your magic is working, or a miserable experience because the caster isn't just not helping, he's actively hurting the party by summoning space AIDS by accident or something. Or everyone is just dead because the DM thought a magic mishap table that includes stuff like "everyone within 60ft gains a permanent insanity" and "the casters body splits open and becomes a portal to the abyss and an archfiend walks out and murders everyone" was a good idea. Seriously guys, at least make these tables scales with the level of the spell, so every first level caster doesn't have a 0.5% chance of obliterating reality every time he casts magic missile. I guess if your game is super high lethality anyway these goofy tables can work, but I've not had great luck with systems where everyone's got a few backup sheets cooking. Hard to get invested in the narrative.

4) Mundanes should be boosted to do things that are equal in contribution to casters, but not equal in flavor. Punching to raise a wall of stone or jumping through space with just your ripped legs seems a little silly to me personally, but it also means that a "mundane" is just a caster with oilly muscles. Wizards and Fighters should fill different roles. Not trying to "guy at the gym" here, but literally picking up a river with your bare hands and putting it back down doesn't fit into the flavor of a typical fantasy game at all. I actually thought 3.5 handled this fairly well with Tome of Battle Crusaders and Warblades. Maneuvers are similar to spells mechanically but have unique effects that aren't magical and fill different roles, and IMO don't strain the disbelief of what a super skilled fantasy warrior could accomplish. In any case I think people can generally agree that wizards having access to thousands of spells and fighters having access to full attacks and tripping was a mistake. I think 4e actually was on the right trick with it's class powers, although it pushed too far for mechanically unity and lost a sense of identity.

5) I think forcing casters to specialize into a type of magic is a good idea. It doesn't necessarily mean mundanes are generalists, but if the wizard who teleports people thousands of miles isn't also the wizard who raises legions of undead and rains down fireballs on battlefields, you have a good start. Casters should be able to do some stuff outside their speciality, but shouldn't really be masters of every field of magic unless they're epic or something. Really I think the power level in D&D just needs to be clamped somewhat for a more traditional experience. Fighters don't really have a logical analogue to wizards in the double digit levels. Older editions handled this by making magic users significantly more difficult to level up than fighters. So a level 15 wizard was more powerful than a level 15 fighter, but the level 15 wizard needed a lot more XP to get there.

6) Everyone playing a caster is one "solution.", but I think you're playing a very different kind of fantasy game then.

Arbane
2017-11-13, 04:30 PM
But why have only Ban or Use Limits? Why not have Power with a Price?

For example, in my game when a character polymorphs/changes shape there is a good chance that they might ''loose their mind'' in the form they have taken and think and act like they were that form. This is a great way to put a dead stop to any and all polymorph wacky stuff...it is simply too much of a risk.

"Whoops. I rolled the wrong number. Time to make another character."

I'm OK with magic having self-destructive effects, but I also think that in the interest of gameplay, in most genres, there should be some limit characters can use magic up to without having to roll on the Random Spontaneous Death And Happy Fun Times Table.


First, it's cool. Letting Darkseid have Omega Beams that kill on contact is cool, and it establishes that Darkseid is a Serious Badass who you have to take seriously (as opposed to someone like Killer Croc or Bane, who is just a bruiser).

Except, of course, that Darkseid can't ever Omega Beam anyone important. (And have it stick - thanks, Batman.)
Written stories and RPGs have very different requirements.


Or just not include SoDs or SoS. They either don't work (save) or they work too well (die). Binary, encounter-trivializing abilities are fundamentally boring to a lot of players. Especially if one class (or meta class like spellcasters) has a virtual monopoly on such things.

You know what ability shows up a lot in myth & legend that is instant-death against most opponents? "Cutting Their Heads Off With A Sword."

CharonsHelper
2017-11-13, 04:39 PM
2) Ow. Even with daily magic people often run into the "I fire my crossbow" while playing lower level casters. Magic having permanent, irrecoverable costs is one way to make playing a magic user not very magical. Honestly that sounds more like a soft ban on people playing casters than anything else.


I will say - while I'm dubious of using the same system in a D&D style game, it worked pretty well in WFRPG.

Psikerlord
2017-11-13, 06:15 PM
And that one is one of the least played (sub)-classes, in large part because that risk doesn't come with compensating power.

What are the gains in terms of game-play of adding "risk" to an ability (beyond using replenishable, fungible resources like mana or spell slots)? There's already trade-offs--do I use this ability or that ability? Which will be more effective? This one does more damage, but can miss more; that one is more reliable but less powerful. Will I need those resources later?
I agree the risk doesnt outweigh the rewards, but only because there are other classes that do the same thing without the risk.

What if the wild mage was the only wizard, however. People would play it then, because the (exclusive) rewards would be greater than the risk.

Psikerlord
2017-11-13, 06:21 PM
On the save or die topic, I think they should definitely be in the game, they're a much needed option outside of hit point attrition.

I do think however that ideally all classes should have access to some form of save or die. Some classes might tend to get less than others, is all, in the overall balance of things.

The cleric might save or die with a 5th level spell, the fighter might gain a 9th level ability that allows it once/long rest. Or whatever (speaking in 5e)

Speeding up combats with such abilities is a nice side effect, too

Morty
2017-11-13, 06:23 PM
I mean, when it comes to hit point attrition, save-or-die effects are hardly the only solution. A better one is "don't make martial combat a cure for sleep deprivation".

Psikerlord
2017-11-13, 06:24 PM
I mean, when it comes to hit point attrition, save-or-die effects are hardly the only solution. A better one is "don't make martial combat a cure for sleep deprivation".

True, quick combats should be the starting point.

Outside of hit point attrition, save or die, and morale/flee - what else is there to end a DnD fight?

Arbane
2017-11-13, 06:52 PM
True, quick combats should be the starting point.

Outside of hit point attrition, save or die, and morale/flee - what else is there to end a DnD fight?

Diplomacy? Bribery? Stealing everyone's weapons? The building starting to collapse?

Cluedrew
2017-11-13, 07:35 PM
My argument is not to make the consequences so severe it punishes the player for the audacity of using it.I also notice a focus on randomness here. That is to say the costs that come up randomly are worse than the ones that can be counted on. This part is my take on it but I'm going to guess because both the random costs are so much higher when they come up and you can't plan for it because it is random.

RazorChain
2017-11-13, 07:54 PM
I havent read the entire thread, only the initial post.


A lot of systems don't have the problem you describe. Yes those systems acknowledge that magic is powerful, they just give you less power. So when one PC is the deadliest swordsman in the land then the PC wizard might have a bunch of utility spells or some combat magic. The wizard isn't solving all problems with teleportation, invisibility, disintegration, flying or dropping a mountain on his foes. He isn't either ruining the economy with simple spells.

So when the wizard has an open lock spell, he might also be dancing around, chanting like an idiot which isn't handy while you are sneaking, spending precious resources or just being dumbfounded because the door is barred from the inside.

The problem is essentially too much power is given to the magic user compared to the mundanes.

Tanarii
2017-11-13, 10:19 PM
The other aspect I've seen to this is random rolls for magical backfire which is a dangerous thing to use too. The mage accidentally invoking powers beyond their comprehension and dragging the entire party screaming to hell is a good narrative element, but it's terrible for a cooperative RPG. The first thing you want to do with the guy who is actually a magical ticking hellbomb is shove him out the airlock, preferably into the nearest sun.Checks out.

Also: http://www.theallguardsmenparty.com/psyker.html
:smallbiggrin:

Cosi
2017-11-14, 10:13 AM
2) Ow. Even with daily magic people often run into the "I fire my crossbow" while playing lower level casters. Magic having permanent, irrecoverable costs is one way to make playing a magic user not very magical. Honestly that sounds more like a soft ban on people playing casters than anything else.

Yup. This another problem with "limit magic" as a paradigm. Fundamentally, if you have a class that is a "magic user", they should solve their problems by using magic. If magic is so costly or so useless that they instead solve their problems by using mundane skills, you have failed.


4) Mundanes should be boosted to do things that are equal in contribution to casters, but not equal in flavor. Punching to raise a wall of stone or jumping through space with just your ripped legs seems a little silly to me personally, but it also means that a "mundane" is just a caster with oilly muscles.

You have to make mundanes equal in "flavor" as well, because otherwise you encounter problems scaling. People give more leeway to abilities that are "magic" when their users try to go off-script with them, because it is easier to imagine why you can't do something with "being very strong" than "controlling matter with your mind".


Fighters don't really have a logical analogue to wizards in the double digit levels. Older editions handled this by making magic users significantly more difficult to level up than fighters. So a level 15 wizard was more powerful than a level 15 fighter, but the level 15 wizard needed a lot more XP to get there.

I think the solution to this is very obvious -- move to fiat leveling so the people who want to play at a level where "is good at stabbing people" is enough to make you a useful character can do that without having to push out the people who want to play at the power level of high level casters. If you can't have Fighters at high level, then you need to either accept that some people's characters will eventually expire, or not make advancement an intrinsic byproduct of adventuring.


6) Everyone playing a caster is one "solution.", but I think you're playing a very different kind of fantasy game then.

What does "caster" mean? What does "non-caster" mean? Is the Warblade a caster? Is the Warlock a caster?


The problem is essentially too much power is given to the magic user compared to the mundanes.

Well, sort of. The problem is that people can't agree where the balance point should be. Should it be closer to the Wizard (which would involve buffing the Fighter), or closer to the Fighter (which would involve nerfing the Wizard)?

CharonsHelper
2017-11-14, 10:15 AM
Yup. This another problem with "limit magic" as a paradigm. Fundamentally, if you have a class that is a "magic user", they should solve their problems by using magic. If magic is so costly or so useless that they instead solve their problems by using mundane skills, you have failed.

Or they can use resource management effectively and save their magic for when they really need it - which is how spell slots are supposed to balance casters.

Don't go nova every fight and it's not really a problem.

PhoenixPhyre
2017-11-14, 10:39 AM
Well, sort of. The problem is that people can't agree where the balance point should be. Should it be closer to the Wizard (which would involve buffing the Fighter), or closer to the Fighter (which would involve nerfing the Wizard)?

Why not both? Speaking strictly of 3.5 here, fighters are too weak (even in combat--they're either super specialized or largely ineffective) AND wizards too powerful (more precisely, too versatile). The two are actually inverses of each other--fighters are only strong when they specialize (and thus lose any hope of contributing outside of their very narrow "I charge and it dies" niche); wizards (and clerics, and druids) are strong because they don't have to meaningfully specialize. A wizard can be competent at a wide range of things; a druid is a better fighter than fighters, and can summon a better fighter than a fighter, and can also do all the other things expected of a full caster.

That's why I believe the only viable option is to make casters more thematic (no longer "it's magic so it can do anything") and thus more limited (force them to specialize, but give a wide range of specialties to choose from) AND drop the "fighters can only do it if a real person can do it" paradigm. Accept that all D&D PCs are special and outside the realms of normal humans. Allow them to do cool things at the cost of specialization. Can a heroic figure of mythology do it? Then a high enough level, properly specialized fighter (or other martial) could probably emulate it in one fashion or another.

Force every PC to make meaningful, intentional choices with consequences including at character creation. No more "I can do anything, just let me change out my spells tomorrow" casters, no more Guy at the Gym. That allows the two to meet somewhere in the middle (right about where ToB classes are on the martial end).

Morty
2017-11-14, 11:05 AM
True, quick combats should be the starting point.

Outside of hit point attrition, save or die, and morale/flee - what else is there to end a DnD fight?

Emphasizing combat results other than someone being dead or incapacitated is definitely something more RPGs should be doing, but also not the point. What I mean is that it would help if combat didn't revolve around swinging/shooting people until they fall over or getting lucky and removing them from play entirely.

Quertus
2017-11-14, 01:22 PM
Well, sort of. The problem is that people can't agree where the balance point should be. Should it be closer to the Wizard (which would involve buffing the Fighter), or closer to the Fighter (which would involve nerfing the Wizard)?

This is the fundamental point that bugs me.

IMO, the balance point is the module. Period. Can your character contribute reasonably to the adventure? Yes? Then good. No? Then you need a leg up somehow.

D&D is, historically, primarily about combat. Fighters can contribute to combat in spades. There is not a problem. (fighters not being able to contribute much out of combat is no better than making specialist casters - I'm not a fan of either of those ideas, personally).

Wizards can, at some levels / at some optimization levels / in some editions go overboard. This is primarily an OOC problem. And should be solved OOC. Just like bringing the übercharger or d2 Crusader on an unoptimized prepublished module should be solved OOC.

Not only is this not rocket science, it's even things that get advocated all the bloody time.

So... What am I missing? Why are we still talking about this? :smallconfused:


I disagree with this. The penalty for using the ability is baked in to it... if someone has the ability to do X, but with Y consequences, then choosing to do X is choosing to take Y consequences. Are you playing a Paladin? Then you're choosing to accept certain restrictions on your actions. Are you playing a Force User? Then you know by taking that unasked for Force Point, you're accepting the Dark Side. If the ability says "You can do X, but you will take 5 points of damage", then you know that doing X will result in 5 points of damage. Or a knockdown. Or what have you.

The game becomes about choices and what cost you're willing to pay.

MtG has this. Blue and two: draw two cards. Black and one: draw two cards, but lose 2 life. Thematic for the colors, different effect + cost, similar balance point in casual play.


I think that's only if you have both defined very broadly.

I think that an easy way to balance magic is to have it work normally on NPCs & most monsters, but have PC classes & special monsters (dragons etc.) have an inherent resistance where they can take a penalty and/or reduce their resistance pool - which could either be separate or combined with HP.

After all - as you level in D&D HP gives you inherent and undefeatable resistance to being stabbed through the throat and being killed in one shot like you can be at low levels, why shouldn't the same be true of resistance to SoD and/or SoS spells?

Though - to make that balance you would still have to avoid the 3.x power levels where casters can do things like create pocket dimensions and various craziness. But it could easily balance SoD & SoS spells etc.


I still don't get the benefit of having SoD spells.

"Look away", Persues says to his men as he removes the severed gorgon head from his bag.

How would you recommend stating out that scene?


I will say - while I'm dubious of using the same system in a D&D style game, it worked pretty well in WFRPG.

It did? I mean, WF is a meat grinder with no applicable learning curve for player skill. Characters die like flies to critical hit effects, disease from scratches, fumbling magic, or ambient mutagins turning their brains to rocks.


Yup. This another problem with "limit magic" as a paradigm. Fundamentally, if you have a class that is a "magic user", they should solve their problems by using magic. If magic is so costly or so useless that they instead solve their problems by using mundane skills, you have failed.

You have to make mundanes equal in "flavor" as well,

I like flavorful characters. Wizards who have to resort to pulling out their bows fail - wizards should be magical.

Monks should be balancing on spider webs and ripping out hearts; Fighters should be NPCs, and true combat masters should be splitting arrows, looping off limbs, whatever. All the PCs should be different flavors of very cool, not the drab "+2 to hit" we usually see.


Or they can use resource management effectively and save their magic for when they really need it - which is how spell slots are supposed to balance casters.

Don't go nova every fight and it's not really a problem.

That makes Wizards not feel magical. Note, however, that plenty of variety in their at-will cantrips, plus limited spell slots for big effects, plus ritual magic for even bigger effects, would work for me? How about you?


That's why I believe the only viable option is to make casters more thematic

I have to disagree with this part. What if, say, Wizards could still learn any spell, but had very limited spells known, and Fighters got far more techniques than Wizards got spells known? Would that qualify as both a viable option and as not making casters more thematic?

CharonsHelper
2017-11-14, 01:41 PM
It did? I mean, WF is a meat grinder with no applicable learning curve for player skill. Characters die like flies to critical hit effects, disease from scratches, fumbling magic, or ambient mutagins turning their brains to rocks.

Right - and what was what WFRPG was going for. That was Working As Intended.

That's also why I specifically said "I'm dubious of using the same system in a D&D style game", because that's NOT the vibe that D&D is going for. But this isn't the D&D board - it's the general RPG one, so I thought that it was a relevant point to make.



That makes Wizards not feel magical. Note, however, that plenty of variety in their at-will cantrips, plus limited spell slots for big effects, plus ritual magic for even bigger effects, would work for me? How about you?

*shrug* I enjoy resource management games. You can design it so that mages can still do 5e style cantrips at will to be magical, or go grittier where they have to pull out a sling or crossbow. Or the feeble psychic has to use a laspistol.

Plus - there are generally spells which last longer than a single round. In 3.x my favourite 1st level spell is Silent Image (assuming the DM doesn't nerf it) largely because it works on nearly everything (I can't tell you the # of GMs in PFS I had to prove it worked against mindless stuff) and can last an entire fight. It's a very efficient way to be magically effective for a whole fight.

So - you can either go mundane/cantrip (depending upon the game's vibe), go with long-term efficient, or go nova. It adds depth of play.

Pleh
2017-11-14, 01:56 PM
D&D is, historically, primarily about combat. Fighters can contribute to combat in spades. There is not a problem. (fighters not being able to contribute much out of combat is no better than making specialist casters - I'm not a fan of either of those ideas, personally).

In 3.5 (the caster edition), this was not quite as true at higher level.

As the CR climbed above level 7 or so, the game started to shift as the monsters had to adapt to the expectation of Players having Magic Items.

Fighters really, really need magic items to stay relevant to monsters whose defenses and tactics expect them. At some point the game tells a mundane Fighter, "GISH or die." Your Fighter will not survive the average combat without supplemental magic items.

In fact, this is so true that the Fighter's entire regimen of abilities matter infinitesimally less than what magic items they are using. Above the E6 threshold, almost all monsters will have DR Nope to your weapons unless its at least +1 magic. Increasingly monsters will be able to Fly, so our Fighter better be saving up some gold to keep up or put up. Even a ranged based Fighter is at a disadvantage against a flying opponent.

Invisibility keeps scaling to higher levels. Ranged Attacks are getting longer range and higher damage. Incorporeal creatures can be easily overcome with Ghost Strike weapons, but that is a hefty investment for a specific application. It will do you no good except against this one kind of creature. But if you don't have it when you need it, that one incorporeal creature may be the end of your character.

But the versatile mages can just prepare a different spell to adapt to the monster tactics. They have so many different kinds of choices of tactics, but many of them do not involve having to go to the store and hope they have the right item in stock for an affordable price. They get to prepare the magic the game requires of them at no additional charge (unless you get *really* stingy about material spell components).

PhoenixPhyre
2017-11-14, 01:57 PM
"Look away", Persues says to his men as he removes the severed gorgon head from his bag.

How would you recommend stating out that scene?


In a game? Don't. That, or make it a puzzle-boss scenario with ample telegraphing or a one-use item with conditions on its use, not a simple spell effect. Because otherwise it's going to quickly become the go-to tactic of the players (path of least resistance and all). 5e does pseudo-SoD effects by allowing multiple saves (petrification requires 3 failed saves, over at least 3 rounds and the caster's concentration can be broken or dispel magic can end the effect early). I believe that no single failed save (or attack that hits) should take any significant combatant out.

This doesn't imply padded sumo combat--combats should take ~3-5 rounds on average.



I have to disagree with this part. What if, say, Wizards could still learn any spell, but had very limited spells known, and Fighters got far more techniques than Wizards got spells known? Would that qualify as both a viable option and as not making casters more thematic?

That depends on the techniques and spells in question. If your available spells are Shapechange, Polymorph Any Object, and Gate, you've got problems. If your techniques are "hit it with a sword," "hit it with your fists", etc, you've got problems. To make this work would require fundamentally rewriting the core of the game.

I'll rephrase my statement--the most viable (and least effort) solutions include both adding versatility to weapon-users by eliminating the guy at the gym mentality and reducing versatility of casters by making them more thematic (moving everyone over to limited-list casting).

I posted an attempt to do the caster side of this for 5e (the system I'm more familiar with) higher up. 3.5e would take a lot more work since there are more spells involved.

As a side note: I find the martial/magic dichotomy to be a false, useless one. In a fantasy world where magic is omnipresent, everybody's magic. The distinction is between those who impose magic directly on the outside world (spell-casters) and those who use the medium of their body/weapons/etc (martials). Every PC can do things no regular human can do. Limiting one group to the Guy at the Gym is another way of saying "casters should beat everyone else because I like them more."

Komatik
2017-11-14, 03:16 PM
One thing that's also really good about specializing casters more is that they become more flavourful. If you want a way to give a high-theme caster some effect, it's hard to just give them a plain mechanism and have it feel right unless it's smack dab in their specialty (ie. Teleport for a Conjurer).

For all its do-everything brokenness and general accidental invalidation of entire classes with class features, one thing the Druid does well is theme. You don't get Fireball and Lightning Bolt and Teleport, but Call Lightning, Fire Seeds. Teleport is substituted with Tree Stride and Stormwalk, which at least to me have a lot more magicy feel to them. All of those spells ooze flavour.

PhoenixPhyre
2017-11-14, 03:24 PM
One thing that's also really good about specializing casters more is that they become more flavourful. If you want a way to give a high-theme caster some effect, it's hard to just give them a plain mechanism and have it feel right unless it's smack dab in their specialty (ie. Teleport for a Conjurer).

For all its do-everything brokenness and general accidental invalidation of entire classes with class features, one thing the Druid does well is theme. You don't get Fireball and Lightning Bolt and Teleport, but Call Lightning, Fire Seeds. Teleport is substituted with Tree Stride and Stormwalk, which at least to me have a lot more magicy feel to them. All of those spells ooze flavour.

That was the main reason I tried my proof of concept approach (posted above) for 5e. Not balance, since 5e’s close enough for me. But flavor. Letting someone show that they’re a fire mage or a divine guardian by the spells they have, as well as giving incentives to have a theme other than “I’m Batman” or “I read the guides.”

Zanos
2017-11-14, 04:04 PM
One thing that's also really good about specializing casters more is that they become more flavourful. If you want a way to give a high-theme caster some effect, it's hard to just give them a plain mechanism and have it feel right unless it's smack dab in their specialty (ie. Teleport for a Conjurer).

For all its do-everything brokenness and general accidental invalidation of entire classes with class features, one thing the Druid does well is theme. You don't get Fireball and Lightning Bolt and Teleport, but Call Lightning, Fire Seeds. Teleport is substituted with Tree Stride and Stormwalk, which at least to me have a lot more magicy feel to them. All of those spells ooze flavour.
Probably in the minority but I actually think teleport isn't that problematic of an ability. Normal teleport in D&D at least only lets you reliably visit locations you've been before or have seen with magic and aren't warded, so it's really just fast travel. "We have to walk a long time" is kind of a boring challenge at level 9.

PhoenixPhyre
2017-11-14, 04:19 PM
Probably in the minority but I actually think teleport isn't that problematic of an ability. Normal teleport in D&D at least only lets you reliably visit locations you've been before or have seen with magic and aren't warded, so it's really just fast travel. "We have to walk a long time" is kind of a boring challenge at level 9.

Teleport, in a vacuum (...ok, that came out wrong), isn't a problem. The problem is that spells are like ravioli. They're atomic entities that don't depend on anything else, while feats (in 3e) are chains. They're also (for many of the worst offenders) flexible. You can trade out one for another given a rest, while a martial has to rebuild his entire character. This poses balance problems in addition to leading to samey-samey-feeling casters. If every wizard has spells X, Y, and Z because they're the best despite them not sharing any other theme than optimization, it just feels wrong to me. A fire mage should have different spells than a ice mage. A transmutation specialist shouldn't also be a divination specialist. And spell schools are too wide and non-specific (and too few) to handle this.

I'd like to see a cleric having to choose (with some domain/divine input) whether he's a "purge the heretic" type or a "I defend the faithful" type or a "I guide the souls of the dead" type. I'd like to see a druid have to focus on spirits (shamanism), animals/plants, or nature. They'd still get access to other spells but at a much reduced rate. Doing this in 3e would require a significant amount of work as you'd have to reassign spells to themes, not classes. 5e was much easier that way for many reasons. But I still think it's the way to go--more fixed list casters.

I personally hate the idea of "Batman" wizards being the highest and best use of their abilities. Dunno why, but it's always rubbed me the wrong way.

Lunatic Sledge
2017-11-14, 04:23 PM
The answer I came to in my own writing was just to make the Fighter-type classes ridiculous.

Like, when you think of an archetypical wizard, you think of Merlin or Gandalf, right? But a D&D wizard is stopping time, insta-killing huge monsters, dropping meteors out of the sky, mind controlling dudes, and all kinds of other stuff with a consistency that (for the most part, Merlin's got a couple of crazy stories) puts them above the paygrade of those archetypes.

For fighters, who do you think of? Conan? Beowulf? Conan could tear apart metal with his bare hands, pull down siege towers, survive a poison that could kill an ox in seconds, was described as "panther like" in his speed, stuff like that. Beowulf ripped the arm off a monster that had previously scooped up 30 men like it was no big deal. D&D Fighters don't do this stuff.

In short, D&D wizards are stronger than their base fiction and D&D fighters are weaker than their base fiction. Making spellcasters weaker isn't as fun as making fighters stronger, though. Make fighters ridonkulously strong. Make them stupid fast. Let the fighter cut a truck in half or throw a dude into orbit. Let fighters shrug off poison because whatever. But then again, I tend to work with anime as a basis, so none of this comes off as outrageous. D&D's world has sort of set a precedence where magic can do anything, but the mundane is still very mundane. People can buy a wizard stopping time, but a fighter lifting two tons overhead seems silly. The first step to narrative parity is letting physical qualities be just as incredible as mystical ones--establishing that someone can get that strong, that fast, that durable just through training.

Zanos
2017-11-14, 04:26 PM
I do like that 3.5 style wizards are encouraged to do research, seek out scrolls, and work with eachother since it reinforces tropes I like in association with casting, such as it being scientific but also requiring exploration, and wizards sometimes being secluded and standoffish.

I've seen good systems where you needed X lower level spells in a sphere or school to get higher ones, which works well since you can dabble in lower level stuff but need to specialize in just a few higher level schools. But it's hard to get that with the flavor above.


In short, D&D wizards are stronger than their base fiction and D&D fighters are weaker than their base fiction. Making spellcasters weaker isn't as fun as making fighters stronger, though. Make fighters ridonkulously strong. Make them stupid fast. Let the fighter cut a truck in half or throw a dude into orbit. Let fighters shrug off poison because whatever. But then again, I tend to work with anime as a basis, so none of this comes off as outrageous. D&D's world has sort of set a precedence where magic can do anything, but the mundane is still very mundane. People can buy a wizard stopping time, but a fighter lifting two tons overhead seems silly. The first step to narrative parity is letting physical qualities be just as incredible as mystical ones--establishing that someone can get that strong, that fast, that durable just through training.
In favor of stuff like this. The stuff I don't like is lifting weights until you can shoot fire out of your eyes like you see sometimes. Lifting weights making you supernaturally strong is cool in my book. More Charles Atlas and less Avatar.

Quertus
2017-11-14, 04:31 PM
In 3.5 (the caster edition), this was not quite as true at higher level.

As the CR climbed above level 7 or so, the game started to shift as the monsters had to adapt to the expectation of Players having Magic Items.

Fighters really, really need magic items to stay relevant to monsters whose defenses and tactics expect them. At some point the game tells a mundane Fighter, "GISH or die." Your Fighter will not survive the average combat without supplemental magic items.

In fact, this is so true that the Fighter's entire regimen of abilities matter infinitesimally less than what magic items they are using.

The game is "balanced" (and I use the word loosely) such that Fighters need magical items, yes. Is that the actual problem? Would the problem be "solved" If Wizards actually required their WBL to be able to perform the basic functions of their job? If all spells require an expensive, magical focus to cast? If, instead of what spells you have memorized, what spells a Wizard can cast is based on what items (priced by spell level based on WBL) they have?


I believe that no single failed save (or attack that hits) should take any significant combatant out.

My low-level Wizards would love for this to be true.


This doesn't imply padded sumo combat--combats should take ~3-5 rounds on average.

Hmmm... Probably the most bad-*** party I was in, rolling a 17 on initiative meant you didn't get to go, because the battle was over by then 90+% of the time. Fights were quick and the party felt epic. And, before you ask, these were mostly mundanes and gishes.


I'll rephrase my statement--the most viable (and least effort) solutions include both adding versatility to weapon-users by eliminating the guy at the gym mentality and reducing versatility of casters by making them more thematic (moving everyone over to limited-list casting).

That, at least, is a defensible position. Not one I like, mind - I prefer for everyone to be playing the game 100% of the time, rather than everyone only participating in their little niche. But, I agree, it's both easier to implement, and more forgiving of balancing errors.

PhoenixPhyre
2017-11-14, 05:05 PM
Hmmm... Probably the most bad-*** party I was in, rolling a 17 on initiative meant you didn't get to go, because the battle was over by then 90+% of the time. Fights were quick and the party felt epic. And, before you ask, these were mostly mundanes and gishes.

That, at least, is a defensible position. Not one I like, mind - I prefer for everyone to be playing the game 100% of the time, rather than everyone only participating in their little niche. But, I agree, it's both easier to implement, and more forgiving of balancing errors.

These two statements are at odds (and I don't see how you got the second from my quote). If every fight is over on the first two characters' turns, then most of the party didn't participate in each combat. That's horrible, horrible encounter and game design from my standpoint. Especially if those fights still took 5-8 minutes each. You have long stretches of absolute boredom from the rest of the table while one person adds up his dice. And then you move on. Or you're dead.

Note--this idea that challenges shouldn't be overcome in a single action extends to all sorts of things. Any skill challenge that a single check trivializes is a bad challenge. Any social encounter that a single check solves is a bad challenge. If a single spell, feat, or other ability trivializes a type of challenge, either the ability is overpowered or the challenge is improper.

Everybody should have something effective to do in every encounter (social or combat), should they wish. That could be skills, it could be spells, it could be weapon-based combat. As it stands, they don't. If we ranked the classes like racing games across the dimensions of gameplay, you'd currently have (out of ten) some classes that were 8/10 or better in many areas and 0 or 1/10 in the rest. Then you'd have classes that, if built decently, had 8/10 in one area and 4-5/10 in a couple more, with 1/10 in the rest. Then you have the poor fighter, who, if built to very specific specifications, has a 14/10 in one area (dealing damage if he can charge right) and a cow/10 in the rest. And there are classes that can't even reach that potential. A better, fairer, design would put all classes at 5/10 in most areas, with one or two weaknesses (3-4/10) and one or two strengths (7-8/10). No one should be incapable, no one should be dominant. No one class or ability should trivialize any relevant encounter or challenge just by existing.

From the existing setup, you'd need to force casters to specialize more and martials to specialize less. Not entirely, but more from the casters and less from the martials.

Lord Raziere
2017-11-14, 05:36 PM
In favor of stuff like this. The stuff I don't like is lifting weights until you can shoot fire out of your eyes like you see sometimes. Lifting weights making you supernaturally strong is cool in my book. More Charles Atlas and less Avatar.

Eeeeh, you don't really get Avatar if you think thats how the supernatural martial art wuxia stuff works.

in wuxia they would agree with you. lifting weights would not give you any form of fire-based technique. you need to specifically train and find enlightenment of how to do that in a way thats more specific and far stranger than just lifting weights, you can be just as great a fighter with or without learning the specific martial arts style to use fire. Mostly because lifting weights is just pure power, using fire is technique. as in, you need to do something specific for it to work, that fits with fire. you can learnt hat technique or you can decide not to, thats just a fighting style choice, that doesn't have any impact on your raw power.

Talakeal
2017-11-14, 05:46 PM
Why not both? Speaking strictly of 3.5 here, fighters are too weak (even in combat--they're either super specialized or largely ineffective) AND wizards too powerful (more precisely, too versatile). The two are actually inverses of each other--fighters are only strong when they specialize (and thus lose any hope of contributing outside of their very narrow "I charge and it dies" niche); wizards (and clerics, and druids) are strong because they don't have to meaningfully specialize. A wizard can be competent at a wide range of things; a druid is a better fighter than fighters, and can summon a better fighter than a fighter, and can also do all the other things expected of a full caster.

That's why I believe the only viable option is to make casters more thematic (no longer "it's magic so it can do anything") and thus more limited (force them to specialize, but give a wide range of specialties to choose from) AND drop the "fighters can only do it if a real person can do it" paradigm. Accept that all D&D PCs are special and outside the realms of normal humans. Allow them to do cool things at the cost of specialization. Can a heroic figure of mythology do it? Then a high enough level, properly specialized fighter (or other martial) could probably emulate it in one fashion or another.

Force every PC to make meaningful, intentional choices with consequences including at character creation. No more "I can do anything, just let me change out my spells tomorrow" casters, no more Guy at the Gym. That allows the two to meet somewhere in the middle (right about where ToB classes are on the martial end).

I fully agree with you're first paragraph, not so much the second.

One could easily balance a generalist spell-caster against a mundane character if that is what is desired.

Cosi
2017-11-14, 05:47 PM
wizards too powerful (more precisely, too versatile).

I don't think this is true, or rather I disagree that you can't balance the Wizard's versatility.

Spell preparation gives you an advantage because you have more information when you pick spells than other people do. A Sorcerer picks spells when he levels up, which means that he picks against (roughly) all encounters of a given EL. On the other hand, the Wizard picks spells each day, which means he can (potentially) make better choices because he know what he's likely to encounter today in more detail than "a EL = APL encounter".

I think those two things can balanced, and not with all that much difficulty either.

Consider a simplified example. I'm going to roll a (six-sided) die, and you're going to guess the result. If you guess the result correctly, you win. Now, I give you two choices for how you guess. Your first choice is to guess four numbers. Your second choice is that I will tell you that the result is either even or odd, and then you will guess two numbers. Unless I've made an error somewhere (I don't think I have, but stats is weird), your chance of winning in either case is 2/3. Either you win on four out of six numbers (in the first case), or you win on two out of three numbers (in the second case).

You can think of this as roughly approximating spell selection with the die roll as a choice of encounter, the guesses as spells known or prepared, and the odd/even information as divination. So if you make the choices of non-prepared casters sufficiently more broad than the choices of prepared casters, the characters will be comparably effective.

There is the problem of non-combat abilities (which are a definite advantage for the prepared caster), but I'm not convinced those belong on the same list to begin with.


That's why I believe the only viable option is to make casters more thematic (no longer "it's magic so it can do anything") and thus more limited (force them to specialize, but give a wide range of specialties to choose from)

Thematic does not necessarily mean limited. Consider, for example, Magneto. He has a pretty tightly thematic power -- he can create magnetic fields. But his abilities are not terribly limited.

So you start out with using magnet powers to throw metal at people. That's a pretty basic blasting effect. But it's a small step from "pick up some metal and drop it on people" to "pick up some metal and drop it between two groups of people", which is a BFC effect. Then you ask "what happens if I push metal instead of pulling it", and you can fly. If you can create a stable magnetic field, you can deflect bullets.

But that's far from everything. People have some amount of metal in or near them, right? Fillings, keys, maybe some surgical things. If you pull those through whoever happens to be carrying them, that's a lot like a save-or-die. But really, does it matter if people have metal on them? Blood has iron in it, and iron is magnetic. So whats to stop you from pulling out people's blood?

So that's a lot of destructive stuff you can do, but you don't have to be a villain. If you can warp metal out of shape, you can probably warp it into shapes. So you could build anything from buildings to weapons to minions.

That's a lot of stuff. But still, all you've really done is figure out ways to use your power differently. What about poking at the edges of your power? Magnetic fields effect electricity, right? So what (aside from precision limits) is stopping you from reprogramming computers, phones, or anything else that runs on electricity -- hell, even brains use electrical signals.

Incidentally, most of that is stuff that either Magneto or similar characters have done in comics (the brains thing, for example, is Jenny Sparks).

None of that really crosses outside of Magneto's theme. He's not grabbing any new power, just using his existing one in different ways.


IMO, the balance point is the module. Period. Can your character contribute reasonably to the adventure? Yes? Then good. No? Then you need a leg up somehow.

Modules make bad tests. First, they're too long. A typical module is a dozen or more encounters. That's terrible for testing because you want to run multiple tests at multiple levels. Second, they assume a party. That's bad for testing because it obscures the contributions of individual characters. A party where one character does everything and everyone else does nothing passes, but it really shouldn't. Third, they're balanced around assumed success. A test that always passes is a bad test, because it's not really capturing information about balance differences. The expectation should be some amount of failure, because otherwise you can't tell if people are on the same power range.

Generally, I think something like the Same Game Test is better.


They're atomic entities that don't depend on anything else, while feats (in 3e) are chains. They're also (for many of the worst offenders) flexible. You can trade out one for another given a rest, while a martial has to rebuild his entire character.

Those are both good things. Feat chains were a bad a idea, and less things should work like them, not more. Similarly, having powers be flexible encourages people to think creatively. Those are both good outcomes, and the game should encourage them.

Cluedrew
2017-11-14, 10:21 PM
I like flavorful characters. Wizards who have to resort to pulling out their bows fail - wizards should be magical.
Two things:

One: it calls to mind a scene where the immortal guardian of the demon king's prison faces down an intruder trying to break a demon out. The guardian is constantly changing forms, into a reflection of whatever emotion he is feeling at the moment. He breaths a shallow life back into the animated corpses (that look alive at first glance) that the intruder struck down on the way in, shows a kind of omnipresence about what is happening in the prison, undoes the intruder's magic and traps them in place without raising a finger. Then draws a sword and strikes down the intruder. That magical to me, and I don't feel that was a failure just because wish breaker doesn't have any direct damage spells.

That is an aside, because it was a cool scene. Anyways, the main point I wanted to make is that I feel that magic becoming a simple convenient tool makes it less magical to me. I have mastered ancient and long forgotten art over years of study. And it is more convenient to use than a bow? It doesn't feel like a magical ability, it feels like I hot-keyed fireball to Num3.

So yeah this post is really just a collection of slightly off-topic notes about the aesthetics of magic. But here they are.

Talakeal
2017-11-15, 12:29 AM
That makes Wizards not feel magical. Note, however, that plenty of variety in their at-will cantrips, plus limited spell slots for big effects, plus ritual magic for even bigger effects, would work for me? How about you?


Your definition of magical sounds a lot like my definition of mundane.

Magic that is commonplace, reliable, and convenient is pretty much just refluffed technology which hardly feels magical at all.


Blood has iron in it, and iron is magnetic. So whats to stop you from pulling out people's blood?

Kind of a tangent, but is this actually a real thing? Will a strong enough magnetic field rip the blood out of a person's body?



Yup. This another problem with "limit magic" as a paradigm. Fundamentally, if you have a class that is a "magic user", they should solve their problems by using magic. If magic is so costly or so useless that they instead solve their problems by using mundane skills, you have failed.

And this, right here is why we can't have nice things. It isn't the "guy at the gym fallacy" or some theoretical linear vs. quadratic math, it is the idea that RPG characters are not allowed to be anything more than the sum of their class abilities.

If people believe that you are no longer a magic user just because you don't have a spell for anything and everything, or that you are no longer a fighter because you can do things that are not "fighting," then that is a huge problem with both balance and fun.

Personally I see RPG characters as (fictional) people first and class archetypes a distant second, and heck, I even see classes as broad tool-kits rather than just their titular feature.

Tanarii
2017-11-15, 01:34 AM
And this, right here is why we can't have nice things. It isn't the "guy at the gym fallacy" or some theoretical linear vs. quadratic math, it is the idea that RPG characters are not allowed to be anything more than the sum of their class abilities.
It also doesn't really fit any narrative-based archetype except wish-fulfillment ones. The limits of magic is an incredibly important theme in tons of literature, even the ones where the protagonist is very magical.

Besides, if you really want that, in many systems you can get away with describing your use of non-magical skills or combat actions as enhanced or completely avoided by magic. Parry, Dodge, or attack misses? Magical deflection. Weapon attack hits? You magically directed it to the target. Stealth? Magically shrouded. Jump? Magically enhanced. Remember something (Lore skill)? Cast a minor recall cantrip.

VoxRationis
2017-11-15, 01:54 AM
Your definition of magical sounds a lot like my definition of mundane.

Magic that is commonplace, reliable, and convenient is pretty much just refluffed technology which hardly feels magical at all.
I am very much in agreement with this sentiment, but I also am a fan of magic which obeys set rules and is consistent in its outcomes. These are two sadly conflicting but desirable goals.



Kind of a tangent, but is this actually a real thing? Will a strong enough magnetic field rip the blood out of a person's body?


It is my understanding that hemoglobin-bound iron is not significantly magnetic.

Regarding the so-called "guy at the gym fallacy": titling it a fallacy is ridiculous and exists only to poison the well against it. There's nothing fallacious about saying that a person whose abilities do not rely on defying the laws of physics (i.e., they don't use magic of one form or another) has to do things in keeping with the laws of physics. What it is is basically a tonal distinction, an aesthetic preference which people who like high-power play, who are common here, do not share. Some people prefer settings where no one is truly non-magical, while other people prefer more grounded works, where most characters, even significant ones, have no abilities beyond real-world capabilities. I personally would rather have a setting where wizard-types are fairly restrained than one in which the supposedly non-magical can do the impossible.

Cosi
2017-11-15, 03:26 AM
Magic that is commonplace, reliable, and convenient is pretty much just refluffed technology which hardly feels magical at all.

This is only true if magic does the things technology does. As long as we don't have teleporters, casting teleport will "feel magical" even if there's no chance it instead causes your brain to explode. Conversely, something being crappy, unreliable, or dangerous doesn't make it feel less like technology. Apple Maps was a bad product, but no one accused it of being sorcery. When your cellphone signal drops out in the middle of the call, that does not make you feel like a wizard. Nuclear radiation is dangerous, but no one believes that it is a result of eldritch powers.


If people believe that you are no longer a magic user just because you don't have a spell for anything and everything, or that you are no longer a fighter because you can do things that are not "fighting," then that is a huge problem with both balance and fun.

You don't have to have a spell for everything. But if the character you are pitching is a "magic user", their primary solution should be "use magic". Just like if your character is a "swordsman", they should solve their problems with a sword, and not by researching things. Are there characters that solve their problems by researching them? Sure. But those characters aren't "swordsmen". Are their problems swordsmen solve with research? Sure. But those shouldn't constitute the majority of their problems.

To be clear, there is nothing wrong with saying that magic is dangerous and even the people who know how to do it mostly don't use it. But saying that those people are "magic users" or "wizards" is factually false, because their solutions to problems are not magical.


It also doesn't really fit any narrative-based archetype except wish-fulfillment ones. The limits of magic is an incredibly important theme in tons of literature, even the ones where the protagonist is very magical.

There's a difference between "magic has limits" and "people who are nominally magic-users refuse to use magic because it is dangerous". Mistborn magic has real, meaningful limits. But the titular Mistborn still fight with magic, instead of being expert fencers.

Frozen_Feet
2017-11-15, 07:01 AM
Kind of a tangent, but is this actually a real thing? Will a strong enough magnetic field rip the blood out of a person's body?

Strong enough magnetic field will rip everything out of anything.

However, the iron in your blood is not ferromagnetic. You would need a magnetic field powerfull enough to cause paramagnetic effects, requiring orders of magnitude more power than, say, tearing a ferromagnetic object (such as a sword) out of your hand.

Satinavian
2017-11-15, 07:11 AM
Yup. This another problem with "limit magic" as a paradigm. Fundamentally, if you have a class that is a "magic user", they should solve their problems by using magic. If magic is so costly or so useless that they instead solve their problems by using mundane skills, you have failed.No, a magic user should solve some problems with magic. The kind of problems he specialized in solving.
But certainly not all of his problems. The sword user doesn't get to solve all his problems with his sword skills either. If he wants to make a soup, he has to use his cooking skills. But fighting with swords is still his profession and defining skill. The thing people pay him to do.


And no, i have no problem with magic users using regular weapons in fights. In fact, i actually prefer that because that means they specialize in other applications of magic than killing things.

Cluedrew
2017-11-15, 08:20 AM
Magic that is commonplace, reliable, and convenient is pretty much just refluffed technology which hardly feels magical at all.Yes, that is what I was trying to say. But you said it better.

For me at least there is a difference between magic and "alt-tech". There is also a difference between magic and impossible, but I will get to that later. I'm still trying to put words to this but the tech in Star Wars (Star Trek or any story with faster than light travel) feels like technology and not just because it is in a machine that does it. It follows the same logic of the machines we know, which includes the convenience, the repeatability


Regarding the so-called "guy at the gym fallacy":Good point, I would however call it a double standard. Maybe there are times where it makes sense, but when you are trying to create stories where both martials and magicians are relevant, and relevant in the same way, it's not a good idea. Although to me a martial is not "someone who obeys the laws of physics" but a "body user". Or, if a caster is a master of the unseen forces of the universe, than a martial is the master of the seen forces of the universe.

You can see anyone's body, but only the fighter can get theirs to move like that. You can see the animals and plants in the forest, but a ranger knows how to seek out the ones that are good to eat. You can see the lock and the lock picks, but a rogue has mastered their use. You can barely see the enemy captain from here, but the master archer can still pin them down with arrows.

I would go on with high and high powered examples, getting so some flat out impossible things near the end, but I'm out of time. But for me the line should not be that one does impossible things and the other does not, but the kind of impossible they do.

Darth Ultron
2017-11-15, 08:22 AM
For fighters, who do you think of? Conan? Beowulf? Conan could tear apart metal with his bare hands, pull down siege towers, survive a poison that could kill an ox in seconds, was described as "panther like" in his speed, stuff like that. Beowulf ripped the arm off a monster that had previously scooped up 30 men like it was no big deal. D&D Fighters don't do this stuff.


The problem might be....D&D fighters are based on real fighters, not the fantasy ones. You know the real people who in 1000 marched to war. And that is exactly what was made ''this guy wears armor and can hit people with a weapon''.


Everybody should have something effective to do in every encounter (social or combat), should they wish

This is not possible though, unless your going for a very simple game. Like get rid of classes, races and everything else. So everyone just has a character. Then give everyone exactly the same Action Points to add to rolls. Then play the game. As everyone has exactly the same character, everyone can do exactly the same thing all the time.

Of course, there is also the 4/5E D&D way: Give every class Spells(or Abilities exactly like spells in everything except name) and, of course, nerf the powerful, real, spells.



And this, right here is why we can't have nice things. It isn't the "guy at the gym fallacy" or some theoretical linear vs. quadratic math, it is the idea that RPG characters are not allowed to be anything more than the sum of their class abilities.

If people believe that you are no longer a magic user just because you don't have a spell for anything and everything, or that you are no longer a fighter because you can do things that are not "fighting," then that is a huge problem with both balance and fun.

It is amazing how in modern times this idea has not only become popular, but become a demand ''it must be this way for us to even consider playing the game''.

Set the Wayback Machine for any time before 2000. Back in that Long Ago Time Before Time, the idea of magic less magic-uses was common and accepted. The standard advice for a magic user was ''make sure your character has a dagger, staff or crossbow so that when your character runs out of spells, they can still fight. I can recall years of magic users casting only a handful of spells per adventure, mostly for big tough fights, and the rest of the time the magic user would stay in the back and maybe shoot a crossbow bolt or two.

And someone saw that around 3E start and said, ''no way, wizards must be able to pew pew all the time or they are not wizards'', and it has gone down hill from there.

PhoenixPhyre
2017-11-15, 08:33 AM
Good point, I would however call it a double standard. Maybe there are times where it makes sense, but when you are trying to create stories where both martials and magicians are relevant, and relevant in the same way, it's not a good idea. Although to me a martial is not "someone who obeys the laws of physics" but a "body user". Or, if a caster is a master of the unseen forces of the universe, than a martial is the master of the seen forces of the universe.

You can see anyone's body, but only the fighter can get theirs to move like that. You can see the animals and plants in the forest, but a ranger knows how to seek out the ones that are good to eat. You can see the lock and the lock picks, but a rogue has mastered their use. You can barely see the enemy captain from here, but the master archer can still pin them down with arrows.

I would go on with high and high powered examples, getting so some flat out impossible things near the end, but I'm out of time. But for me the line should not be that one does impossible things and the other does not, but the kind of impossible they do.

Or the methods they use to do the impossible.

I'm a fan of the "everybody who's anybody is magic, but that doesn't mean they cast spells" mindset. How you access and use that supernatural force depends on your skill-set, mind-set, and talents.

These examples come from 5e D&D: Some expend bits of stored power to cause resonances in the fabric of reality (spells)--the exact mechanism of doing so varies. Some tap into the essence of rage to harden their skin and strengthen their muscles (a barbarian's rage). Some discipline their actions and train their bodies to be able to shrug off effects that would destroy others and to be able to move their weapon blindingly fast (a fighter's Action Surge and Indomitable). Some channel their training into being more expert at certain tasks than any other living creature, as well as evading the un-evadable (rogues with expertise and evasion). Etc.

This is the "class as archetype and common power source" idea (lifted slightly from 4e). Thus, a high level fighter is someone who is that much better than a normal person because he's trained his body, infusing it with the natural, omnipresent magic of the world. A druid has made contracts with spirits and can ask for favors from some of the greater spirits that normally don't talk to mortals. A wizard has learned to (in some way ) tamper with the source code to reality. A sorcerer tells the world to get bent, and it does. A bard convinces reality that the world was already bent that way. A paladin is so convinced that the world is that particular shape that it can't deny him. Etc.

Pex
2017-11-15, 08:45 AM
It is amazing how in modern times this idea has not only become popular, but become a demand ''it must be this way for us to even consider playing the game''.

Set the Wayback Machine for any time before 2000. Back in that Long Ago Time Before Time, the idea of magic less magic-uses was common and accepted. The standard advice for a magic user was ''make sure your character has a dagger, staff or crossbow so that when your character runs out of spells, they can still fight. I can recall years of magic users casting only a handful of spells per adventure, mostly for big tough fights, and the rest of the time the magic user would stay in the back and maybe shoot a crossbow bolt or two.

And someone saw that around 3E start and said, ''no way, wizards must be able to pew pew all the time or they are not wizards'', and it has gone down hill from there.

What you call downhill I call a feature. I'm glad spellcasters can go "pew pew" all day with a spell. It may be a glorified crossbow in effect, but the flavor text enhances the experience. You get to feel like a spellcaster by saying "I cast Firebolt". "I fire my crossbow" does not have the same vibe.

Quertus
2017-11-15, 08:58 AM
I lost my longer reply. In brief,

Apparently, I wasn't clear, as most everyone missed the point on being magical. I wasn't talking about the magic, I was talking about the Wizard.

For example, my Fighter is powerful. But he actually has to spend 80% of fights on the bench, just resting (while using his leadership/tactics skills to direct combat, giving his allies bonuses), because he gets winded super easy from walking around, let alone fighting. That really doesn't make him feel powerful.

My mobster is rich. But I can't afford to buy bubble gum, otherwise, I might not have money later? No, he doesn't come across as rich anymore.

It's the same thing with the Wizard for me. If the Wizard is constantly forced to employ mundane methods or risk not having magic, he no longer feels as magical.


These two statements are at odds

If every fight is over on the first two characters' turns, then most of the party didn't participate in each combat. That's horrible, horrible encounter and game design from my standpoint.

They only seem at odds until you realize that most of the party is walking around with a +12-+17 initiative modifier. Despite mostly running through various modules written by other people, the party was well designed for the modules' power level. Most characters got to act in most encounters, and the players were skilled and took their turns quickly, so everyone got to shine many times per session. And they paid attention to the fight (as it was something they, in principle, could participate in), so they weren't just sitting there bored. So, all in all, pure good times all around.


Note--this idea that challenges shouldn't be overcome in a single action extends to all sorts of things. Any skill challenge that a single check trivializes is a bad challenge. Any social encounter that a single check solves is a bad challenge. If a single spell, feat, or other ability trivializes a type of challenge, either the ability is overpowered or the challenge is improper.

I'm a war gamer at heart. To me, the idea of a "proper challenge" means that either side has a 50/50 chance of winning. Oddly, outside of the worst meat grinders, that mentality of a 50% chance of TPK is not conducive to your standard RPG. So RPG combat is a boring easy mode snooze fest compared to a "proper challenge".

But, when a single spell, feat, or ability trivializes an encounter, it serves to show just how bad-*** the PCs are. I think that that's a very proper purpose for a challenge. Do you agree that reinforcing just how cool and awesome the PCs are is a proper use for a challenge? What other uses do you perceive challenges as having?


Everybody should have something effective to do in every encounter (social or combat), should they wish. That could be skills, it could be spells, it could be weapon-based combat. As it stands, they don't. If we ranked the classes like racing games across the dimensions of gameplay, you'd currently have (out of ten) some classes that were 8/10 or better in many areas and 0 or 1/10 in the rest. Then you'd have classes that, if built decently, had 8/10 in one area and 4-5/10 in a couple more, with 1/10 in the rest. Then you have the poor fighter, who, if built to very specific specifications, has a 14/10 in one area (dealing damage if he can charge right) and a cow/10 in the rest. And there are classes that can't even reach that potential. A better, fairer, design would put all classes at 5/10 in most areas, with one or two weaknesses (3-4/10) and one or two strengths (7-8/10). No one should be incapable, no one should be dominant. No one class or ability should trivialize any relevant encounter or challenge just by existing.

Strongly agree on everyone having the option of having something to do, and not just in the false dichotomy of combat/social. But when I hear "specialize", I tend to think 0/10 across the board, and 10/10 in one specialty. Like the poor mind mage, who is as useless against undead and constructs as the Diplomancer or DPS sneak attack Rogue. So I don't feel that word encapsulates the meaning you desire. And the generalist Wizard is already "broad" and "generalized". So... How about the term "balanced"? I could get behind making all characters roughly balanced.


Modules make bad tests. First, they're too long. A typical module is a dozen or more encounters. That's terrible for testing because you want to run multiple tests at multiple levels. Second, they assume a party. That's bad for testing because it obscures the contributions of individual characters. A party where one character does everything and everyone else does nothing passes, but it really shouldn't. Third, they're balanced around assumed success. A test that always passes is a bad test, because it's not really capturing information about balance differences. The expectation should be some amount of failure, because otherwise you can't tell if people are on the same power range.

Generally, I think something like the Same Game Test is better.

Wow. This hurts me to read it. You are clearly not a tester*.

The question is, "will the group have fun?". Now, that's dependent upon a lot of things, many of them outside the game.

For the ones we can control, inside the game, we're looking at a lot of social, soft-skills stuff, plus the important question, "will this group of players, playing this group of characters, have fun running them through this adventure?"**

For that, you're looking at evaluating the module in several ways. Some good tests are to look at the balance of aesthetics***, or the balance of hearts / diamonds / spades / clubs moments, and compare that to your expected values.

But the test in question is to evaluate, if the party as a whole went through this module, for each character, how many times would the character get to participate / shine / feel useless? One character doing everything clearly makes this test hit a fail state****.

Similarly, this is why you warn the players of the Diplomancer and the Sneak Attack DPS Rogue that they may want to consider playing a different character through Necrophilia on Bone Hill - no matter how well they did on the bloody Same Game Test. :smallannoyed:

* I am a software developer, and happen to be a very good tester
** as an aside, for me, that largely involves me running a character I enjoy in the first place.
*** I'm so glad Angry renamed those, because "aesthetics" just isn't the right word... But I can never seen to remember - what are the 8 aesthetics called now? :smallconfused:
**** for most groups, at any rate.

CharonsHelper
2017-11-15, 09:05 AM
I lost my longer reply. In brief,

Apparently, I wasn't clear, as most everyone missed the point on being magical. I wasn't talking about the magic, I was talking about the Wizard.

For example, my Fighter is powerful. But he actually has to spend 80% of fights on the bench, just resting (while using his leadership/tactics skills to direct combat, giving his allies bonuses), because he gets winded super easy from walking around, let alone fighting. That really doesn't make him feel powerful.

My mobster is rich. But I can't afford to buy bubble gum, otherwise, I might not have money later? No, he doesn't come across as rich anymore.

It's the same thing with the Wizard for me. If the Wizard is constantly forced to employ mundane methods or risk not having magic, he no longer feels as magical.


I understood your point.

That doesn't keep me from disagreeing entirely. And your above examples are really bad/irrelevant.

The fighter getting winded is inherently NOT powerful unless there are valid in-setting reasons. (Like Vancian spell-casting is to magic perhaps? I did see a show where a villain was a total badass but he had health issues and could only fight for 3-4 minutes at a time - so he relied upon minions.)

The mobster might often not be able to spend much $ if he's lying low or the IRS is watching him. That doesn't keep him from being rich.

As a counter example:

If I have the ability to launch nukes, that makes me dangerous even if I'm feeble, have no martial knowledge and own no small arms. But if I can drop a nuke anywhere I want I don't think it's difficult for people to realize that I'm still dangerous.

It's entirely a matter of taste - not something that you can argue people into agreeing with.

PhoenixPhyre
2017-11-15, 09:14 AM
I lost my longer reply. In brief,

They only seem at odds until you realize that most of the party is walking around with a +12-+17 initiative modifier. Despite mostly running through various modules written by other people, the party was well designed for the modules' power level. Most characters got to act in most encounters, and the players were skilled and took their turns quickly, so everyone got to shine many times per session. And they paid attention to the fight (as it was something they, in principle, could participate in), so they weren't just sitting there bored. So, all in all, pure good times all around.

I'm a war gamer at heart. To me, the idea of a "proper challenge" means that either side has a 50/50 chance of winning. Oddly, outside of the worst meat grinders, that mentality of a 50% chance of TPK is not conducive to your standard RPG. So RPG combat is a boring easy mode snooze fest compared to a "proper challenge".

But, when a single spell, feat, or ability trivializes an encounter, it serves to show just how bad-*** the PCs are. I think that that's a very proper purpose for a challenge. Do you agree that reinforcing just how cool and awesome the PCs are is a proper use for a challenge? What other uses do you perceive challenges as having?


Wait...so everyone was rolling 18+ on initiative? What I took from your initial point was that the fights broke down like this (all results are before any bonus):

d20 roll: Result
20-17: Take first turn (20% chance)
16-1: Fight's over (80% chance)

If everyone has a high modifier including the monsters, then what you're actually saying is

d20 roll: Result
20-2: Take first turn (95% chance)
1: Fight's over (5% chance)

That means that you'd get the same result with everyone having +0 or +1 initiative. It also means that only a narrow range of builds (those that focus on having high initiative) can even begin to matter. The range of possible "balanced" builds (including available monsters) is greatly narrowed. That's horrible design.

A well used ability trivializing a single encounter--not that big a deal. A single character having a whole raft of abilities that trivialize a whole category of encounters? Not so good. That means that the characters are out of balance with the system. If the first mover wins (rocket-tag), then all fights are either cake-walks or TPKs and that only depends on the dice. It's a game of chess where the first person to go automatically wins. That's the same as deciding by a fair coin toss. Not fun. I want people to feel epic because they had to use skill, mediated by luck.

In my opinion, a "fair" challenge should have about 0% TPK chance unless the party screws up badly. The chance of failure should be higher, but still pretty low. Overcoming challenges is how you feel epic. Not having cakewalks.

Edit: and to the other part, the "specialized" part was relative to their current status. Currently, mundane martials have to be 100% specialized to be relevant in anything, while a 0% specialized cleric can be relevant everywhere. A better thing would be to make everyone have to specialize somewhat, but build that into the system as a set of defaults. That makes a "by-the-book," choose-what-looks-good build close in power to a more carefully crafted build. Basically raise the optimization floor for everybody and drop the ceiling. Everyone should be Great at one thing (which thing depends on class/choices), OK at most things, and (relatively) Weak at one or two things (depending on choices).

VoxRationis
2017-11-15, 09:17 AM
Good point, I would however call it a double standard. Maybe there are times where it makes sense, but when you are trying to create stories where both martials and magicians are relevant, and relevant in the same way, it's not a good idea.

I'm not quite sure what you mean by "relevant in the same way." I don't think that applies, based on my understanding of that phrase, even to your proposed muscles-caster fighters. Perhaps you could clarify what you meant? However, the former condition isn't hard to achieve at all. A Song of Ice and Fire is replete with relevant characters whose abilities, though significant, are wholly mundane, even though there are very real magic-users running around. (Well, semi-real. Even the real ones use trickery rather than actual magic for a certain percentage of what they accomplish.) My first and only time playing L5R, my perfectly ordinary duelist character was more than relevant in spite of operating next to a magic-user played by my optimization-oriented brother. It's more than possible to have magic-users who are toned down to a degree where completely non-magical characters compete with them. Heck, if you took 5e's concentration mechanic and applied it to 2e's spellcasters, you're pretty close to there already, and that's just a quick fix.

Frozen_Feet
2017-11-15, 09:25 AM
Regarding the so-called "guy at the gym fallacy": titling it a fallacy is ridiculous and exists only to poison the well against it. There's nothing fallacious about saying that a person whose abilities do not rely on defying the laws of physics (i.e., they don't use magic of one form or another) has to do things in keeping with the laws of physics.

The "guy at the gym" is not a fallacy because it limits characters to what's physically possible. It's a fallacy because it limits characters to what some person (usually the GM) thinks is physically possible, which is a different thing.

The fallacious form of "guy at the gym" can afflict even games which have no supernatural elements at all. It happens when even a highly skilled character isn't allowed to do something which is possible in real world, because the person running the game doesn't consider that thing plausible. It literally means that person thinks some guy at the gym is the most a human being can achieve (also suggesting they must be attending a really boring gym).

You can see it right there in d20 character class design, even. I mean, is there a good reason why Fighters, who are a broad archetype meant to cover people from Swashbucklers to Roman Legionaires to Knights, are missing Survival, Listen, Use Rope etc. vital warrior skills from their class skill list? No. It can only be explained by the desginers not really having a clue of what real life thing the Fighter class would model, by the designers believing a Fighter is just "guy a the gym" who's been handed a sword.

Quertus
2017-11-15, 09:27 AM
I understood your point.

That doesn't keep me from disagreeing entirely. And your above examples are really bad/irrelevant.

The fighter getting winded is inherently NOT powerful unless there are valid in-setting reasons. (Like Vancian spell-casting is to magic perhaps? I did see a show where a villain was a total badass but he had health issues and could only fight for 3-4 minutes at a time - so he relied upon minions.)

The mobster might often not be able to spend much $ if he's lying low or the IRS is watching him. That doesn't keep him from being rich.

As a counter example:

If I have the ability to launch nukes, that makes me dangerous even if I'm feeble, have no martial knowledge and own no small arms. But if I can drop a nuke anywhere I want I don't think it's difficult for people to realize that I'm still dangerous.

Your examples are every bit as flawed as above. It's entirely a matter of taste - not something that you can argue people into agreeing with.

Disagree? Ok, either...

As you said, it's a matter of taste, and, as you said, something you can't disagree about;

Or it's a matter of me defining how I was using a word, and it would be really odd (but technically not impossible) for you to disagree with me on how I was defining my words;

Or it's me trying to pitch the idea of a valid archetype, in which case you could disagree with its validity, or it being an archetype, but your response is neither.
/pedantic

Actually, I'm most concerned that your response feels to conflate "powerful" and "magical" in ways even my examples did not.

Tinkerbell is magical. She constantly glows and trails magical dust. She flies in defiance of the laws of physics. And she even "talks" in strange tinkles that would likely remain unexplained even were she to be dissected. Every moment of her existence is magical.

Cosi
2017-11-15, 09:53 AM
And no, i have no problem with magic users using regular weapons in fights. In fact, i actually prefer that because that means they specialize in other applications of magic than killing things.

It depends on what you think class means, and what the focus of your RPG is.

In general, I think class is expected to be a fairly good descriptor of what your character does. It doesn't have to be exclusive. You can totally have non-class abilities. But classes are supposed to be good, evocative descriptors of what your character does. As such, if your character is a swordsman who does magic to solve some things, his class should be Swordsman, not Magic User (in the same way that you wouldn't describe a Swordsman who had taken some ranks in Open Lock as a Lockpicker).

Similarly, RPGs are generally focused combat, and what you do in combat largely defines your character. Obviously if your game is largely about things that aren't combat, you could have a character whose non-combat abilities defined her. But that's usually not the case.


What you call downhill I call a feature. I'm glad spellcasters can go "pew pew" all day with a spell. It may be a glorified crossbow in effect, but the flavor text enhances the experience. You get to feel like a spellcaster by saying "I cast Firebolt". "I fire my crossbow" does not have the same vibe.

Yes. Exactly this. In general, if you find out that Darth Ultron is on your side, you should probably change sides, because Darth Ultron is always wrong.


Wow. This hurts me to read it. You are clearly not a tester*.

Actually, it's exactly testing that makes me thing your plan is bad. Your proposal is essentially that we do only integration tests, and no unit tests. That is not a good idea. We should absolutely do unit tests for any number of reasons. We should also do integration tests, but they are not a replacement for unit tests.


For the ones we can control, inside the game, we're looking at a lot of social, soft-skills stuff, plus the important question, "will this group of players, playing this group of characters, have fun running them through this adventure?"**

"This adventure" is a bad test because people mostly don't play published adventures. I would guess that playing through published adventures probably constitutes 50% at best of gameplay, and even less if you don't count cases where the adventure is modified somehow. You have to test against "stuff in the MM", because "stuff from the MM" is going to be the level at which most encounters are selected.

Also, it's worth pointing out that most of your sales aren't modules. They're books. So you need a framework for testing the things you put in books, because those are the products you are selling.


The "guy at the gym" is not a fallacy because it limits characters to what's physically possible. It's a fallacy because it limits characters to what some person (usually the GM) thinks is physically possible, which is a different thing.

The problem with "guy at the gym" is that it comes from having three incompatible goals:

1. Putting limits on some characters (mundanes), but not other characters (casters).
2. Allowing people to continue accumulating abilities indefinitely.
3. Game Balance.

It doesn't matter what the limits on Fighters nominally are. They can be "things you can personally do", "things you believe someone could do", "things someone has actually done", "things that could in theory be done", or even "things an action hero can plausibly do". But as long as there is some point where you say "that is clearly impossible" when a Fighter tries to do something, and don't have a point like that for Wizards, you have the exact same problem.

Max_Killjoy
2017-11-15, 10:00 AM
And this, right here is why we can't have nice things. It isn't the "guy at the gym fallacy" or some theoretical linear vs. quadratic math, it is the idea that RPG characters are not allowed to be anything more than the sum of their class abilities.

If people believe that you are no longer a magic user just because you don't have a spell for anything and everything, or that you are no longer a fighter because you can do things that are not "fighting," then that is a huge problem with both balance and fun.

Personally I see RPG characters as (fictional) people first and class archetypes a distant second, and heck, I even see classes as broad tool-kits rather than just their titular feature.


EXACTLY.

This is a chunk of why I finally set a hard rule against playing or running systems that use class-based character creation. Even in Vampire, almost all of my characters were Caitiff, because I got so sick of gamers viewing the characters as their clan first... and as fictional people second (if at all). "Oh, you're a ______, you wouldn't do that / think that." :smallfurious:

PhoenixPhyre
2017-11-15, 10:00 AM
The problem with "guy at the gym" is that it comes from having three incompatible goals:

1. Putting limits on some characters (mundanes), but not other characters (casters).
2. Allowing people to continue accumulating abilities indefinitely.
3. Game Balance.

It doesn't matter what the limits on Fighters nominally are. They can be "things you can personally do", "things you believe someone could do", "things someone has actually done", "things that could in theory be done", or even "things an action hero can plausibly do". But as long as there is some point where you say "that is clearly impossible" when a Fighter tries to do something, and don't have a point like that for Wizards, you have the exact same problem.

I agree. It's also boring (at least to me). If I wanted to deal with real-life limitations, I wouldn't be playing a fantasy game. I'd be out in real life.

But that's just a taste issue. The balance issue is as pointed out above by both of you.

Cosi
2017-11-15, 10:16 AM
But that's just a taste issue. The balance issue is as pointed out above by both of you.

It's a taste issue how you solve it. It's not a taste issue that the problem exists. You can resolve it by saying "I don't care about the imbalance", or even "I want casters to be better than mundanes". You can resolve it by putting a cap on the game's power level (like E6 does). You can resolve it by some combination of buffs to Fighters and nerfs to Wizards. But the problem exists regardless of which of those solutions you happen to like best.

PhoenixPhyre
2017-11-15, 10:21 AM
It's a taste issue how you solve it. It's not a taste issue that the problem exists. You can resolve it by saying "I don't care about the imbalance", or even "I want casters to be better than mundanes". You can resolve it by putting a cap on the game's power level (like E6 does). You can resolve it by some combination of buffs to Fighters and nerfs to Wizards. But the problem exists regardless of which of those solutions you happen to like best.

Right. I was saying that my "it's boring" thing was a taste issue. Not the existence of a problem.

I happen to care about build diversity and removing trap options. Maybe because I play mostly with new players, I want you to be able to get an effective (if formulaic) build by taking "what looks cool." I also want to encourage people to try different tactics and builds instead of sticking to what the holy guides say.

Exact balance is a pipe-dream, but if everyone is mostly OK at most things with one or two areas of specialty (but not outright dominance) and one or two areas of weakness (but not crippling uselessness), that's where I'm happiest.

LibraryOgre
2017-11-15, 11:20 AM
This is only true if magic does the things technology does. As long as we don't have teleporters, casting teleport will "feel magical" even if there's no chance it instead causes your brain to explode. Conversely, something being crappy, unreliable, or dangerous doesn't make it feel less like technology. Apple Maps was a bad product, but no one accused it of being sorcery. When your cellphone signal drops out in the middle of the call, that does not make you feel like a wizard. Nuclear radiation is dangerous, but no one believes that it is a result of eldritch powers.


This is, IMO, a narrow definition of technology. As we develop robotics and AI, do golems stop being magical? Is Magic Missile not magical because firearms exist? Does a Tesla Coil negate Lightning Bolt, or a stun gun demystify Shocking Grasp?

Magic, as it exists in D&D, largely IS a technology. Get a hundred 9 Intelligence kids, teach them all to cast Cantrip, and they'll all cast Cantrip. They can memorize from the same spellbook. They'll make near-identical modifications in casting for the circumstances. There's not much difference between Cantrip and a smart phone at that point... if we all have the same cellphone and want to play the same game, we'll all go through very similar actions to reach its icon, summon the game, and begin to play.

Now, it is an imperfectly understood technology... you still have room for the mystical things that exist outside of D&D magic. You can still have "How does X work" be answered with "I don't know, it's magic"... but at the level of spell-casting and most normal magic items? There's little difference between D&D magic and technology.

Satinavian
2017-11-15, 11:28 AM
It depends on what you think class means, and what the focus of your RPG is.

In general, I think class is expected to be a fairly good descriptor of what your character does. It doesn't have to be exclusive. You can totally have non-class abilities. But classes are supposed to be good, evocative descriptors of what your character does. As such, if your character is a swordsman who does magic to solve some things, his class should be Swordsman, not Magic User (in the same way that you wouldn't describe a Swordsman who had taken some ranks in Open Lock as a Lockpicker).

Similarly, RPGs are generally focused combat, and what you do in combat largely defines your character. Obviously if your game is largely about things that aren't combat, you could have a character whose non-combat abilities defined her. But that's usually not the case.
The part where i disagree is how combat focussed RPGs are or should be.

Of course the someone who uses his magic only for certain non-combat tasks and uses a sword in combat is can either be a swordfighter with a bit of magic, a gish or a noncombatant/civillian who has to defend himself due to some rare and unespected situation.

Obviously i had the last in mind. The character is still a magic user who uses magic for his most important job related tasks. He is an expert in doing so. It is what he trained for years. But now the need to fight arises and what is more likely : using another decade to learn some battle-magic or take a week to get the basics with sword/speer or bow and help the militia a bit ? Especcially when one expects that fights keep to be really rare events ?


Yes, that is not how D&D handles it. But i don't really play D&D either.

Morty
2017-11-15, 11:41 AM
I've run two Vampire: the Requiem chronicles, with one fight scene between the two of them. In our Dark Heresy campaign that's run for two years, my character invested a handful of XP into shooting a lasgun, with everything else going towards utility skills of various sorts. So the claim about most RPGs being combat-focused and characters being defined by what they do in combat is news to me.

Of course, Dark Heresy is a very traditional and combat-focused RPG... just not to D&D's extreme, laser-focused degree, which is a category all of its own.

LibraryOgre
2017-11-15, 12:01 PM
We had a Ninjas and Superspies game that I jokingly referred to as "The Ninjas and Superspies game with neither Ninjas nor Superspies." It was an alien invasion conspiracy game. My character got into combat once (another player was bored and wanted a fight, so the GM attacked us with a gorram wolverine; put one of the characters in the hospital for a few days), and drew is his pistol one other time (heading towards a crashed space ship to rescue its Air Force pilots). Otherwise, it was all conversation and deduction, in a system that doesn't really deal with those sorts of things.

It was also one of my favorite games to play in.

Komatik
2017-11-15, 12:07 PM
Kind of a tangent, but is this actually a real thing? Will a strong enough magnetic field rip the blood out of a person's body?

Magnets and blood (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IVsWTkD2M6Q)

Max_Killjoy
2017-11-15, 12:08 PM
Perhaps players want conflict and challenge, and combat might be the easiest to identify, mechanize, and introduce.

(I am not suggesting that combat is overdone or underdone or necessary or unnecessary or whatever, that's purely a choice for each player or group.)

Max_Killjoy
2017-11-15, 12:16 PM
Two things to keep in mind about magnetic effects on the human body.

1) If my math is right, about 0.007% of the human body is iron.

2) Much of the metal artificially added to the human body as implants and fillings and such isn't magnetic.

Frozen_Feet
2017-11-15, 12:41 PM
The problem with "guy at the gym" is that it comes from having three incompatible goals:

1. Putting limits on some characters (mundanes), but not other characters (casters).
2. Allowing people to continue accumulating abilities indefinitely.
3. Game Balance.

It doesn't matter what the limits on Fighters nominally are. They can be "things you can personally do", "things you believe someone could do", "things someone has actually done", "things that could in theory be done", or even "things an action hero can plausibly do". But as long as there is some point where you say "that is clearly impossible" when a Fighter tries to do something, and don't have a point like that for Wizards, you have the exact same problem.

None of those three things are "goals" for the "guy at the gym" fallacy and the fallacy can exist in absence of all of non-mundane characters, ability accumulation and game balance.

You are right in the sense that the presence of these things, especially 1 & 2, makes it increasingly worse. But 1 is a problem in its own right that's separate from the guy at the gym, or any mundane-magic-distinction whatsoever. In context of d20, This is most obvious when you compare limited casters (paladin, ranger, adept, bard, healer, warmage etc.) with those which are less so (wizard, cleric, druid, archivist etc.)

Darth Ultron
2017-11-15, 01:28 PM
What you call downhill I call a feature. I'm glad spellcasters can go "pew pew" all day with a spell. It may be a glorified crossbow in effect, but the flavor text enhances the experience. You get to feel like a spellcaster by saying "I cast Firebolt". "I fire my crossbow" does not have the same vibe.

But ok, if your going to say casters can ''pew pew'' all day...why not bump up the fighters too? See the problem.

Tanarii
2017-11-15, 01:59 PM
There's a difference between "magic has limits" and "people who are nominally magic-users refuse to use magic because it is dangerous". Mistborn magic has real, meaningful limits. But the titular Mistborn still fight with magic, instead of being expert fencers.Um. Mistborn fight physically, and enhance it with magic. That's the exact opposite of a pure caster. They're GISH.

Other GISH:
Kylar in the Night Angel Trillogy
Neo in the Matrix

Characters that aren't GISH, can use magic to directly attack, and still fight with mundane capabilities anyway, although they often enhance that like GISH do:
Rand Al'Thor in Wheel of Time
Haplo in the Death Gate Cycle

Contrast with a full caster:
Raistlin

Pex
2017-11-15, 02:05 PM
But ok, if your going to say casters can ''pew pew'' all day...why not bump up the fighters too? See the problem.

Who says I'm against beefing up the warriors?

3E did a wonderful job with Tome Of Battle. Pathfinder gave Paladins lots of love and perfected Barbarians and Monks in one of their splat books. Fighter is improved over 3E but not enough for some people's tastes. 5E made warriors self-sufficient. I'm quite happy when playing a 5E spellcaster I only need to cast Cantrip attacks in combat because the warriors are handling everything on their own. I get to shine later when the party really needs my spellpower.

PhoenixPhyre
2017-11-15, 02:07 PM
Um. Mistborn fight physically, and enhance it with magic. That's the exact opposite of a pure caster. They're GISH.

Other GISH:
Kylar in the Night Angel Trillogy
Neo in the Matrix

Characters that aren't GISH, can use magic to directly attack, and still fight with mundane capabilities anyway, although they often enhance that like GISH do:
Rand Al'Thor in Wheel of Time
Haplo in the Death Gate Cycle

Contrast with a full caster:
Raistlin

And the only full caster is from a D&D setting. The whole "I'm a caster so all I do is cast spells" for protagonists seems to me to stem from D&D. Maybe even from Raistlin himself.

VoxRationis
2017-11-15, 02:22 PM
And the only full caster is from a D&D setting. The whole "I'm a caster so all I do is cast spells" for protagonists seems to me to stem from D&D. Maybe even from Raistlin himself.

Not really. Mazirian the Magician had no particular martial ability and was pretty much defenseless without his spells. The witch in Hansel and Gretel could be overpowered by a couple of children under the right circumstances. The wizard from one of the The Magic Goes Away short stories needed a werewolf to act as muscle when it came down to an actual confrontation with his rival. Melisandre from ASOIAF (though that's post-Gygaxian) has no particular noted martial skill. Merlin relies on the Knights of the Round Table to do any fighting that needs to be done. The various wizards and sorcerers in Newhon, even when they're good for anything with magic, tend to require non-magical minions. There are plenty of fairly pure caster-types in fantasy fiction, even if we ignore the last few decades' works as being too D&D-influenced.

Tanarii
2017-11-15, 02:28 PM
And the only full caster is from a D&D setting. The whole "I'm a caster so all I do is cast spells" for protagonists seems to me to stem from D&D. Maybe even from Raistlin himself.


Not really. Mazirian the Magician had no particular martial ability and was pretty much defenseless without his spells. The witch in Hansel and Gretel could be overpowered by a couple of children under the right circumstances. The wizard from one of the The Magic Goes Away short stories needed a werewolf to act as muscle when it came down to an actual confrontation with his rival. Melisandre from ASOIAF (though that's post-Gygaxian) has no particular noted martial skill. Merlin relies on the Knights of the Round Table to do any fighting that needs to be done. The various wizards and sorcerers in Newhon, even when they're good for anything with magic, tend to require non-magical minions. There are plenty of fairly pure caster-types in fantasy fiction, even if we ignore the last few decades' works as being too D&D-influenced.
Yeah, Merlin and Gandalf (despite the whole Glammerdingaling or whatever thing) are most likely huge inspirations for the D&D-style full-caster that Merlin Raistlin later came from. Although obvious Jack Vance's stuff had something to do with it somewhere. Just a little bit. :smallamused: Not that I've ever read his stuff, so i don't know if they're honestly full casters D&D-style.

Frozen_Feet
2017-11-15, 02:35 PM
Although to me a martial is not "someone who obeys the laws of physics" but a "body user". Or, if a caster is a master of the unseen forces of the universe, than a martial is the master of the seen forces of the universe.

This is a case where you (and these forums in general) plain don't use the words like the rest of the world do.

Let's recap what "martial" means:


mar·tial (mär′shəl)
adj.
1. Of, relating to, or suggestive of war.
2. Relating to or connected with the armed forces or the profession of arms.
3. Characteristic of or befitting a warrior.

[Middle English, from Latin mārtiālis, of the god Mars, from Mārs, Mārt-, Mars.]

Notice how "mundane" or "non-magical" don't enter into it. Conflating "martial" with mundane is, as far as I can tell, conceit of specific people talking of a specific system and exists nowhere else.

In truth, whether an archetype is martial and whether it is non-magical should be kept separate.

A wizard who uses their spells to wage war, is a martial wizard. In fact, the whole discussion of whether Wizards should have magic attack powers they can freely use, is not about whether they're magic. It's about whether they're martial.

And let's be clear on that front: once you're willing to get out the D&D box, or even just do something different within that box, the Wizard doesn't have be martial. They don't have to be combat focused, they don't need to have combat-usable spells at all.

And the same goes for non-magical "body users". The Acrobat-Thief doesn't need to know how to fight to fullfill their role. Neither does the scientist. Nor the master diplomat. Nor any other non-magical archetype you can think of.

That little demon sitting on your shoulder, whispering "the game is about combat, so every class ought to have ways to contribute in combat"? Kill it. Kill it with fire. Untill you do, intelligible, non-conflatory discussion of non-magical versus magical, and non-martial versus martial characters is impossible.

The corollary to this is that if you want to play a wizard who has combat-usable magic, own up to it and call your archetype a Warmage or Fighter-Wizard, 'cause that's what it is.

Morty
2017-11-15, 02:53 PM
This is a case where you (and these forums in general) plain don't use the words like the rest of the world do.

Let's recap what "martial" means:



Notice how "mundane" or "non-magical" don't enter into it. Conflating "martial" with mundane is, as far as I can tell, conceit of specific people talking of a specific system and exists nowhere else.

In truth, whether an archetype is martial and whether it is non-magical should be kept separate.

A wizard who uses their spells to wage war, is a martial wizard. In fact, the whole discussion of whether Wizards should have magic attack powers they can freely use, is not about whether they're magic. It's about whether they're martial.

And let's be clear on that front: once you're willing to get out the D&D box, or even just do something different within that box, the Wizard doesn't have be martial. They don't have to be combat focused, they don't need to have combat-usable spells at all.

And the same goes for non-magical "body users". The Acrobat-Thief doesn't need to know how to fight to fullfill their role. Neither does the scientist. Nor the master diplomat. Nor any other non-magical archetype you can think of.

That little demon sitting on your shoulder, whispering "the game is about combat, so every class ought to have ways to contribute in combat"? Kill it. Kill it with fire. Untill you do, intelligible, non-conflatory discussion of non-magical versus magical, and non-martial versus martial characters is impossible.

The corollary to this is that if you want to play a wizard who has combat-usable magic, own up to it and call your archetype a Warmage or Fighter-Wizard, 'cause that's what it is.

I'm just going to sign my name until all of this.

Max_Killjoy
2017-11-15, 03:03 PM
Notice how "mundane" or "non-magical" don't enter into it. Conflating "martial" with mundane is, as far as I can tell, conceit of specific people talking of a specific system and exists nowhere else.


For somewhat related reasons, I tried using "mundane" in an earlier incarnation of this discussion... and kinda got my head bit off for it ("How dare you call martial characters 'mundane'?!?" and so on).

E: and I think "martial vs caster" does come from the unspoken presumption of a D&D-like setup, but then many other setups don't have such a hard and drastic split between the those who wield weapons and those who cast spells.

Tinkerer
2017-11-15, 03:04 PM
The corollary to this is that if you want to play a wizard who has combat-usable magic, own up to it and call your archetype a Warmage or Fighter-Wizard, 'cause that's what it is.

Everything is combat usable. Based off my experiences Stone to Mud is the most OP combat spell in the game.

EDIT: Right, my initial point that I was going to make is that they are not using the word incorrectly because it is how it was defined in D&D is several editions.

Tanarii
2017-11-15, 03:09 PM
This is a case where you (and these forums in general) plain don't use the words like the rest of the world do.

Let's recap what "martial" means:



Notice how "mundane" or "non-magical" don't enter into it. Conflating "martial" with mundane is, as far as I can tell, conceit of specific people talking of a specific system and exists nowhere else.Ultimately, whenever martial vs caster gets mentioned, what it means is Fighter vs Wizard. Fighters (with or without magic items), Wizards, and multiclass Fighter/Wizards (characters that blend the two).

Some folks try to expand the point out by (for example) including agile Rogue-like characters in combat, but originally it all comes from Fighters vs Wizards.

Talakeal
2017-11-15, 03:11 PM
You don't have to have a spell for everything. But if the character you are pitching is a "magic user", their primary solution should be "use magic". Just like if your character is a "swordsman", they should solve their problems with a sword, and not by researching things. Are there characters that solve their problems by researching them? Sure. But those characters aren't "swordsmen". Are their problems swordsmen solve with research? Sure. But those shouldn't constitute the majority of their problems.[/I]


I haven't taken the time to actually do this, but I am fairly certain if I rewatched the Lord of the Rings trilogy Gandalf the wandering wizard would solve less than 50% of his problems by casting spells. Likewise I if I watch Willow I am fairly certain Madmartigan, the greatest swordsman in the world, solves less than half of his problems with melee.

Now, they probably use their respective class skills more than any other single approach, but almost certainly not more than all other approaches combined.


Strong enough magnetic field will rip everything out of anything.

However, the iron in your blood is not ferromagnetic. You would need a magnetic field powerfull enough to cause paramagnetic effects, requiring orders of magnitude more power than, say, tearing a ferromagnetic object (such as a sword) out of your hand.

I looked it up after posting, apparently magnetism isn't so much a property of the iron element as it is the chemical structures it typically finds itself in when in the state we think of as metallic iron.

But yeah, technically almost everything we experience is some sort of interaction caused by the electromagnetic force, and this is a pretty good example of why specialist casters are better for the game then generalists. If Magneto were to go around poking at the edges of his power to influence things that were not traditionally ferro-magnetic (sp?) because they still use the electromagnetic force he stops being "The Master of Magnetism" and instead is just another telekinetic.


What you call downhill I call a feature. I'm glad spellcasters can go "pew pew" all day with a spell. It may be a glorified crossbow in effect, but the flavor text enhances the experience. You get to feel like a spellcaster by saying "I cast Firebolt". "I fire my crossbow" does not have the same vibe.

Which is great if you are a blaster. I tried playing an abjurer in 5E and sat around bored (and pissing my party of for being useless) because there are very few cantrips in 5E that are not direct damage but are still frequently useful.

If all you really want to do is cast fireball all day long while waiting for the right type to cast the big spells the best solution in my game would be to simply get a wand that allows you to do just that.


Apparently, I wasn't clear, as most everyone missed the point on being magical. I wasn't talking about the magic, I was talking about the Wizard.

For example, my Fighter is powerful. But he actually has to spend 80% of fights on the bench, just resting (while using his leadership/tactics skills to direct combat, giving his allies bonuses), because he gets winded super easy from walking around, let alone fighting. That really doesn't make him feel powerful.

My mobster is rich. But I can't afford to buy bubble gum, otherwise, I might not have money later? No, he doesn't come across as rich anymore.

It's the same thing with the Wizard for me. If the Wizard is constantly forced to employ mundane methods or risk not having magic, he no longer feels as magical.

What do you think about an expert marksman who has a limited supply of ammunition and thus chooses his shots carefully rather than simply nonstop firing from the hip like an 80s action hero. Is he no longer a marksman because he has to take his ammo supply into consideration?


The "guy at the gym" is not a fallacy because it limits characters to what's physically possible. It's a fallacy because it limits characters to what some person (usually the GM) thinks is physically possible, which is a different thing.

The fallacious form of "guy at the gym" can afflict even games which have no supernatural elements at all. It happens when even a highly skilled character isn't allowed to do something which is possible in real world, because the person running the game doesn't consider that thing plausible. It literally means that person thinks some guy at the gym is the most a human being can achieve (also suggesting they must be attending a really boring gym).

You can see it right there in d20 character class design, even. I mean, is there a good reason why Fighters, who are a broad archetype meant to cover people from Swashbucklers to Roman Legionaires to Knights, are missing Survival, Listen, Use Rope etc. vital warrior skills from their class skill list? No. It can only be explained by the desginers not really having a clue of what real life thing the Fighter class would model, by the designers believing a Fighter is just "guy a the gym" who's been handed a sword.

"Guy at the gym," has come to mean several different things and argue several different points.

Some people use it to argue in favor of the "badass normal" archetype and other's against it. Some people think it means limiting martials to what is physically possible, others think it means limiting heroes to what some random guy at the gym can do.

Other people use a sort of hybrid argument; because so far the game limits people to doing what any guy at the gym can do it is therefore impossible to make a worthwhile character who is bounded by the constraints of physics," which is the argument that I spend most of my time crusading against.


For example, in my campaign a max level martial character is going to function like a gestalt of Captain America, Hawkeye, and Black Widow with the combat skills of Thor (and likely an artifact weapon on part with Mjolnir). They aren't doing anything that it isn't theoretically possible using RL physics*, but they are certainly not mundane in any way.


*: Obviously there are a few moments when said characters do things that are blatantly impossible and inconsistent with their normal power set, but that's the superhero genre for you.



1. Putting limits on some characters (mundanes), but not other characters (casters).
2. Allowing people to continue accumulating abilities indefinitely.
3. Game Balance.
.

I still don't know why you think games need to allow people to advance indefinitely or why they should be balanced around a point long after most games end.

Most RPGs I know of have either a hard limit or an effective limit based on the rates of XP acquisition that limit how strong characters can get, and those that don't tend to offer only token support to the theoretical end-game. For example, D&D 3.X has just the one epic handbook, which was fairly bad imo, and was never updated to 3.5 or really integrated into any of the other material they published later, and I only played in one game that even attempted to make use of it.

Insisting on balancing the game around some theoretical 430th level play session seems like a bit of a lost cause as the 1-20 actually can benefit from a bit of tinkering with CMD while the epic level game has way bigger things to worry about.

Frozen_Feet
2017-11-15, 03:36 PM
Everything is combat usable.

Said a warrior. If you're not a warrior nor playing such a character, you don't think like this.

Just as well, a thief would consider Stone to Mud a great way to break into houses. But if you're not a thief nor playing such a character, you don't think like this.

If you systematically approach magic from the angle of "how does this make me better in a fight?", you're a Wizard-Fighter.

If you systematically approach magic from the angle of "how does this make me better at stealing stuff?", you're a Wizard-Thief.

So on and so forth. If you can't wrap your head around a Wizard who doesn't do combat, don't say a word about "pure casters". They aren't, in your mind.

---


For somewhat related reasons, I tried using "mundane" in an earlier incarnation of this discussion... and kinda got my head bit off for it ("How dare you call martial characters 'mundane'?!?" and so on).

"Mundane" is a bad word, because:


mundane (ˈmʌndeɪn; mʌnˈdeɪn)
adj
1. everyday, ordinary, or banal
2. relating to the world or worldly matters

There are many, many non-magical things which are none of everyday, ordinary or banal. A highly trained martial artist, an olympic athlete, a world-class performer etc. might not be magic, but on their respective fields they are frequently anything but mundane.

Hence, I increasingly favor "non-magical" and "non-supernatural". Because as I remarked earlier, there is quite a large room to be extraordinary, even superhuman, without being magic or supernatural.

---


Ultimately, whenever martial vs caster gets mentioned, what it means is Fighter vs Wizard. Fighters (with or without magic items), Wizards, and multiclass Fighter/Wizards (characters that blend the two).

Some folks try to expand the point out by (for example) including agile Rogue-like characters in combat, but originally it all comes from Fighters vs Wizards.

I know. What I'm trying to tell people is that this is not a smart way of discussing the subject.

---


"Guy at the gym," has come to mean several different things and argue several different points.

I know. I'm trying to cut through the conflation.

Kaptin Keen
2017-11-15, 03:51 PM
If you want to have a real discussion, with the - slight, but real - possibility of any agreement, I'd suggest:

1. Agree on what the discussion is, for instance: Wizard vs Fighter (for any given value of the two - but without all the alchemy in between)
2. Try not to nitpick. Everyone knows what's meant by mundane, who cares if the textbook definition doesn't cover - we all know what mundane means in roleplaying context. It means 'does things without magic'.

For my own part, I simply want warriors fighters (just forgot my own rule after 10 seconds) to be an even match for wizards. I've built some systems for this, but nothing solid enough for others to use. In order to have fighters be able to beat magic, I've allowed strength checks to break spells (hold person being the obvious example), rage to defeat mind affecting spells (reactively), and bonuses to saves that increase with loss of hit points.

With the end result being that wizards cannot rely on save-or-suck or save-or-lose spells, meaning they actually have to win by removing hit points, meaning the fighters have a chance to fight back.

Obviously it plays in to things that I've never played even a single game above level 16, I think. The overwhelming majority have ended around level 12. In D&D 3.5.

Oh and on a side note, none of this is aimed at the guy who posted above. The mundane thing is just an example.

Max_Killjoy
2017-11-15, 04:02 PM
Said a warrior. If you're not a warrior nor playing such a character, you don't think like this.

Just as well, a thief would consider Stone to Mud a great way to break into houses. But if you're not a thief nor playing such a character, you don't think like this.

If you systematically approach magic from the angle of "how does this make me better in a fight?", you're a Wizard-Fighter.

If you systematically approach magic from the angle of "how does this make me better at stealing stuff?", you're a Wizard-Thief.

So on and so forth. If you can't wrap your head around a Wizard who doesn't do combat, don't say a word about "pure casters". They aren't, in your mind.


What if a character isn't "A Thief" or "A Warrior", but still looks at magic from those angles?

Personally I'm not a thief, but I still notice things that make buildings easier or harder to break into. I'm not an arsonist, but I still know that a can of gasoline and a book of matches makes lighting a building on fire a lot easier.

This is part of what ends up with me being so vehemently negative about archetype-based character rules (D&D-like Classes being the extreme example).




"Mundane" is a bad word, because:

There are many, many non-magical things which are none of everyday, ordinary or banal. A highly trained martial artist, an olympic athlete, a world-class performer etc. might not be magic, but on their respective fields they are frequently anything but mundane.

Hence, I increasingly favor "non-magical" and "non-supernatural". Because as I remarked earlier, there is quite a large room to be extraordinary, even superhuman, without being magic or supernatural.


For any particular setting, there's a line where a character who isn't casting spells still crosses from what's non-magically possible (in the broad sense of magic), into the realm of what's magic. In establishing that line, there's a tension between what you want to be possible without any magic at all, and the effects this is going to (or "should") have on the worldbuilding (if people are capable of carrying 500 lbs, running all day with that load, and leaping 20 foot gaps, you've probably put some donkeys and ferrymen and bridge-builders out of work).

So there are really two distinctions here, I think -- not-magic vs magic, and not-caster vs caster.

LibraryOgre
2017-11-15, 04:27 PM
And the only full caster is from a D&D setting. The whole "I'm a caster so all I do is cast spells" for protagonists seems to me to stem from D&D. Maybe even from Raistlin himself.

I'd say emphatically NOT Raistlin. Especially early in the Chronicles, Raistlin was very limited in what spells he could do, reflecting the D&D game as it stood at the time... he could use some spells, and he used them well, but "Cast all day" simply wasn't a thing that he (or any wizard) could do.

Tanarii
2017-11-15, 06:00 PM
I'd say emphatically NOT Raistlin. Especially early in the Chronicles, Raistlin was very limited in what spells he could do, reflecting the D&D game as it stood at the time... he could use some spells, and he used them well, but "Cast all day" simply wasn't a thing that he (or any wizard) could do.He is a good example of "all I do is magic and use my brain". He uses a dagger to stab someone, what, one time?

Edit: But yeah, he's a pre-cantrip D&D wizard. From back when everyone understood that "Wizard" didn't mean "cast all day long" or "uses magic for everything", but rather "extremely powerful but highly use limited abilities" and "weak at everything else".

Basically, they were the equivalent of Artillery in the fantasy wargaming that became D&D. Where-as Fighting Men were grunts.

Frozen_Feet
2017-11-15, 06:29 PM
What if a character isn't "A Thief" or "A Warrior", but still looks at magic from those angles?

Then they're emulating mindset of a warrior or a thief in a way that benefits their profession, such as a policeman trying to figure out what spells a Wizard-Thief could use for burglaring.

But those are exceptions that prove the rule. For any application of a thing, there is a limited amount of incentives to think of such application. And only specific sorts of people who routinely deal with the thing will routinely have such incentives.


Personally I'm not a thief, but I still notice things that make buildings easier or harder to break into.

In a systematic way? No you don't. Not unless, again, it relates to your routine.


I'm not an arsonist, but I still know that a can of gasoline and a book of matches makes lighting a building on fire a lot easier.

Here you're confusing acknowledging an obvious fact with routinely looking for how and which buildings to set on fire.

It's similar to an average person acknowledging that a kitchen knife can be used to kill someone: superficial. In truth, majority of people who use kitchen knives neither use nor think of them as lethal weapons, and their ability and will to use them as such approaches nill. Just like, I hope, your will and ability to use matches and gasoline to burn down houses.


This is part of what ends up with me being so vehemently negative about archetype-based character rules (D&D-like Classes being the extreme example).

Except you're barking the wrong tree. I'm not arguing that people should play "pure" whatevers. I'm arguing that a characters who are not primarily defined by fighting, don't need to be able to fight. D&D is only relevant insofar as it's D&D that's seen to be "about combat" and hence "can fight" gets baked into every character type.

The general point goes way beyond any D&D class or archetype. I can easily imagine a doctor who also practices martial arts, and can use their medical knowledge to enhance their martial abilities. But just as well I can imagine another doctor who has the same medical knowledge, but does not practice martial arts and hence has no ability to apply their knowledge in a martial way.

Hence, if I say to someone, "your doctor does not need to have any ability to use martial arts", and someone starts smart-assing ways to use medical knowledge in a martial way, clearly they missed the point or they want to play the doctor who is also a martial artist.

---


For any particular setting, there's a line where a character who isn't casting spells still crosses from what's non-magically possible (in the broad sense of magic), into the realm of what's magic. In establishing that line, there's a tension between what you want to be possible without any magic at all, and the effects this is going to have on the worldbuilding.

So there are really two distinctions here, I think -- not-magic vs magic, and not-caster vs caster.

It's funny you say "really two" when I already showed four: mundane versus extraordinary, human versus superhuman, non-magical versus magical and natural versus supernatural. (Your "caster versus non-caster" is my not-magic versus magic and your "not-magic versus magic" is my natural versus supernatural.)

If the category of "extraordinary, superhuman thing which is natural and non-magical" really does not open to you, think hard sci-fi genetically enhanced hominid, or a robot, or (in more limited sense) animals which beat humans in some trait handily (such as chimpanzee's raw strength).

LibraryOgre
2017-11-15, 06:56 PM
He is a good example of "all I do is magic and use my brain". He uses a dagger to stab someone, what, one time?


And sleight of hand. Yeah, he's a magic-only character for the most part, but he was husbanding a rare and powerful resource. Later editions removed the rare but didn't make it less powerful... which, again, is kind of why I respected 4e. A mage there could cast spells all day long, but that wasn't terribly better than being able to swing swords all day long. The really powerful magics were Rituals, which anyone had access to.

Tanarii
2017-11-15, 07:23 PM
And sleight of hand. Yeah, he's a magic-only character for the most part, but he was husbanding a rare and powerful resource. Later editions removed the rare but didn't make it less powerful... which, again, is kind of why I respected 4e. A mage there could cast spells all day long, but that wasn't terribly better than being able to swing swords all day long. The really powerful magics were Rituals, which anyone had access to.
Good call on the sleight of hand thing. Not only some bit-part skill use either, he was good enough to create a useful cover for the entire party for an extended journey.

Pex
2017-11-15, 07:25 PM
Which is great if you are a blaster. I tried playing an abjurer in 5E and sat around bored (and pissing my party of for being useless) because there are very few cantrips in 5E that are not direct damage but are still frequently useful.

If all you really want to do is cast fireball all day long while waiting for the right type to cast the big spells the best solution in my game would be to simply get a wand that allows you to do just that.



Campaign specific I'd measure. In my cleric game the wizard is an abjurer mainly for the temporary hit points. However, in that Yawning Portal adventure in the pyramid where there's a gas so you can't short rest her most valuable spell that game was Mage Hand. She used it liberally to set off traps and grab loot that would set off traps but we're not near it to be hurt. I figured out early in the adventure that most of the traps were "greed traps". You're safe as long as you don't go for the treasure. The toppling statue trap was nothing for example. We knew it was trapped without having to investigate because of the gem eyes. Mage Hand the gems, statue topples, we're richer without losing anything because no one needed to climb it. The gem in the wall within the head of a creature? Mage Hand the gem out, the mouth slams shut against nothing because no one needed to put their hand inside it.

Cluedrew
2017-11-15, 07:29 PM
Or the methods they use to do the impossible.

I'm a fan of the "everybody who's anybody is magic, but that doesn't mean they cast spells" mindset.Actually I think both would be the ideas solution for both mechanical and narrative differentiation. I think 4e got into some trouble with changing just the "how" and not enough of the "what" (or at least that was the perception). And I used to do that magic thing... then I just realized I was sticking the word magic in there because it made me feel better. Once I realized that taking the word magic out and instead saying "the universe does not operate by the same rules" makes me feel better.


Apparently, I wasn't clear, as most everyone missed the point on being magical. I wasn't talking about the magic, I was talking about the Wizard.What about my reply didn't address that? Well I guess the whole thing then. I actually understood what you were getting at. Let me be more direct:

Its it too much to ask that a wizard be more than just one who casts spells? I feel it cheapens the concept in the same way calling a fighter one who uses swords does that. The wizards I grew up with were wise and or cunning and more often got by with that than pulling out a convenient spell. More than having magic, having the mind that has learned enough of the secrets of the universe seemed to be the deciding issue. Does a wizard stop being a wizard in an anti-magic zone? Does a fighter stop being a fighter without a weapon? I should hope not.


I'm not quite sure what you mean by "relevant in the same way."In short "as PCs". They can work together to solve problems with each playing a significant role in most of them. Also yes, is not an issue at lower power levels.


This is a case where you (and these forums in general) plain don't use the words like the rest of the world do.By the dictionary definition you are entirely correct. By how the gaming community (and the forums in general, who are the people I'm talking to) martial tends to mean "non-caster" or "physically empowered character" as often as not. Mundane is technically more correct but it cares some really bad connotations with it (notably boring) so I avoid it. That leaves me in the awkward position of not really liking the word martial but not having a better option. If you have a suggestion, please tell me and maybe I'll start using that word instead.

PhoenixPhyre
2017-11-15, 08:13 PM
Actually I think both would be the ideas solution for both mechanical and narrative differentiation. I think 4e got into some trouble with changing just the "how" and not enough of the "what" (or at least that was the perception). And I used to do that magic thing... then I just realized I was sticking the word magic in there because it made me feel better. Once I realized that taking the word magic out and instead saying "the universe does not operate by the same rules" makes me feel better.


:smallsmile: I like exploring universes that, on the surface, look the same as ours with some fantastic elements, but are really very different under the hood. Ones where the Four Element theory is true. Where there are no such things as atoms or molecules, where the planets stay in orbit because a legion of angels push them along fixed tracks. Where everything is made out of the dreams of living souls, including those living souls themselves.

I'll admit, I started on the tabletop in 4e (after having played the 2e and 3e CRPG versions of D&D). I really liked the idea of the various power-sources and the fact that even a fighter (the quintessential non-magic class) becomes more-than-human through training. I just tend to define "magic" as "that thing that allows PCs (and monsters, and many NPCs) do things that regular earth humans can't do."

Tinkerer
2017-11-15, 08:18 PM
Its it too much to ask that a wizard be more than just one who casts spells? I feel it cheapens the concept in the same way calling a fighter one who uses swords does that. The wizards I grew up with were wise and or cunning and more often got by with that than pulling out a convenient spell. More than having magic, having the mind that has learned enough of the secrets of the universe seemed to be the deciding issue. Does a wizard stop being a wizard in an anti-magic zone? Does a fighter stop being a fighter without a weapon? I should hope not.

Bingo. Some of my favourite moments playing a wizard came when my spells ran out or they were otherwise restricted. If all you have left is your gear or a spell which is entirely unsuited to the situation and your party is in grave peril you have to get pretty damn creative to pull their asses out of the fire.

Max_Killjoy
2017-11-15, 09:15 PM
Then they're emulating mindset of a warrior or a thief in a way that benefits their profession, such as a policeman trying to figure out what spells a Wizard-Thief could use for burglaring.

But those are exceptions that prove the rule. For any application of a thing, there is a limited amount of incentives to think of such application. And only specific sorts of people who routinely deal with the thing will routinely have such incentives.


At least from my personal experience, how I think and what thoughts come to mind aren't at all about incentives, or emulating a mindset.




In a systematic way? No you don't. Not unless, again, it relates to your routine.


Maybe other people are different, but I regularly think about a lot of things that have nothing to do with my routine.




Here you're confusing acknowledging an obvious fact with routinely looking for how and which buildings to set on fire.

It's similar to an average person acknowledging that a kitchen knife can be used to kill someone: superficial. In truth, majority of people who use kitchen knives neither use nor think of them as lethal weapons, and their ability and will to use them as such approaches nill. Just like, I hope, your will and ability to use matches and gasoline to burn down houses.


I think of kitchen knives, cars, gasoline, various sporting equipment, and lots of other things as potential weapons.

Is this something other people don't do? Do people just filter the stuff around them into some sort of "not a weapon" mental category and not see that potential?




Except you're barking the wrong tree. I'm not arguing that people should play "pure" whatevers. I'm arguing that a characters who are not primarily defined by fighting, don't need to be able to fight. D&D is only relevant insofar as it's D&D that's seen to be "about combat" and hence "can fight" gets baked into every character type.

The general point goes way beyond any D&D class or archetype. I can easily imagine a doctor who also practices martial arts, and can use their medical knowledge to enhance their martial abilities. But just as well I can imagine another doctor who has the same medical knowledge, but does not practice martial arts and hence has no ability to apply their knowledge in a martial way.

Hence, if I say to someone, "your doctor does not need to have any ability to use martial arts", and someone starts smart-assing ways to use medical knowledge in a martial way, clearly they missed the point or they want to play the doctor who is also a martial artist.


I don't think I'm barking up the wrong tree -- it appears that you're still defining the character first as "a doctor" and/or "a martial artist", in the same way they might be defined first in D&D as "a fighter" or "a wizard".

(E: That re-reads as a lot snarkier or smug than I intended it to be. My point is that I look at the character as a fictional person, let's call her Emily, who grew up somewhere, had X siblings, went to school somewhere, studied medicine, is currently between relationships, and practices JKD on the side for self-defense and fitness.)




It's funny you say "really two" when I already showed four: mundane versus extraordinary, human versus superhuman, non-magical versus magical and natural versus supernatural. (Your "caster versus non-caster" is my not-magic versus magic and your "not-magic versus magic" is my natural versus supernatural.)

If the category of "extraordinary, superhuman thing which is natural and non-magical" really does not open to you, think hard sci-fi genetically enhanced hominid, or a robot, or (in more limited sense) animals which beat humans in some trait handily (such as chimpanzee's raw strength).

With that last category, you've gone out into the realms of things that aren't human, and used them as examples of inhuman capability... but those capabilities are perfectly natural for those things. Even in the case of the genetically enhanced hominid, there's nothing "magical" about it so long as it stays within the realm of things that are conceived possible with genetic changes.

And I didn't say "categories", I said "distinctions".

Dublinmarley
2017-11-15, 10:31 PM
Defeating wizards is easy. Stop giving them magic. Don't let them just walk into any major town and buy whatever spell they want. Give them random treasure and scrolls. I spent 5th and 6th level once with no 3rd level spells due to I couldn't afford the crappy ones they had available and no wizard would let me copy theirs.

Design encounters to bleed spells from them. A fighter can always swing that sword but after X amount of spells the wizard is spent. Don't let them sleep. Attack encampments at night. Have tons of encounters with creatures they don't know the power level of so wizard wastes spells on scrubs. You can make life a living hell for the party wizards pretty easy. Sorcerers not so easy but same concept applies. Oh you got fireball well now damn only fire resistant creatures are attacking us.

I think the main problem is most parties with DM's allowing it are too entitled with magic. The DM controls the world and you can control your parties power fairly easy. Bleed wealth from them. Most of my wizards and PC's wizards in my campaigns are never powerful. Kill PC's and make them use raise dead. 5k a pop drains funds and magic items real quick. Cant afford to buy spell components for super powerful spells if you are always carrying half the party back from the haunted castle in a bag of holding. Always role play selling the magic items as you make the PC loot his friends bodies to pay for several raise dead spells. The point is you can limit magic and the amount it hurts your game by just limiting their wealth. Here is an evil one. Steal their spell book or destroy it in vat of acid trap. I cant count the number of times a breath weapon or fireball destroyed my spell book. So do I cast this spell as we retreat back to the city or do I try and save it so I can scribe it into my new spell book. This method alone is priceless fun for getting rid of destructive spells. Oh you want the same spells you had before. Sorry I don't carry most of those spells at this shop. I heard capital city might have some of them. Are you a member of the guild? No well then I think you might be screwed.

Stop letting your PC's become extremely powerful. If you gain xp attacking monsters that are just as powerful or more powerful as you then just random chance the party should have a bad day at the dice. TPK should most likely take care of all but the extremely lucky parties by upper mid level.

Remember if the PC's are doing it then that big bad with an even higher int score has already thought of it and has more resources to do it better. Eventually PC's get the hint and learn to play together with balance in the party or they are going to get jumped by several high level wizards a lot doing the same stuff their wizard has been doing. Its all part of the balance.

Zanos
2017-11-15, 10:45 PM
Fighters run out of HP before wizards run out of spell slots.

And having to design specific elaborate and contrived circumstances so that wizards aren't super effective is the opposite of easy. What this actually does is make wizard players super paranoid, and they start swallowing their spellbooks and giving them adamantine cases and ****. Or just storing them in other dimensions.

Dublinmarley
2017-11-15, 10:55 PM
Fighters run out of HP before wizards run out of spell slots.

And having to design specific elaborate and contrived circumstances so that wizards aren't super effective is the opposite of easy. What this actually does is make wizard players super paranoid, and they start swallowing their spellbooks and giving them adamantine cases and ****. Or just storing them in other dimensions.

Its super easy. Have many encounters. How does the wizard know the charging 30 goblins are either 1HD scrubs or 6th level fighters who are the elite guard of the goblin king? And why does the wizard even have worthwhile spells in the first place? Its because the DM screwed up and let him become too powerful. There is no rule in the game where you just get to grab whatever spell you want from the local shop. Hell the easiest thing to do is you know what spells he has memorized. If you cant imagine ways to screw him then the wizard deserves to be that powerful. I find stopping druids, clerics and several other caster types much harder than stopping someone you can stop from acquiring spells that are game changing.

Fairly easy. They don't have spells they can store it in another dimension nor do they have wealth to pay for special storage containers. The point is that controlling characters and their actions is easy by controlling wealth. Oh you don't have eschew materials. Sorry sir but the guy who looked vaguely similar to the wanted posters bought all of those spell components you wanted yesterday. Yep only store for 50 miles around. Easy to control.

Pex
2017-11-15, 11:03 PM
Balancing spellcasters by not letting them cast spells by whatever means is not balancing them. It's screwing over the player. Yes, I will say it. Spellcasters are entitled to cast spells. That's the whole point of playing one.

Lord Raziere
2017-11-15, 11:07 PM
Balancing spellcasters by not letting them cast spells by whatever means is not balancing them. It's screwing over the player. Yes, I will say it. Spellcasters are entitled to cast spells. That's the whole point of playing one.

I agree. A spellcaster should be entitled to cast spells. A martial should be entitled to do great deeds of legend. Simple to me.

Dublinmarley
2017-11-15, 11:15 PM
Balancing spellcasters by not letting them cast spells by whatever means is not balancing them. It's screwing over the player. Yes, I will say it. Spellcasters are entitled to cast spells. That's the whole point of playing one.

But not all spells. They can cast spells that they have found and learned. You control that and it is that simple. Its much harder to control classes like a priest or druid etc who can just pick what spells they want. And remember the enemy can also do the same thing. Fighting evil parties or good parties if evil is an easy way to completely level the playing field.

The problem which I have found playing in games all over the states due to I move a lot is people almost always allow caster types to get insanely powerful by giving them access to anything that is in any sourcebook. Just because its written doesn't mean Sembia or Chelix merchants wizards will sell it to you or they even have it themselves. You can create real reasons and give them just enough hope to get powerful while still limiting there wealth. I remember a game where getting magic missile was one of the happier character moments due to I had tons of spells like false life mirror image etc that didn't insanely change game play. I got that spell at fifth level. You just have to change the dynamics of what your players expect. Trust me your warriors and rogues will love you for it.

Zanos
2017-11-16, 12:27 AM
There are actually rules that detail spell avaliablity and cost in 3rd edition and its offshoots. A wizard can get pretty reliable access. Wizards can also take any spells for their level up spells. Also "the wizard has decent spells because the DM screwed up", just what?

I'm not really sure how not knowing if goblins are 6th or 1st level is more important to a wizard than the fighter standing in front. Running a bunch of encounters with level 1 mobs against high level parties seems like a huge waste of OOC time just to troll wizarda. I guess at worst the wizards hold their action for one round?

And magic missile completely changes gameplay but mirror image doesn't? Have you been smoking hobbit lwaf?

Talakeal
2017-11-16, 12:45 AM
I'm not really sure how not knowing if goblins are 6th or 1st level is more important to a wizard than the fighter standing in front. Running a bunch of encounters with level 1 mobs against high level parties seems like a huge waste of OOC time just to troll wizarda. I guess at worst the wizards hold their action for one round?

My biggest annoyance in 4e was the DM refusing to tell me what was a minnion and what wasnt and so I would constantly waste daily / encounter powers on 1hp mooks.

I could imagine a wizard having similar problems if you dont tell them what level the monsters are and wasting their high level spells when a cantrip would do(or vice versa), while a fighter doesnt really have that problem.

Arbane
2017-11-16, 12:48 AM
Regarding the so-called "guy at the gym fallacy": titling it a fallacy is ridiculous and exists only to poison the well against it. There's nothing fallacious about saying that a person whose abilities do not rely on defying the laws of physics (i.e., they don't use magic of one form or another) has to do things in keeping with the laws of physics.

It turns into a fallacy when you also have, in the same setting, ostenably non-magical creatures that blatantly break the same laws of physics (giant insects), or 'non-spellcasting' classes with supernatural abilities (monks), that fighters can't have because Fighters are supposed to suck.


Magic, as it exists in D&D, largely IS a technology. Get a hundred 9 Intelligence kids, teach them all to cast Cantrip, and they'll all cast Cantrip. They can memorize from the same spellbook. They'll make near-identical modifications in casting for the circumstances. There's not much difference between Cantrip and a smart phone at that point... if we all have the same cellphone and want to play the same game, we'll all go through very similar actions to reach its icon, summon the game, and begin to play.

Leading to one of the game's many problems: D&D magic is approximately as 'mystical' as the act of ordering an Extra Value Meal. :smallconfused:


It doesn't matter what the limits on Fighters nominally are. They can be "things you can personally do", "things you believe someone could do", "things someone has actually done", "things that could in theory be done", or even "things an action hero can plausibly do". But as long as there is some point where you say "that is clearly impossible" when a Fighter tries to do something, and don't have a point like that for Wizards, you have the exact same problem.

Pretty much, yeah. The whole "Magic Can Do ANYTHING" doesn't help.


The "guy at the gym" is not a fallacy because it limits characters to what's physically possible. It's a fallacy because it limits characters to what some person (usually the GM) thinks is physically possible, which is a different thing.

The fallacious form of "guy at the gym" can afflict even games which have no supernatural elements at all. It happens when even a highly skilled character isn't allowed to do something which is possible in real world, because the person running the game doesn't consider that thing plausible. It literally means that person thinks some guy at the gym is the most a human being can achieve (also suggesting they must be attending a really boring gym).

You can see it right there in d20 character class design, even. I mean, is there a good reason why Fighters, who are a broad archetype meant to cover people from Swashbucklers to Roman Legionaires to Knights, are missing Survival, Listen, Use Rope etc. vital warrior skills from their class skill list? No. It can only be explained by the desginers not really having a clue of what real life thing the Fighter class would model, by the designers believing a Fighter is just "guy a the gym" who's been handed a sword.

Very much this. I've often groused that there's real-world people you can't possibly make as a D&D character below level 12, never mind anyone from legends. (Fun fact: Gygax tried to write up Conan the Barbarian as a AD&D character - Conan ended up as a level 20+ fighter/rogue with always-on psychic powers and a bunch of unique special abilities, because D&D COULD NOT HANDLE Conan being simultaneously awesome and a fighter who didn't have a panopoly of magic items.)

Lord Raziere
2017-11-16, 01:00 AM
It turns into a fallacy when you also have, in the same setting, ostenably non-magical creatures that blatantly break the same laws of physics (giant insects), or 'non-spellcasting' classes with supernatural abilities (monks), that fighters can't have because Fightered are supposed to suck.

Yup. Why we have giant crabs, giant rats, giant spiders, and yet still think that fighter should be bound by normal limits is just insane and stupid. its not just a fallacy, its a blind romanticism, much like how some WH40k players romanticize the Imperial Guard as being "badasses" and "having balls of steel" for trying to fight all the threats of that universe with nothing but a lasgun and some imperial flak armor. when really, they're just red shirts that die unceremoniously.

Kaptin Keen
2017-11-16, 01:17 AM
I feel if you ever consider what's 'physically possible' in a magical universe, you're doing it wrong. Maybe with the exception of random commoner npc's in the street. It's like Punisher or Batman: They're both just ordinary guys. Nothing of what they do is possible in the real world. Or, I suppose they walk and eat and stuff, but nothing of what makes them Punisher or Batman is possible.

Satinavian
2017-11-16, 02:04 AM
Everything is combat usable. Based off my experiences Stone to Mud is the most OP combat spell in the game.
Taking a D&D battlefield controll spell as example to show how everything is combat usable completely misses the point.

Let me show you some of the really favorite (= many players pick them and invest a lot of character build power to get them) spells of my most often played RPG :

- A spell that turns yourself into a tree for months. You can't change back earlier and you only have tree senses. But your presence might slowly drive other lingering supernatural effects from the area.

- A spell that allows you to form living wood. Has a casting time of hour to days, but results in the best treehouses ever.

- A spell makes your collected herbs more potent, but only if you use them raw.

- A spell that can turn salty water into drinkable water

- A spell that turns rotten food back into an edable state

- A ward (lasting up to a yers, taking hours to cast and roughly a week of magic power) that turns away all rodents and vermin from a field

- A ward that makes crops in a field more resistent to bad weather and improves fertility

- A ward that prevents a well from drying up

- A spell that protects a newborn child from being abducted by fey

- A spell that can cure a drug addiction

Actually i could go on several pages. But in essence that is the stuff magic is mostly about in that system and the stuff PC magic users can do with their magic. Yes, there is some combat magic but due to very limited spells per caster many can't do any magic that is even remotely useful in a combat situation. Monst magic users are noncombattants.

Guizonde
2017-11-16, 02:36 AM
Taking a D&D battlefield controll spell as example to show how everything is combat usable completely misses the point.

Let me show you some of the really favorite (= many players pick them and invest a lot of character build power to get them) spells of my most often played RPG :

- A spell that turns yourself into a tree for months. You can't change back earlier and you only have tree senses. But your presence might slowly drive other lingering supernatural effects from the area.

- A spell that allows you to form living wood. Has a casting time of hour to days, but results in the best treehouses ever.

- A spell makes your collected herbs more potent, but only if you use them raw.

- A spell that can turn salty water into drinkable water

- A spell that turns rotten food back into an edable state

- A ward (lasting up to a yers, taking hours to cast and roughly a week of magic power) that turns away all rodents and vermin from a field

- A ward that makes crops in a field more resistent to bad weather and improves fertility

- A ward that prevents a well from drying up

- A spell that protects a newborn child from being abducted by fey

- A spell that can cure a drug addiction

Actually i could go on several pages. But in essence that is the stuff magic is mostly about in that system and the stuff PC magic users can do with their magic. Yes, there is some combat magic but due to very limited spells per caster many can't do any magic that is even remotely useful in a combat situation. Monst magic users are noncombattants.

you've pretty much described why followers of erastil are so well appreciated in my dm's campaign setting (druids, clerics, etc...). hell, we've been undercover as worshippers of erastil rather than cayden caillean and it worked wonders, even if it meant killing people using a sack of potatoes.

likewise, i feel that dnd tries to address the issue of "casters can't fight" by the bab attribution. at level 4, in the party we know who's gonna reliably do fisticuffs, and it ain't the cleric. now, i play an unoptimized inquisitor, so a half-caster. i pretty much play as cantrip-only, since i chose 1st level spells that are extremely situational. even then, i rarely use spells because there's no need for me to. it's possible and it's a solution, but i instinctively avoid it.

re: the language thing, in my group we use "arcane vs mundane": one uses physics, the other breaks physics. arcane is split up further into "divine vs profane", but that's only to get specific when necessary. not saying all the monk class features don't break physics, but hey, it's an easy shorthand.

Talakeal
2017-11-16, 02:43 AM
It turns into a fallacy when you also have, in the same setting, ostenably non-magical creatures that blatantly break the same laws of physics (giant insects), or 'non-spellcasting' classes with supernatural abilities (monks), that fighters can't have because Fighters are supposed to suck.

Let's unpack this about. From how I see it, there are at least five different arguments involved here:

1: People should not be allowed to play character's without supernatural abilities.
2: Fighter's cannot have supernatural abilities.
3: Characters without supernatural abilities have to suck.
4: When creating a fictional setting people need not limit themselves to real world physics.
5: If you are going to break the laws of reality in some element of your setting you shouldn't be allowed to adhere to it in others.

For number one, I wholeheartedly disagree. People should be allowed to play whatever archetypes they want. There are plenty of "mundane" characters in both the media which inspired D&D as well as the media which has been inspired by D&D, and it seems stupid to shut these people out in the cold, and there really isn't any reason to do so aside from hurting the egos of people who like to play super powerful characters and don't like the thought of mere muggles being able to compete with them.


As for number two, I partially agree. There should be a character archetype for "normal people" who get by on strength of limb, skill at arms, and pure grit, and this has traditionally been the fighter in D&D. I have nothing wrong with also having options for people who want to play martial characters who draw upon supernatural strengths, for example the monk class, and I have no problem with creating a new archetype for someone who is a cross between the fighter type and the monk type, but I see no reason to obliterate the existing fighter concept in the process.


And for number three, this is objectively false. Fighters in AD&D, 4E, and 5E are all much stronger than they are in 3.X, and there are many other games where they are far stronger than in any edition of D&D, and they are all still non magical. If you want non-magical characters to suck in your game, go ahead, but I see no reason why you should tell other people that they are having "badwrongfun" for not doing the same.

I agree with number four. Do what you want to do.

For number five I absolutely disagree. People can make whatever stories they want, and if they want to see how otherwise realistic humans would deal with fantastical elements who are you to tell them they can't? This is essentially the "But dragons!" fallacy and it is absolutely wrong.


Yup. Why we have giant crabs, giant rats, giant spiders, and yet still think that fighter should be bound by normal limits is just insane and stupid. its not just a fallacy, its a blind romanticism, much like how some WH40k players romanticize the Imperial Guard as being "badasses" and "having balls of steel" for trying to fight all the threats of that universe with nothing but a lasgun and some imperial flak armor. when really, they're just red shirts that die unceremoniously.

Might I ask exactly what you are referring to as "stupid and insane?"

Its not very clear from your post, but it seems to be the idea that people like playing the underdog.

Now, I personally prefer stories about the underdog because to me the essence of heroism is standing up to something that is stronger than yourself and triumphing through courage and ingenuity. Simply playing the strongest thing in the setting and smacking down everyone else because they can't possibly stand up to your might feels, to me, less like heroism and more like bullying.

Lord Raziere
2017-11-16, 02:51 AM
Might I ask exactly what you are referring to as "stupid and insane?"

Its not very clear from your post, but it seems to be the idea that people like playing the underdog.

Now, I personally prefer stories about the underdog because to me the essence of heroism is standing up to something that is stronger than yourself and triumphing through courage and ingenuity. Simply playing the strongest thing in the setting and smacking down everyone else because they can't possibly stand up to your might feels, to me, less like heroism and more like bullying.

There is a vast difference between "heroic underdog" and "mook who dies to show that underdog how dangerous things are." fighters are the latter.

Satinavian
2017-11-16, 03:02 AM
Now, I personally prefer stories about the underdog because to me the essence of heroism is standing up to something that is stronger than yourself and triumphing through courage and ingenuity. Simply playing the strongest thing in the setting and smacking down everyone else because they can't possibly stand up to your might feels, to me, less like heroism and more like bullying.But if it is stronger, you will most likely lose if you don't cheat. That is just a fact.

RPGs use four ways to solve this :

1) cheating
2) idiot ball (the enemy uses all its power so ineffectually that it is only as dangerous as a far weaker foe)
3) Letting the PC be stronger and the game be about smacking weaker foes
4) huge numbers of throw away characters who do lose until someone gets lucky

All four ways have people preferring them and yes, you can mix and match. But there is no way around them.

Talakeal
2017-11-16, 03:11 AM
There is a vast difference between "heroic underdog" and "mook who dies to show that underdog how dangerous things are." fighters are the latter.

Depends on the game, but this is more or less a problem that is specific to 3.X D&D and maybe Ars Magica.


But if it is stronger, you will most likely lose if you don't cheat. That is just a fact.

RPGs use four ways to solve this :

1) cheating
2) idiot ball (the enemy uses all its power so ineffectually that it is only as dangerous as a far weaker foe)
3) Letting the PC be stronger and the game be about smacking weaker foes
4) huge numbers of throw away characters who do lose until someone gets lucky

All four ways have people preferring them and yes, you can mix and match. But there is no way around them.

Or you can have a game system that models things like skill, determination, and cunning as well as raw power OR you can have some sort of meta-game currency / narrative control.

For example, I don't think anyone sees an AD&D fighter as being anywhere near as strong or as powerful as an ancient dragon, but the game is set up in such a way that the high level fighter will still win a head on confrontation with the dragon due to the abstract nature of the combat system which values things like skill and grit as much if not more than pure might.

Satinavian
2017-11-16, 03:44 AM
I count nearly all that as part of character power.

If an AD&D fighter usually wins against a dragon because the game rules are made that way, he simply is the more powerful one. He can't be the underdog of the fight, the dragon is. Not he should be scared to fight it, the dragon should be scared of ever taking on fighters of his level.

Yes, some of the narrative control stuff would be more part of the "cheating" category than the "character power" category but even many of those (like e.g. Shadowrun edge) are character power and characters with a high stat here are simply vastly more powerful.

Talakeal
2017-11-16, 04:11 AM
I count nearly all that as part of character power.

If an AD&D fighter usually wins against a dragon because the game rules are made that way, he simply is the more powerful one. He can't be the underdog of the fight, the dragon is. Not he should be scared to fight it, the dragon should be scared of ever taking on fighters of his level.

Yes, some of the narrative control stuff would be more part of the "cheating" category than the "character power" category but even many of those (like e.g. Shadowrun edge) are character power and characters with a high stat here are simply vastly more powerful.

I don't agree with those definitions.


So, taking the game mechanics out of it, let me tell you a story:

"Bob was walking home one night when an enraged grizzly jumped out of the bushes and began to maul him. Bob was just an ordinary guy, and the bear outweighed him by close to a thousand pounds, and he had every reason to suspect he was going to die, but he thought about his little ones waiting for him at home and decided not to give up. He pulled his trusty pocket knife out and started stabbing wildly, and wouldn't you know it, he just so happened to drive it into the bears eye socket, killing it instantly. Miracle really, one in a million shot, but he did it. Bob survived that night, and though he was pretty beat up he got the better of that grizzly."

Now, Bob won against the bear in that story because I, the author, chose him to. Would you consider that to be "cheating" or would you consider Bob to be more powerful than the bear?

Now, how about if I were to dig through newspaper archives until I found an almost identical story that wasn't fiction at all. Would you still consider the hypothetical real guy who got lucky and killed a bear with his pocket knife to be more powerful than the bear or a "cheater"?

Satinavian
2017-11-16, 04:24 AM
That is one of the reasons why literature as medium works differently then an RPG. Things in a book don't happen because they are logical or even plausible, they happen because the author decides they happen. There was never actually an open ended fight between a bear and a man.

I am not talking about books. I am talking about tabletop RPG where things that happen emerge from play. And where "ordinary guy with knife" vs "Grizzly bear" ususlly ends up with the ordinary guy loosing. Most systems don't even allow stab-into-the-eye-instakill events and those that do tend to have a reputation for nonsensical crit tables.


But yes, even in a book unplausible things like that can really hurt versimilitude and feel like cheating, especcially if they pile up.



Now, how about if I were to dig through newspaper archives until I found an almost identical story that wasn't fiction at all. Would you still consider the hypothetical real guy who got lucky and killed a bear with his pocket knife to be more powerful than the bear or a "cheater"?No, that would not be cheating. But it would be the number four. The pile of throwaway characters until you get the one who is lucky. It is in the newspaper because it is the uncommon result.

Talakeal
2017-11-16, 04:32 AM
That is one of the reasons why literature as medium works differently then an RPG. Things in a book don't happen because they are logical or even plausible, they happen because the author decides they happen. There was never actually an open ended fight between a bear and a man.

I am not talking about books. I am talking about tabletop RPG where things that happen emerge from play. And where "ordinary guy with knife" vs "Grizzly bear" ususlly ends up with the ordinary guy loosing. Most systems don't even allow stab-into-the-eye-instakill events and those that do tend to have a reputation for nonsensical crit tables.


But yes, even in a book unplaisible things like that can really hurt versimilitude and feel like cheating, especcially if they pile up.


No, that would not be cheating. But it would be the number four. The pile of throwaway characters until you get the one who is lucky. It is in the newspaper because it is the uncommon result.

Ok, now replace "author" with "rules of the game".

Bob wasn't "more powerful" than the grizzly bear in universe, but he won because the author said so.

Likewise the level 9 fighter isn't "more powerful" than the dragon in universe, but he still stands a good chance of winning because the game rules say so.

Both of them are meta-game influences that don't necessarily have any direct correlation to any force inside of the fiction.


Or to put it another way, sure let's go with #4, maybe the game runs on confirmation bias. Say in the fictional world a thousand adventurers fight a thousand dragons every century, and 999 of them died a horrible burning death. But we are going to sit down and down and tell the story of the one guy who was lucky enough to come out on top.

noob
2017-11-16, 04:33 AM
Except now imagine there is 7 581 543 756 bobs.
There could be a bob that survive a story that have a super low chance of being survived.
The more events happens the more likely it is that something unlikely happens.
You do not want to play the bob that died in a fire.
You want to play the bob that went in a fire and saved three people and then killed a bear while being in the fire.
It would not be silly to say "this is a story so your fighter gets to live extraordinary things" and then have your fighter roll twenties or have his opponents rolls ones when it is cool for the story.

Satinavian
2017-11-16, 04:41 AM
Game rules have several functions.

One of them is to simulate the world.

If the rules say the fighter wins against the dragon then in this world fighters are more powerful than dragons.


And sure, you can say that the PC just happens to be the lucky one and that NPC fighters who are indistinguishable in universe perform worse than the PC.

But that works exactly one time. The chance that the person who had the 1 in 1000 success also wins the next 1 in 1000 challange is only 0.1%. If that happens somewhat consistantly, your PC atains an in-universe measurable super-luck power which makes him again more powerful than all his enemies.


Not that few games actually do that with "Luck"-powers and blessings that provide mechanical rerolls and stuff. Of course "being extraordinary lucky and likely to win for no really obvious reason" is a power and "enemy starts to be really clumsy suddenly" works well as a curse.

noob
2017-11-16, 04:58 AM
But that works exactly one time. The chance that the person who had the 1 in 1000 success also wins the next 1 in 1000 challange is only 0.1%. If that happens somewhat consistantly, your PC atains an in-universe measurable super-luck power which makes him again more powerful than all his enemies.
You have 1 in 1000000 chance of succeeding in two 1 in 1000 challenge in a row.
This means that there could be someone who does two one on 1000 challenges in a row.
It is rare but it happens(seeing how many humans there is in real life it surely happened a bunch of times)
In dnd the universe is literally infinite and have an infinity of people so somewhere there is someone who won 342346245!!! challenges for which he had one chance on 3242!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! of succeeding.(exclamation point for factorial)
You just could be the bob that won all those challenges it is just that there is low density of bobs that won that many challenges that are that much unlikely to be won but that would not be a superpower: it would just correspond that due to the laws of probability if there is an infinity of bobs there is necessarily a bob that succeeded in everything he did(in fact there will be an infinity of them).

Talakeal
2017-11-16, 05:02 AM
Game rules have several functions.

One of them is to simulate the world.

If you are playing a hard simulationist game then more power to you. But denying that most RPG rules are purely simulationist and include no gamist or narrative elements (to say nothing of other concerns not modeled by the "big 3") is a bit naive.

Heck, I am pretty sure even old school Gygaxian D&D didn't mean for the game rules to be purely simulationist, as abstract as the D&D combat system is I find it hard to believe they were even going for hard simulationism, and every article I have seen discussing what HP represented in D&D seems to imply that is was at least part a narrative mechanic.


If the rules say the fighter wins against the dragon then in this world fighters are more powerful than dragons.

Asserting that a game's rules have to translate into some hard truth in the setting is just flat out false.

To use an example, in the 20th anniversary edition of the White Wolf games Player characters and important NPCs have 7 health levels while the vast majority of NPCs have only 3. Such superhuman toughness is never mentioned anywhere in the setting, as far as I can tell it is purely a narrative mechanic to keep combat moving quickly while at the same time keeping PCs tough enough that you don't have to stop the game to roll a new character every twenty minutes.


But that works exactly one time. The chance that the person who had the 1 in 1000 success also wins the next 1 in 1000 challange is only 0.1%. If that happens somewhat consistently, your PC attains an in-universe measurable super-luck power which makes him again more powerful than all his enemies.

Its a big world and there are plenty of flukes.

I remember reading an article talking about Wild Bill Hickok. Now, he has a reputation as a legendary gunfighter because he survived more shoot-outs than anyone else, but the author of the article asserted that it was merely a statistical anomaly. Someone had to be the lucky guy who survived more shootouts than anyone else, and it just so happened to be him. People noticed this and attributed it to him having super combat skills and a legend grew around him, but in truth (at least according to the article's author) it was just dumb luck.

Would you say that, assuming Wild Bill was not in fact the paragon of combat that folklore makes him out to be, that Wild Bill had measureable super-luck powers in real life?
Or heck, to use a more grounded example, what about those people who win the lottery repeatedly or survive numerous lightning strikes? Do you ascribe measurable super-luck powers to them?

If not, why would you say that someone can be really lucky IRL and it just be one of those things, but you won't accept it in a fictional universe?

Max_Killjoy
2017-11-16, 07:35 AM
Heck, I am pretty sure even old school Gygaxian D&D didn't mean for the game rules to be purely simulationist, as abstract as the D&D combat system is I find it hard to believe they were even going for hard simulationism, and every article I have seen discussing what HP represented in D&D seems to imply that is was at least part a narrative mechanic.


There's nothing similuationist about any edition of D&D. And HP serves as a prime example of that.

I get sick of the conflation of D&D with simulationist emphasis that some engage in.

Max_Killjoy
2017-11-16, 07:38 AM
That is one of the reasons why literature as medium works differently then an RPG. Things in a book don't happen because they are logical or even plausible, they happen because the author decides they happen. There was never actually an open ended fight between a bear and a man.


If the author is ignoring logic, plausibility, character, etc, then the resulting fiction has a much higher chance of being bad. The authors decisions as to what happen can still have solid reasoning underpinning.

Cosi
2017-11-16, 07:58 AM
This is, IMO, a narrow definition of technology. As we develop robotics and AI, do golems stop being magical? Is Magic Missile not magical because firearms exist? Does a Tesla Coil negate Lightning Bolt, or a stun gun demystify Shocking Grasp?

Sure, I'd concede that there's an aesthetic aspect to it as well. But I still fundamentally reject the notion that things being dependable, predictable, or consistent makes them not magical. It doesn't. It just makes them useful. If your definition of magic is "not useful", I would not want to play a magic user in your game.


You are right in the sense that the presence of these things, especially 1 & 2, makes it increasingly worse. But 1 is a problem in its own right that's separate from the guy at the gym, or any mundane-magic-distinction whatsoever. In context of d20, This is most obvious when you compare limited casters (paladin, ranger, adept, bard, healer, warmage etc.) with those which are less so (wizard, cleric, druid, archivist etc.)

Not every imbalance is the fault of Guy at the Gym. Sorcerers are worse than Wizards. Is that Guy at the Gym? Obviously not.


Um. Mistborn fight physically, and enhance it with magic. That's the exact opposite of a pure caster. They're GISH.

Which is a kind of caster. Using magic to enhance something else is still using magic.


But yeah, technically almost everything we experience is some sort of interaction caused by the electromagnetic force, and this is a pretty good example of why specialist casters are better for the game then generalists. If Magneto were to go around poking at the edges of his power to influence things that were not traditionally ferro-magnetic (sp?) because they still use the electromagnetic force he stops being "The Master of Magnetism" and instead is just another telekinetic.

No he isn't. He's still "The Master of Magnetism", because what he is doing is still "magnetism". The problem is that "conceptually limited" is, for the most part, meaningless. Mechanical limits are what matters, but if you have those your concept can be as broad as you happen to want it to be. Requiring casters to be Fire Mages or Death Mages or Nature Mages has its uses, but it is neither necessary nor sufficient to balance them.


I still don't know why you think games need to allow people to advance indefinitely or why they should be balanced around a point long after most games end.

It doesn't have to be "indefinite". It just has to be "after the cap". The reason I'm not naming a point is to sidestep quibbling about whether Conan or Captain America or Hawkeye or Aragorn or The Three Musketeers really represents the pinnacle of martial prowess. Because the specific point isn't relevant. And yes, lots of games end before the imbalance between casters and non-casters becomes crippling. Has it occurred to you that they do that because they want to play a balanced game and if you made that part of the game balanced, they'd play it too?


Insisting on balancing the game around some theoretical 430th level play session seems like a bit of a lost cause as the 1-20 actually can benefit from a bit of tinkering with CMD while the epic level game has way bigger things to worry about.

Mundanes are already bad by 11th level. This is not a problem that is "way outside normal play". This is a problem that occurs halfway through normal play at the absolute latest.


Defeating wizards is easy. Stop giving them magic. Don't let them just walk into any major town and buy whatever spell they want. Give them random treasure and scrolls. I spent 5th and 6th level once with no 3rd level spells due to I couldn't afford the crappy ones they had available and no wizard would let me copy theirs.

No. That sound absolutely miserable. If you don't want people casting spells, don't let them play casters. If you let them play casters, let them cast spells.


For number one, I wholeheartedly disagree. People should be allowed to play whatever archetypes they want.

Then the game cannot be balanced. Period. If I want to play Angel Summoner and you want to play BMX Bandit, the game is not balanced. It's not magically more balanced because people want to play those characters.


there really isn't any reason to do so aside from hurting the egos of people who like to play super powerful characters and don't like the thought of mere muggles being able to compete with them.

That is a very good reason to do so. If your "super strength" does not make you stronger than the guy who has no superpowers, you do not have super strength. If I am going to have powers beyond the mundane, I have to be better than mundanes. By definition. That is what my character concept requires, just as yours requires that you do not have superpowers. Our concepts are not compatible.

Cluedrew
2017-11-16, 08:07 AM
:smallsmile: I like exploring universes that, on the surface, look the same as ours with some fantastic elements, but are really very different under the hood. [...] I just tend to define "magic" as "that thing that allows PCs (and monsters, and many NPCs) do things that regular earth humans can't do."Yeah, that sounds like "the narrative definition of magic" I use sometimes, which actually all the impossible things that are possible in a story world. It includes all that and also sufficiently advanced magic. I find it useful do divide up the impossible things from the things that have the aesthetics of magic, the things that feel magical. However that is just an organizational thing for myself, and a much broader term of magic is completely fine.


Bingo. Some of my favourite moments playing a wizard came when my spells ran out or they were otherwise restricted.Glad I'm not the only one who thinks that. As a whole the opinion seems to be rather unpopular at the moment.

By the way I have seen those posts, I'm just a little short on time right now.

Darth Ultron
2017-11-16, 08:53 AM
But if it is stronger, you will most likely lose if you don't cheat. That is just a fact.

RPGs use four ways to solve this :

1) cheating
2) idiot ball (the enemy uses all its power so ineffectually that it is only as dangerous as a far weaker foe)
3) Letting the PC be stronger and the game be about smacking weaker foes
4) huge numbers of throw away characters who do lose until someone gets lucky

All four ways have people preferring them and yes, you can mix and match. But there is no way around them.

This is not true. A ''weaker'' hero can defeat a ''more powerful'' foe in a lot of ways. The most basic, and the one done from the literal Dawn of Time, is to out smart a foe and be clever. And this is just as true in everyday life as it is in fantasy.

Of course, the tricky part is you can't really have rules for being clever or smart.....and if you do, having a ''clever roll'' just does not really work out (''My character rolled a 25 and does something clever''). And this gets back to the Old School type of gaming vs the modern way. Say a character in a game comes up to a door that is locked and they wish to get past the door...what do they do:

Well, the Modern Gamer immediately looks down at their character sheet and scans it for anything that says ''open door'' or something similar. If they find something, they will happy say they use it an open the door. If there is nothing on the character sheet that can be used to open a door, then will just shut down and quietly say their character just wanders away and does something else.

The Old School gamer glances at their character sheet so they know what they have to start to work with and then try to figure out a way to open the door.

This is a huge difference in style.

Though, form all sides, both the Dm and the Players, doing the ''smart clever'' thing is HARD. After all to do it, For Real...you have the think of it For Real. And the Reality is: most people can't do it.



And sure, you can say that the PC just happens to be the lucky one and that NPC fighters who are indistinguishable in universe perform worse than the PC.


But it is not just luck. It is a lot of skill. You can go toe to toe with monster X.....but if you catch them in a net and trick them into some quicksand...then you have a chance. Or doing something like tripping a foe or tricking them into charging off a cliff.



Glad I'm not the only one who thinks that. As a whole the opinion seems to be rather unpopular at the moment.


I agree too. I'm very big on ''restricting'' all characters...not just spellcasters, so much so that I think it is a normal part of the game. A character should all ways be at ''less then 100%''.

Pex
2017-11-16, 09:14 AM
But not all spells. They can cast spells that they have found and learned. You control that and it is that simple. Its much harder to control classes like a priest or druid etc who can just pick what spells they want. And remember the enemy can also do the same thing. Fighting evil parties or good parties if evil is an easy way to completely level the playing field.

The problem which I have found playing in games all over the states due to I move a lot is people almost always allow caster types to get insanely powerful by giving them access to anything that is in any sourcebook. Just because its written doesn't mean Sembia or Chelix merchants wizards will sell it to you or they even have it themselves. You can create real reasons and give them just enough hope to get powerful while still limiting there wealth. I remember a game where getting magic missile was one of the happier character moments due to I had tons of spells like false life mirror image etc that didn't insanely change game play. I got that spell at fifth level. You just have to change the dynamics of what your players expect. Trust me your warriors and rogues will love you for it.

Ok.

If a particular spell is a problem for you blame the spell not the spellcaster. Have that spell not exist if you must, but do keep in mind spellcasters are permitted to have powerful spells that do fantastic things. Warriors should also have their own powerful stuff to do. It's not a problem for a PC to be powerful. Get rid of what you think Wins The RPG but not what Makes Things Easier For The PCs. Spells that makes things easier is the whole point of having those spells.

Max_Killjoy
2017-11-16, 09:50 AM
Which is a kind of caster. Using magic to enhance something else is still using magic.


Using magic does not, in and of itself, make a spellcaster. Allomancers, feruchemists, etc, don't seem to be casting spells as such, but rather making creative use of basic magical effects.

And I do think this is an important distinction for this particular discussion, because one of the ways to solve the caster vs not-caster disparity is to open up a space for characters who are doing things most people can't do in the setting, but also aren't in any way casting spells.

The alternative is to assert that it's within the "normal limits" of what's possible for people in that setting to do things that would clearly be impossible in our reality -- and then leave yourself with the choice of following through with that in your worldbuilding, or just having an incoherent setting.




No he isn't. He's still "The Master of Magnetism", because what he is doing is still "magnetism". The problem is that "conceptually limited" is, for the most part, meaningless. Mechanical limits are what matters, but if you have those your concept can be as broad as you happen to want it to be. Requiring casters to be Fire Mages or Death Mages or Nature Mages has its uses, but it is neither necessary nor sufficient to balance them.


Mechanical limits and conceptual limits should, IMO, be mutually coherent and consistent.

Letting "Magneto's" player use "magnetism" as a fig-leaf for just making crap up cheapens the character.

noob
2017-11-16, 10:31 AM
Letting "Magneto's" player use "magnetism" as a fig-leaf for just making crap up cheapens the character.

So you say that the magneto from marvel which is exactly doing that is cheapening itself?

Max_Killjoy
2017-11-16, 10:34 AM
So you say that the magneto from marvel which is exactly doing that is cheapening itself?

If the shoe fits...

PhoenixPhyre
2017-11-16, 11:00 AM
Using magic does not, in and of itself, make a spellcaster. Allomancers, feruchemists, etc, don't seem to be casting spells as such, but rather making creative use of basic magical effects.

And I do think this is an important distinction for this particular discussion, because one of the ways to solve the caster vs not-caster disparity is to open up a space for characters who are doing things most people can't do in the setting, but also aren't in any way casting spells.

The alternative is to assert that it's within the "normal limits" of what's possible for people in that setting to do things that would clearly be impossible in our reality -- and then leave yourself with the choice of following through with that in your worldbuilding, or just having an incoherent setting.


I very much agree. Magic =/= spells. In 5e D&D (at least), everybody who is everybody is magic. They don't cast spells. And even those who cast spells do so in ways that don't fit the same pattern as the real spell-casters. A barbarian's rage? Magic. A fighter's Action Surge (lets them take two actions in a turn)? Magic. A rogue's extraordinary skill set (Expertise allows them to do things no one else can with ability checks)? Magic.

Realizing that all of these are just as magic as a wizard's spells, and realizing that they follow similar principles also helps explain why some of them are limited use effects. The character is expending concentrated energy to break the bounds of what is normal, just like a spell-caster expends concentrated energy (a spell slot) to invoke a resonance cascade (a spell). Spell slots are more generic and fungible, but the other resource-spending abilities are pulling from the same fount of energy.

This removes the "but if everyone can do it..." worldbuilding issues--not everyone can do it. It's a talent, just like a sorcerer's casting is a talent. It requires training, discipline, and focus. It also eliminates the "magic vs mundane" dichotomy--all PCs (and 99% of all threats they face, in combat or not) are magic in one form or another. But only a few actually cast spells.

Max_Killjoy
2017-11-16, 12:59 PM
I very much agree. Magic =/= spells. In 5e D&D (at least), everybody who is everybody is magic. They don't cast spells. And even those who cast spells do so in ways that don't fit the same pattern as the real spell-casters. A barbarian's rage? Magic. A fighter's Action Surge (lets them take two actions in a turn)? Magic. A rogue's extraordinary skill set (Expertise allows them to do things no one else can with ability checks)? Magic.

Realizing that all of these are just as magic as a wizard's spells, and realizing that they follow similar principles also helps explain why some of them are limited use effects. The character is expending concentrated energy to break the bounds of what is normal, just like a spell-caster expends concentrated energy (a spell slot) to invoke a resonance cascade (a spell). Spell slots are more generic and fungible, but the other resource-spending abilities are pulling from the same fount of energy.

This removes the "but if everyone can do it..." worldbuilding issues--not everyone can do it. It's a talent, just like a sorcerer's casting is a talent. It requires training, discipline, and focus. It also eliminates the "magic vs mundane" dichotomy--all PCs (and 99% of all threats they face, in combat or not) are magic in one form or another. But only a few actually cast spells.

Exactly -- this is one of the ways to resolve the conundrums at hand.

There are multiple ways to do so, but one has to actually take a choice if one wants game balance* and a coherent setting. What one cannot have is one's cake while also eating it.


(* wanting balance doesn't mean that one must insist on perfect balance, or that the impossibility of perfect balance makes striving for balance pointless)

Tanarii
2017-11-16, 01:17 PM
Which is a kind of caster. Using magic to enhance something else is still using magic.Irreleveant within the context of both the OP's Fighter vs Wizard that started this thread, and the context your contention that "magic-users" should solve their problems using magic. GISH are not magic-users, unless you're trying to redefine something under the table. And they certainly do not solve all of their problems using magic.

LibraryOgre
2017-11-16, 01:27 PM
Leading to one of the game's many problems: D&D magic is approximately as 'mystical' as the act of ordering an Extra Value Meal. :smallconfused:


Isn't that what clerical magic is?

"Yeah, I'd like two Cure Light Wounds and a... ah.... Spiritual Hammer."
"So that's two Cures, a Light, and a Spiritual Gramma? That'll be 3rd level and an 18 Wisdom please."
"Geez, no, two Cure. Light. Wounds. and a Spiritual Hammer."


Sure, I'd concede that there's an aesthetic aspect to it as well. But I still fundamentally reject the notion that things being dependable, predictable, or consistent makes them not magical. It doesn't. It just makes them useful. If your definition of magic is "not useful", I would not want to play a magic user in your game.

That's not what I'm saying at all. I'm simply saying that magic, as presented in D&D, is a technology, based on a physics they understand some of (i.e. can make reliable predictions about what a spell will do given certain parameters), but not all of (leading the occasional "Well, we don't really know WHY it's doing that.") It is a technology because it is an array of tools and knowledge that lets you create an effect... and I'm pretty ok with that. I think where D&D magic gets in trouble is actually its scope... at higher levels, you're able to do ANYTHING, so the places where something is not or cannot be understood are relatively few. It is magic, but it isn't mystical or ineffable.

90sMusic
2017-11-16, 02:53 PM
Magic already has limited use. If you aren't running out of spell slots, it's because your DM is being easy on you. That is the strength of "mundane" characters is they can go and go and go without ever losing damage potential.

If you really want a nice fix, just do something like double or triple their spell slots and then make them only come back once a week or something like that. The goal is to make resource management more important so they really have to decide if casting a spell at any given time is worth it.

Another issue with spells coming back every night (or even once a week) is when they are close to their "refill" point, like just before they know they're going to long rest, they'll blow their load and use everything they have.

You could use the spell point variant for casting and then only give them a certain number of points each long rest instead of filling up their whole tank. That would make the situation of "well, i'm about to goto sleep so i'll go ahead and cast all this stuff" impossible because you'd still be down whatever resources you spent the next day.

Max_Killjoy
2017-11-16, 03:30 PM
Magic already has limited use. If you aren't running out of spell slots, it's because your DM is being easy on you. That is the strength of "mundane" characters is they can go and go and go without ever losing damage potential.

If you really want a nice fix, just do something like double or triple their spell slots and then make them only come back once a week or something like that. The goal is to make resource management more important so they really have to decide if casting a spell at any given time is worth it.

Another issue with spells coming back every night (or even once a week) is when they are close to their "refill" point, like just before they know they're going to long rest, they'll blow their load and use everything they have.

You could use the spell point variant for casting and then only give them a certain number of points each long rest instead of filling up their whole tank. That would make the situation of "well, i'm about to goto sleep so i'll go ahead and cast all this stuff" impossible because you'd still be down whatever resources you spent the next day.

Resource management minigames are usually a poor substitute for game balance.

Tinkerer
2017-11-16, 03:38 PM
Resource management minigames are usually a poor substitute for game balance.

Eh, magic users are already a resource management mini-game. I don't quite think that is a Grod's law violation yet. Although it does bear the risk of turning the 5 minute work day into a 15 minute work week. Also raises the question of how it would interact with one-shots and convention play.

EDIT: Because I recently saw a number of people talking about not knowing Grod's law it is "Grod's Law: You cannot and should not balance bad mechanics by making them annoying to use"

Talakeal
2017-11-16, 05:07 PM
So, I got sidetracked off my initial point by all the talk of narrative mechanics.

You can still beat someone without being more powerful than them and there are many ways to do so, luck being only one of them.

I don't think, for example, that anyone would say Puss in Boots is more powerful than the magical shape changing giant, but he still defeats him by being more clever.

Likewise you can have two guys arm wrestling and one of them can be objectively stronger than the other. Yet he can still lose the arm-wrestling match by simply not wanting it bad enough and giving in once he starts to get tired while the weaker man who is determined to persevere through the pain triumphs.




Mundanes are already bad by 11th level. This is not a problem that is "way outside normal play". This is a problem that occurs halfway through normal play at the absolute latest.

This says more an argument against specific implementation rather than an innate conceptual imbalance.

In 3.X mundanes are bad at level 11. Other editions of D&D manage to keep class balance all the way to level 20-30 which is closer than 3.X has at levels 1-5.




It doesn't have to be "indefinite". It just has to be "after the cap". The reason I'm not naming a point is to sidestep quibbling about whether Conan or Captain America or Hawkeye or Aragorn or The Three Musketeers really represents the pinnacle of martial prowess. Because the specific point [I]isn't relevant. And yes, lots of games end before the imbalance between casters and non-casters becomes crippling. Has it occurred to you that they do that because they want to play a balanced game and if you made that part of the game balanced, they'd play it too?

IMO balance is a very small part of it. Mostly games just don't last that long, others the rules break down entirely past a certain point (and I am not talking about balance between options here, I mean the core rules of the game cease to matter), or they just aren't relatable to people.

For example, Mage the Ascension has an "epic level" variant called Masters of the Art where you play as arch-mages who can rewrite fundamental aspects of reality and are unconcerned by daily adventures instead focusing on shaping the very nature of existence and almost nobody uses it. People are interested in street level urban fantasy, cosmic games starring barely comprehensible abstract entities not so much.




Then the game cannot be balanced. Period. If I want to play Angel Summoner and you want to play BMX Bandit, the game is not balanced. It's not magically more balanced because people want to play those characters.

You keep wrapping power level into concept, that js not what I am talking about.

A guy who can summon a little cherub who just flies around being cute and whispering messages for him is an angel summoner, but isn't really a powerhouse.
A guy who has the ability to ride his bike so fast that he can travel back in time and pop wheelies so powerful they crack the Earth's crust is still a BMX Bandit but he is far from useless.

Likewise in D&D a rogue uses stealth, a fighter uses martial skill, a monk uses chi, a ranger uses knowledge of the environment, a paladin uses holy power and strength of character, and a barbarian channels his inner rage and, depending on the edition, the power of the spirits. All of them are different character concepts, but they are all roughly equal in combat ability.

On the flip side, the ToB classes have pretty much the same concept behind them as fighters, paladins, and monks respectively yet are clearly superior to them in combat ability.

Concept =/= mechanics or implementation.



That is a very good reason to do so. If your "super strength" does not make you stronger than the guy who has no superpowers, you do not have super strength. If I am going to have powers beyond the mundane, I have to be better than mundanes. By definition. That is what my character concept requires, just as yours requires that you do not have superpowers. Our concepts are not compatible.

This is wrong.

You can be different than something without being better than it.

A guy who is really good with an AK-47 is mundane, a guy who can turn his skin purple and green with polka dots is not. However the former will be more useful on practically any mission which does not involve infiltrating a freak show.


If the only "concept" you are willing to play are "better than everyone else," then it is absolutely about your ego and desire to play out a power fantasy, and again, if you can find a group who is into that more power to you, but it is certainly not a game that I would ever want to be a part of and it is not something that mainstream RPGs that have gotten along fine without it for four decades need to restructure themselves from the ground up to cater to.

Zanos
2017-11-16, 05:23 PM
Magic already has limited use. If you aren't running out of spell slots, it's because your DM is being easy on you. That is the strength of "mundane" characters is they can go and go and go without ever losing damage potential.
Heavily disagree. Assuming 3.5, a 9th level wizard with 20 intelligence(low, imo) has 20 non-cantrip spell slots. Assuming the wizard uses maybe 2 slots per day for daily buffs(mage armor, overland flight), that's still 18 rounds of casting. In my experience encounters rarely take more than 5 rounds, because 5 rounds of combat can take nearly an hour to run.

If you're running enough combat to drain a wizard who intelligently manages their spell slots dry, I can almost guarantee that all of the fighters in the party are dead.


Resource management minigames are usually a poor substitute for game balance.
Also disagree. Almost every video game or tabletop game I have ever played has some sort of cost associated with more powerful abilities, whether it drained gold, mana, cards, cooldowns, or slots.

Cosi
2017-11-16, 05:39 PM
And I do think this is an important distinction for this particular discussion, because one of the ways to solve the caster vs not-caster disparity is to open up a space for characters who are doing things most people can't do in the setting, but also aren't in any way casting spells.

Well that depends on what you mean by "casting spells". Looking at 3e, I imagine 100% of people would agree that the Wizard is a "caster". But what about the Warlock? The Binder? The Warblade? The Incarnate? I think you can make varyingly reasonable cases for or against each of those, and I have seen people make most of them.


Letting "Magneto's" player use "magnetism" as a fig-leaf for just making crap up cheapens the character.

But doesn't saying "that doesn't work, it's not what your magnetism powers should do" cheapen the verisimilitude of magnetism powers?


Irreleveant within the context of both the OP's Fighter vs Wizard that started this thread, and the context your contention that "magic-users" should solve their problems using magic. GISH are not magic-users, unless you're trying to redefine something under the table. And they certainly do not solve all of their problems using magic.

What part of "gish" is inconsistent with "magic user"? As I understand it, a "gish" is a magic user who uses their magic to enhance their combat skills.


In 3.X mundanes are bad at level 11. Other editions of D&D manage to keep class balance all the way to level 20-30 which is closer than 3.X has at levels 1-5.

None of those editions allow me to play the kinds of characters 3e does. What is the best comparison to a 3.5 Druid/Planar Shepherd (of whatever plane demons come from) that I can play in whatever edition you think is best for this?


IMO balance is a very small part of it. Mostly games just don't last that long, others the rules break down entirely past a certain point (and I am not talking about balance between options here, I mean the core rules of the game cease to matter), or they just aren't relatable to people.

If people couldn't relate to characters that were very powerful, Superman would not be the most popular superhero of all time. The rules breaking down is just another self-fulfilling failure.


You keep wrapping power level into concept, that js not what I am talking about.

Power level is a part of concept. Superman's concept is not that he is fast, and is strong, and can jump*. It is that he is faster than a speeding bullet. And more powerful than a locomotive. And able to leap tall buildings in a single bound. Or, you know, whatever particular power benchmarks whatever version of Superman we are talking has. If I want to play Superman, and you tell me I can't be faster than a speeding bullet, I have not achieved my concept. This is the exact same problem as you not wanting to have your Fighter eventually gain super strength.

*: Well, usually he can fly, but I think it's obvious why I didn't put it that way.


A guy who is really good with an AK-47 is mundane, a guy who can turn his skin purple and green with polka dots is not. However the former will be more useful on practically any mission which does not involve infiltrating a freak show.

Missing the point. Yes, not all non-mundane things are better than all mundane things. But if mundane has any meaning at all, being non-mundane is better than being mundane. Can you write a Wizard who is balanced against Captain America? Sure. You can write several such Wizards. But there are many Wizards who are not balanced against Captain America. Like Doctor Strange.


If the only "concept" you are willing to play are "better than everyone else,"

Stop right there. Read what I wrote. Did I say "stronger than everyone else"? No. I said stronger than people without super strength. That does not mean stronger than everyone. Spiderman has superhuman strength. There are no (non-superpowered) humans stronger than him. But that doesn't mean no one is stronger than him. Hulk is stronger than him. Thor is stronger than him. Superman is stronger than him. Apollo is stronger than him. There are plenty of characters who are stronger than Spiderman (both in the sense of "more physical strength" and in the sense of "more powerful"). My concept is not that I am stronger than your character. It is that I am stronger than a specific benchmark -- the strongest of normal humans. The fact that you have specifically defined the range of characters you want to play as those who are normal humans is your problem, not mine. That is what I mean by "conceptual imbalance".

Dublinmarley
2017-11-16, 06:01 PM
My biggest annoyance in 4e was the DM refusing to tell me what was a minnion and what wasnt and so I would constantly waste daily / encounter powers on 1hp mooks.

I could imagine a wizard having similar problems if you dont tell them what level the monsters are and wasting their high level spells when a cantrip would do(or vice versa), while a fighter doesnt really have that problem.

This is the whole point why wizards shouldn't be so powerful. By increasing encounters and keeping them off balance they will spend spells on weak enemies. They should have to really consider if they want to waste a spell. If you have two three encounters a day then the wizard is just going to blast and control everything in sight. My wizards and wizards in my campaigns literally made life or death decisions if they should just cast ray of frost or a crossbow or do they need to blast the hell out of the target with the biggest spell they got in their playbook.

I work in rocket artillery and we can literally target hundreds of targets coming in from many different information sources but we have a limited amount of rockets to use due to resupply/logistics. We have to be selective in targets which wizards should be as well. You should punish your wizards/other casters who waste spells on everything on every encounter.

Cluedrew
2017-11-16, 06:02 PM
If people couldn't relate to characters that were very powerful, Superman would not be the most popular superhero of all time. The rules breaking down is just another self-fulfilling failure.He's not, Batman is. (According to a quick search and a university professor who got a Ph.D. in comics.)

Guizonde
2017-11-16, 06:10 PM
This is not true. A ''weaker'' hero can defeat a ''more powerful'' foe in a lot of ways. The most basic, and the one done from the literal Dawn of Time, is to out smart a foe and be clever. And this is just as true in everyday life as it is in fantasy.

Of course, the tricky part is you can't really have rules for being clever or smart.....and if you do, having a ''clever roll'' just does not really work out (''My character rolled a 25 and does something clever''). And this gets back to the Old School type of gaming vs the modern way. Say a character in a game comes up to a door that is locked and they wish to get past the door...what do they do:

Well, the Modern Gamer immediately looks down at their character sheet and scans it for anything that says ''open door'' or something similar. If they find something, they will happy say they use it an open the door. If there is nothing on the character sheet that can be used to open a door, then will just shut down and quietly say their character just wanders away and does something else.

The Old School gamer glances at their character sheet so they know what they have to start to work with and then try to figure out a way to open the door.

This is a huge difference in style.

Though, form all sides, both the Dm and the Players, doing the ''smart clever'' thing is HARD. After all to do it, For Real...you have the think of it For Real. And the Reality is: most people can't do it.



But it is not just luck. It is a lot of skill. You can go toe to toe with monster X.....but if you catch them in a net and trick them into some quicksand...then you have a chance. Or doing something like tripping a foe or tricking them into charging off a cliff.



I agree too. I'm very big on ''restricting'' all characters...not just spellcasters, so much so that I think it is a normal part of the game. A character should all ways be at ''less then 100%''.

this has become a trademark in our gaming circle. each veteran tries to beat out the "play the sheet" mentality out of the newbies. each dm keeps going deeper into the tough nut to crack that is a fragile balance between psychopathy and solvable by a 5 year old. essentially, what would you do in your character's shoes? if the answer is "bust out a spell/ fantasy ability", that means you're either taking the easy way out or the dm misjudged the "multiple ways out of a problem" conundrum. in your locked door example, my team would usually ask the following:

-is the door trapped?
-is the door locked?
-how is the door locked? multiple locks? barred from the other side?
-is there a slit to unhinge the door?
-are the hinges visible?
-are we packing lockpicks?
-are we packing a shotgun?
-are we packing a crowbar?
-what are we doing naked in an rpg?

do you notice how late in the questions relevant sheet reading is necessary? and we're not "old-school gamers" either. we just try to cultivate "outside the sheet thinking" because we find it's more fun and challenging. it might also explain why we always have a crowbar in our iso-standard adventuring backpack, along with a mirror, a notebook and crayons, and a monkey wrench.

of course, the vets let the newbies try to figure it out first. most times, sheet readers call foul at first, until the vets start asking the leading questions. once in a blue moon, the newbie throws a curveball that makes even the dm gawp in the brilliant simplicity of the bypass. we live for those moments. high fives between dm and players are not unheard of, as well as retelling the moments of glory/ infamy of all the different characters.

my preferred methods of problem solving? asking nicely (somebody has to have the key, right?), subtlety (unhinging the door or picking the lock), violence (using the crowbar to smash the door in), explosives (blame formative years in redneck virginia), and setting things on fire and running away (because who isn't a firebug in real life rpgs?) in that order. kind of a flow chart, really.

Cosi
2017-11-16, 06:13 PM
He's not, Batman is. (According to a quick search and a university professor who got a Ph.D. in comics.)

IGN has him at number 1 (http://www.ign.com/lists/comic-book-heroes/1), and that was the first result I got for "most popular superheroes 2017". Obviously it's possible there's some other list where Batman is #1, but I doubt that Superman is anywhere outside the top 5 on any list you could find, so I think the point still stands.

Arbane
2017-11-16, 06:21 PM
Let's unpack this about. From how I see it, there are at least five different arguments involved here:

1: People should not be allowed to play character's without supernatural abilities.
2: Fighter's cannot have supernatural abilities.
3: Characters without supernatural abilities have to suck.
4: When creating a fictional setting people need not limit themselves to real world physics.
5: If you are going to break the laws of reality in some element of your setting you shouldn't be allowed to adhere to it in others.

For number one, I wholeheartedly disagree. People should be allowed to play whatever archetypes they want. There are plenty of "mundane" characters in both the media which inspired D&D as well as the media which has been inspired by D&D, and it seems stupid to shut these people out in the cold, and there really isn't any reason to do so aside from hurting the egos of people who like to play super powerful characters and don't like the thought of mere muggles being able to compete with them.


The problem with that is sometimes, there needs to be a certain amount of compromise between the players' concepts and the campaign premise the GM has in mind. If the game's going to be about courtly intrigue, the guy playing a mentally defective berserker is being a jerk. If the game's going to be about fighting opponents with more supernatural powers than can fit on one sheet of paper (ie, high-level D&D), wanting to play someone with no mojo of their own makes your character.... less than useful, generally.

Dublinmarley
2017-11-16, 06:24 PM
There are actually rules that detail spell avaliablity and cost in 3rd edition and its offshoots. A wizard can get pretty reliable access. Wizards can also take any spells for their level up spells. Also "the wizard has decent spells because the DM screwed up", just what?

I'm not really sure how not knowing if goblins are 6th or 1st level is more important to a wizard than the fighter standing in front. Running a bunch of encounters with level 1 mobs against high level parties seems like a huge waste of OOC time just to troll wizarda. I guess at worst the wizards hold their action for one round?

And magic missile completely changes gameplay but mirror image doesn't? Have you been smoking hobbit lwaf?

Who says they are charging from the front of the party? Its more to get the wizard to never know what encounter he should conserve and what encounter he should cast spells.

Never said MM was game changing. I was making a point that allowing full access to spells and the wealth which to buy them will always lead to ruin and OP characters ruining the game for anyone who wants to play a weaker class. The point was the wizard was happy to get magic missile at 5th level.

Dublinmarley
2017-11-16, 06:39 PM
No. That sound absolutely miserable. If you don't want people casting spells, don't let them play casters. If you let them play casters, let them cast spells.

They can cast all they want. Its the ability to get everything they want is the problem and leads to problems. I am a fairly powerful mid level wizard in PC town. I can sell one 4th level spell and maybe one or two minor magical items each year and live like a god fairly easy. Why should I sell to my competition? What is his motivation to allow you access to another powerful spell? I view magic users as generally egotistical about their own power level and would horde spells that few have or are extremely powerful. This is why most have to be guild members or belong to a national wizard org that requires service to the state. Players just want to run around and kill stuff/solve problems etc. So unless you are adventuring in the local area you grew up in I highly doubt the local extremely powerful wizards are just going to sell to an outsider without good reason.

Talakeal
2017-11-16, 06:50 PM
But doesn't saying "that doesn't work, it's not what your magnetism powers should do" cheapen the verisimilitude of magnetism powers?

You really don't see how a character with limits to their power is more flavorful than someone who can do everything?

Also, getting into pseudo-magnetism and electromagnetic photon interactions isn't really dealing with "magnetism" as it is defined and does not break my verisimilitude any more than saying that night crawler can't also time travel because technically space and time are the same thing.


If people couldn't relate to characters that were very powerful, Superman would not be the most popular superhero of all time.

Superman is mostly popular because he was "first," and has become sort of the generic icon of Super Hero comics in the same way that Mcdonalds is the most popular restaurant in the world despite most people agreeing their food isn't very good.

But Superman isn't really hard to relate to, he is mostly just a guy who has all his stats turned up to 11(billion) and can fly and shoot lasers. That's pretty easy to understand, and it is in a totally different realm of power than something like a 3.5 wizard.

Also, note that while he occasionally pulls weird powers out of his backside (mostly in the Silver Age) this are almost always ignored in later issues and dramatic adaptations because they would make for weird un-relatable stories. For example, Superman can move at speeds that only the Flash and similar speedsters can perceive, yet for some reason when he is fighting another brawler, so Doomsday, he does so at roughly the same speed as a human combatant would because it wouldn't be dramatic or entertaining for the fight to be over in a period of time faster than a human can perceive.


The rules breaking down is just another self-fulfilling failure.

Could you please elaborate on this point? I am not quite sure what you are trying to say here, and responding to conjecture is just going to be tilting at straw-men.


Power level is a part of concept. Superman's concept is not that he is fast, and is strong, and can jump*. It is that he is faster than a speeding bullet. And more powerful than a locomotive. And able to leap tall buildings in a single bound. Or, you know, whatever particular power benchmarks whatever version of Superman we are talking has. If I want to play Superman, and you tell me I can't be faster than a speeding bullet, I have not achieved my concept. This is the exact same problem as you not wanting to have your Fighter eventually gain super strength..

Question for you:

You say that you're power level is implicitly linked to you're concept. In the previous thread you said that you liked games with drastic advancement where characters changed radically over the course of the game rather than just facing "different colored orcs,"

Out of curiosity, what does you're ideal game look like?

Do you constantly cycle out characters? Do you only play with other people who like to start out with super high powered characters (who are roughly on the same level) and then only go up from there?

What system do you usually play? What power level? What optimization level?



Stop right there. Read what I wrote. Did I say "stronger than everyone else"? No. I said stronger than people without super strength. That does not mean stronger than everyone. Spiderman has superhuman strength. There are no (non-superpowered) humans stronger than him. But that doesn't mean no one is stronger than him. Hulk is stronger than him. Thor is stronger than him. Superman is stronger than him. Apollo is stronger than him. There are plenty of characters who are stronger than Spiderman (both in the sense of "more physical strength" and in the sense of "more powerful"). My concept is not that I am stronger than your character. It is that I am stronger than a specific benchmark -- the strongest of normal humans. The fact that you have specifically defined the range of characters you want to play as those who are normal humans is your problem, not mine. That is what I mean by "conceptual imbalance".

Here's the thing, at first that's what I thought you were saying and I typed out a response that boiled down to "Super strength is nice, but it isn't the be all and end all of a character. You can have a guy who is super strong on the same team as people without super strength and they can all still contribute to the plot in different ways," but then I saw that you went on to say "If I am going to have powers beyond the mundane, I have to be better than mundanes. By definition." which is the part that I was objecting to.


Missing the point. Yes, not all non-mundane things are better than all mundane things. But if mundane has any meaning at all, being non-mundane is better than being mundane. Can you write a Wizard who is balanced against Captain America? Sure. You can write several such Wizards. But there are many Wizards who are not balanced against Captain America. Like Doctor Strange.

Sure. You can make wizards at whatever power level you like.

If you only want to play games with super powered wizards go for it, it is only the insistence that it has to be that way that I am objecting to.

Zanos
2017-11-16, 07:18 PM
Who says they are charging from the front of the party? Its more to get the wizard to never know what encounter he should conserve and what encounter he should cast spells.

Never said MM was game changing. I was making a point that allowing full access to spells and the wealth which to buy them will always lead to ruin and OP characters ruining the game for anyone who wants to play a weaker class. The point was the wizard was happy to get magic missile at 5th level.

All of this insistence that wizards need specific, detailed worldbuilding and encounter design to keep in line while fighters don't seems to be an admission that maybe wizards are too powerful.