Balancing Casters by Buffing Martials

[Cosi]

Several people have posted threads recently about how to balance casters. Mostly these threads aren't terribly serious (though at least one of them (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?557889-I-ve-had-a-game-balance-thought) was), but there are various comments, in those threads and elsewhere that express the same incorrect belief -- the correct solution to the balance problems 3e has is to make casters less powerful. This is wrong, and its wrong for a two major reasons. First, people don't like nerfs. In general, they dislike nerfs more than they like buffs. So we should be very careful to avoid nerfing things to as large a degree as possible when addressing imbalance (though I will admit there are some things that need to be nerfed, e.g. planar binding and wish). Second, casters are better than mundanes. I don't mean that in the sense that they are more powerful (although, yes, that is obviously true), I mean that Wizard is better designed than Fighter.

Casters have a bunch of traits that are desirable in classes. They have a wide variety of abilities, which enable them to adapt to different kinds of opposition. An Ubercharger is going to behave the exact same way regardless of whether he's fighting Mind Flayers, Glabzeru, or Zombies. He'll either charge something, or move into position to charge something. A Wizard on the other hand has the opportunity to prepare different spells in the face of different opposition, meaning that the character has dynamic behavior in the face of dynamic opposition. This is good. Casters are also easier to build effectively. While you can do a lot of optimization on a Cleric or a Dread Necromancer, it's also entirely possible to build an effective character using on the book the classes appear in. That's simply not the case for a Fighter or a Barbarian. Finally, non-casters are essentially totally deficient in their non-combat capabilities. Outside of a fight, the only things a Fighter can offer are "hope hitting things is still useful" and "maybe three skills".

So clearly, when confronted with the imbalance between casters and martials, we should attempt to move martials up before we attempt move casters down. To do that, we need to address two things.

First, the difficulty of building an effective martial character. To this end, the obvious solution is access to high-floor options like Tome of Battle (likely as a free Gestalt with whatever martial class the player would otherwise take), or the homebrew scaling feats from Races of War (http://www.dandwiki.com/wiki/Races_of_War_(3.5e_Sourcebook)/Warriors_with_Style#The_Failure_of_Feats). An important thing to remember is that the goal of buffs like these should not be to give people the resources to create a 20 level build that can be notionally effective if they are allowed to dumpster dive through every printed splat, but to give people options that allow them to make an effective character quickly and cleanly. This also has the advantage of mitigating the linearity of martial characters. Races of War feats are designed to replace entire feat chains, meaning it is no longer prohibitively expensive to be effective with both a bow and a sword.

Second, the dearth of utility options available to martials, particularly outside combat. A Fighter needs something to do when the combat music is not playing. Not just because that makes his character more effective, but because extended sequences where a character is unable to act are unfun for the corresponding player, which means that for extended non-combat sequences to occur (allowing casters to use their non-combat abilities), martials need something to contribute to those sequences. The obvious solution would be to simply give martials casting, but there isn't an elegant way of doing that without also allowing them to use that casting in combat. Instead, I suggest some combination of custom Weapons of Legacy (with penalties removed), access to Infusions as an Artificer (which have few in-combat applications without access to Action Points), or a free Factotum Gestalt (which also provides some in-combat utility).

So in this setup, a martial would look something like Thor. A Barbarian/Warblade with a magical hammer that gave him lightning powers, super strength, and flight. That's the kind of character who can contribute effectively to a party comprised of a bunch of high level casters.

[Nifft]

I like the idea of buffing non-casters.

However, the example of Thor, especially the part where he hurls lighting, really looks like a caster.

If the solution is to make everyone a caster -- well, that works, and it would be fine with me personally. But I suspect some people will object.

[Elkad]

I like the idea of buffing non-casters.

However, the example of Thor, especially the part where he hurls lighting, really looks like a caster.

If the solution is to make everyone a caster -- well, that works, and it would be fine with me personally. But I suspect some people will object.

So use The Hulk. No magic there, and he can almost fly.
Sure, it's really just an insane jump check, but it works well enough.

He's jumped into orbit in the comics. Which means leaving the ground at 7 miles/second. The part the comics skip is jumping that high means the force he exerts on the ground would be the same as a meteor of his weight striking the ground. 1500lbs impacting at 7 miles/second is like 10 tons of TNT going off. That's a healthy fireball he leaves behind. Same as a GBU-43 MOAB. Blast so big the air overpressures until it ignites within 1000' or so. Windows broken to well over a mile. Sound heard for many miles.

So just punching the ground and doing 20d6 within 40' as a mundane feat seems reasonable on that scale. Along with Balance/Reflex saves for everyone to avoid falling prone, etc. Or making Burst checks on 15' thick castle walls.

[Goaty14]

So use The Hulk. No magic there, and he can almost fly.
Sure, it's really just an insane jump check, but it works well enough.

I also agree that the hulk is a good representation of what a lvl 20 barbarian should look like.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I3xwKN-nEXE&feature=youtu.be&t=9m8s

(Skip to 9:05 for the relevant part)

[daremetoidareyo]

martials need to be able to target all three saves. TOB provides this. Some feats help, but they are always targetting the fort save.

Free movement needs to be seriously nerfed if grappling is going to see the light of day.

[Ignimortis]

The issue that usually arises isn't that martials can't hold their own in combat. ToB and PoW provide enough power for martials to keep up in combat and even no-sell some spellcasting (pumping a skill is much easier than pumping a save, and a warblade can have one Moment of Perfect Mind each second round). A free gestalt with any initiator class would probably prove overpowering to most encounters. I cannot even imagine how much damage, how quickly and how well would a fighter/initiator mix put out. That's not the problem, though.

The problem is that full casters can do so much outside of combat, and that includes minionmancy and WBL-mancy and other loops that really shift the in-combat balance in their favor, that caster supremacy over mundanes in combat without those things seems relatively tame by comparison.

Therefore, if you're not nerfing casters and all the shenanigans they can get up to with Planar Binding/Fabricate/"Scry and Fry" tactics/etc., for pure competitive ability you'd need to give martials ways to do similar things too. And there are very few ways to make that happen unless you just give them spells, at which point they're no longer pure martials.

[ryu]

martials need to be able to target all three saves. TOB provides this. Some feats help, but they are always targetting the fort save.

Free movement needs to be seriously nerfed if grappling is going to see the light of day.

The problem with this idea is that it necessarily involves using the grappling rules.

[Rebel7284]

I think that trying to make martials equal to casters is not necessarily good and leads to something like 4th edition.

However, there should be ways for non-casters to be good at their own niche and have a few options outside of it. It doesn't have to be as powerful as a caster, but it should be more reliable.

I think Warblade and Psychic Warrior are good examples of effective martial classes. They have a number of options they can select both for being great at combat and effective outside of it. Maybe something like making Psychic warriors have all their power points per-encounter instead of per day so they can actually be wolverine or hulk all day would work.

Also, a thought, making all attacks from BAB be at full attack bonus (or nearly so) would make full BAB be worth SOMETHING (yes, DMM clerics still break this)

[ryu]

Technically moving martials up without bringing casters down can't get you 4e. 4e was low complexity where most everyone was roughly as equivalent as a martial adept in 3.5. You'd need uniform simple T3 to mimic that. Why simple T3? 3.5 has a lot of T3 with higher complexity like bards and such.

[Drakevarg]

Personally I don't even bother balancing casters - I just ban them. And it's not because I think they're necessarily overpowered - they can be, but you have to at least kind of try, generally speaking. No, my reason is (and I think that even Cosi can agree with this much) that casters and martials are just playing different games. I've said in another thread on a related subject that I'd love if 3.5e was set up like WoD so that content was divided across splatbooks by theme rather than just the "everything-to-everyone" grab bag that basically everyone agrees doesn't actually work.

Cosi doesn't like nerfed casters, I don't want martials to play like casters, so why not just let them play in different arenas? I've heard plenty of arguments that martials just can't do high-level play without caster support, but that simply doesn't pan out in personal experience if you're designing adventures around them. It's not really any different than having the presence of mind to not have an obstacle hinge on a spell that you know for a fact that nobody in the party knows or has access to an item for.

[DMVerdandi]

Alright, I will share a few of my "easy fix" ideas, that would be quick means to moving forward.


1. All casters get 2 skill points per level+ int. All non-casters get access to ALL skills, 6 skill points per level, and have individual features per class which max out 2 or 3 skills automatically, without use of skill points; And every level provides another rank in said skills.

Example. Rogue gets automatic maxed out slots in Hide,Move silently, and slight of hand.
Fighter gets maxed out ride, swim, Jump. Scout gets Spot,Listen,Survival.

The point is that spell casting takes up so much learning that regular skills aren't paid attention to, but the non-spellcasting classes earn their bread and butter by them.


2.All non-spellcasting classes get TOB Maneuvers, but only have choice between two schools. Advance as warblade.



3.Armor provides DR=to AC.


4.Artificer's Item Creation Class feature is now a feat. Requires 4 ranks in craft, 4 ranks in spell craft, and 4 ranks in Use Magic device.



WALLAH.
Ideally I would build the game from ground up, but We ain't got that long a character limit.

[ryu]

Just to clear up some ambiguities the artificers still get that feat as a native bonus yes?

Also what type(s) of damage bypass the armor DR or does that vary with armor type and enchantments?

I still support the changes. It's just important to be clear when making sweeping changes.

[ShurikVch]

I also agree that the hulk is a good representation of what a lvl 20 barbarian should look like.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I3xwKN-nEXE&feature=youtu.be&t=9m8sThat video reminded me:
https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/oots/images/4/43/OOTS0787.gif/revision/latest?cb=20160830213119
https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/oots/images/3/3b/OOTS0791.gif/revision/latest?cb=20160830214050
https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/oots/images/8/8c/OOTS0795.gif/revision/latest/scale-to-width-down/300?cb=20160830210708
https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/oots/images/2/28/OOTS0796.gif/revision/latest/scale-to-width-down/300?cb=20160830194928
https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/oots/images/a/a5/OOTS0798.gif/revision/latest?cb=20160830190127

[Remuko]

WALLAH.

Its: Voila not "wallah".

[Lans]

This is wrong, and its wrong for a two major reasons. First, people don't like nerfs. In general, they dislike nerfs more than they like buffs. So we should be very careful to avoid nerfing things to as large a degree as possible when addressing imbalance (though I will admit there are some things that need to be nerfed, e.g. planar binding and wish). Second, casters are better than mundanes. I don't mean that in the sense that they are more powerful (although, yes, that is obviously true), I mean that Wizard is better designed than Fighter.

I think planar binding should be based off of CR, and wish shouldn't be able to create magic items except maybe off of a strict basic list.



So in this setup, a martial would look something like Thor. A Barbarian/Warblade with a magical hammer that gave him lightning powers, super strength, and flight. That's the kind of character who can contribute effectively to a party comprised of a bunch of high level casters.

Lightning is basically just mass damage, which might be replicatable by shooting through people or bouncing weapons off people.

super strength is basically just more damage mundanes should be okayish on that front

I don't like every class being overtly magical, even if its from magical items, but things like grappling hooks, building scaffolding, or just shooting it down. up to the flying dragon to cut it with a sword, are things that could be options.

[DMVerdandi]

Just to clear up some ambiguities the artificers still get that feat as a native bonus yes?

Also what type(s) of damage bypass the armor DR or does that vary with armor type and enchantments?

I still support the changes. It's just important to be clear when making sweeping changes.
>Yes. Furthermore, I'd keep it so that mages are the only ones that can give their magic items type magic type. All non-magical created items would be non-typed.

>I would say Mundane armor is bypassed by magic items, and mundane materials that bypass hardness.
Magical items have the "DR/--" attribute.



Its: Voila not "wallah".
Someone took the polyglot feat:smallyuk:

[gkathellar]

It's a worthy goal. Here's the problem: any martial buffed to caster levels starts looking like a caster.

Let me preface that: I am of the strong opinion that The Real Problem(tm) with class balance is not numerical. Combat balance is delicate, and it's really difficult to do well, but ultimately combat actions break down into four categories: make the bodies fall, stop the bodies from falling and/or pick bodies up, make your guys better at maintaining a favorable ratio of bodies fallen, and make the other guys worse at maintaining a favorable ratio of bodies fallen.If everyone's total contribution to combat by way of these four tasks is roughly approximate, congratulations, it's a Combat Balance. Don't underestimate the magnitude of that task: game design is hard, and it is extremely sensitive. I also want to stress that it is heavily impacted by system math. For all that people say things like, "giving fighters more numbers won't let them catch up," things like PoW can create reversed combat balance problems because they give martials too many numbers (something Bo9S is very, very careful about avoiding, for better or worse). Combat balance is hard, but you can totally have a fighter who is relatively useful in combat and feels like a fighter.

What's much harder to solve for is approximate narrative contribution. A fighter can organize the peasants to build a wall, but the wizard can summon monsters to do it, or use telekinesis, or teleport in an army of stonemasons, or uh ... cast wall of stone. So now we give the fighter the power to stamp his foot and pull a wall out of the ground, earthbender style, right? Okay now the party needs to adventure underwater - the wizard casts water breathing on everyone, or the fighter can, uh ... give everyone preemptive CPR and then hold his breath? Oops, the party rogue got cursed, so either the wizard can cast break enchantment, or the fighter can ... use his curse enchantment-breaking punch, I guess. Gotta read minds? The fighter uses Body Language Discerning Mantra, which looks suspiciously like detect thoughts. I can keep going, but I think I've made my point: at a certain point, your fighter is a wizard with the word "fighter" tattooed on his forehead.

[Goaty14]

3.Armor provides DR=to AC.

Wouldn't that only protect them from other martials?

[ShurikVch]

3.Armor provides DR=to AC.
Wouldn't that only protect them from other martials?Then, maybe it should be: "Armor provides Hardness=to AC"?

[Nifft]

Wouldn't that only protect them from other martials?

Being good at tanking vs. mundane foes is a legit role, and it's certainly one thing that baseline mundanes can't do better in the core game.

[theblasblas]

What's much harder to solve for is approximate narrative contribution. A fighter can organize the peasants to build a wall, but the wizard can summon monsters to do it, or use telekinesis, or teleport in an army of stonemasons, or uh ... cast wall of stone. So now we give the fighter the power to stamp his foot and pull a wall out of the ground, earthbender style, right? Okay now the party needs to adventure underwater - the wizard casts water breathing on everyone, or the fighter can, uh ... give everyone preemptive CPR and then hold his breath? Oops, the party rogue got cursed, so either the wizard can cast break enchantment, or the fighter can ... use his curse enchantment-breaking punch, I guess. Gotta read minds? The fighter uses Body Language Discerning Mantra, which looks suspiciously like detect thoughts. I can keep going, but I think I've made my point: at a certain point, your fighter is a wizard with the word "fighter" tattooed on his forehead.

Hmm, this gave me an interesting thought. How about instead of giving mundanes abilities that mimics that of magic-users, we modify certain rules such that they are more easily able to counter the effects of spells? Make unattended objects 4x easier to break so that mundanes can break down walls in one hit, add a feat that allows the substitution of Concentration for a will save for mind-affecting effects, make the skills based on physical abilities work exponentially and with more utility: A Jump DC of 40 now lets you jump over 40 ft castle walls in a single bound(and make it not limited by movement speed), a high enough constitution will let you breathe underwater for hours, an Escape Artist DC of 50 to pass through a wall of force. Also, my suggestion in the other thread about scaling x-foot-step to movement speed. Of course this will probably take a HUGE amount of balancing.

In a lot of high fantasy settings, the role of mundanes is to be able to break through magical effects through sheer force or skill. Essentially, rather than creating new magic-like ways of letting mundanes do the insane stuff that magic-users do like in ToB, allow them to do it through the systems already present.

[Nifft]

In a lot of high fantasy settings, the role of mundanes is to be able to break through magical effects through sheer force or skill. Essentially, rather than creating new magic-like ways of letting mundanes do the insane stuff that magic-users do like in ToB, allow them to do it through the systems already present.

You could go even simpler.

1/ Every class gets a "defense bonus" equal to character level or monster CR. This defense bonus applies to AC and all saves.

2/ Players make all rolls. So there's no Will Save, instead there's a Will Attack.

3/ Add your BAB to all attack rolls (weapon and spell).

High-level full-BAB classes can hit enemies. High-level wizards are going to be hitting lower-level mooks ("crowd control"), for which area attacks are still great. But high-level foes aren't easily trivialized due to the eventual effective +10 difference between BAB and defense bonus. So at high levels, a Wizard's best tactic would be buffing allies & battlefield control. Mundane full-BAB friends would be very useful. (Duskblades would actually be able to hit with spells at high level, which makes them interesting.)

[heavyfuel]

I haven't read the replies, but I have one concern.

At mid to high levels, martials are so out-performed by casters that if you want to buff them to the point where they can actually compete, one of two things is going to happen:

1 - You will transform Martials into Casters by a different name.

Saying you are buffing them by letting everyone have stances like Balance on the Sky isn't buffing martials as much as saying "ok, you're now a caster that can have these at will spells but only one at a time. Oh! Also you can hit people with a sword."

Don't get me wrong. I love ToB and its crazy strikes and stances. But in the book they even call it "blade magic" because that's what it is. Magic. Even if they are mechanically (Ex) abilities, they are still magical.

or 2 - You will have to combine the abilities of many martial characters to form one decent character. Lots of HP, Saves, skill points, etc. And this will come to a point where every martial character will effectively be the same class with different fluff.

[Cosi]

However, the example of Thor, especially the part where he hurls lighting, really looks like a caster.

Thor is interesting, because Thor lives in a space that 3e doesn't spend a lot of time in -- the non-mundane martial. Thor is very clearly a martial character. He big and strong, and he fights with a hammer (or some other melee weapon). He has some additional lightning powers, but he's clearly not a caster. Compare him to, for example, Storm. She's a caster who fights exclusively with weather "magic", while Thor relies mostly on melee, with lightning serving as an AoE.


Therefore, if you're not nerfing casters and all the shenanigans they can get up to with Planar Binding/Fabricate/"Scry and Fry" tactics/etc., for pure competitive ability you'd need to give martials ways to do similar things too. And there are very few ways to make that happen unless you just give them spells, at which point they're no longer pure martials.

I think you're conflating (or perhaps confusing) "martial" with "mundane". "Martial" is just a way of fighting. Gishes are martial. DMM Clerics are martial. Those characters have magic, but they're still quite clearly martial in many respects. None of the suggested changes give martials enough magical juice to fight like a BFC Wizard, but they do give them the non-combat tools they need -- and those tools have to be spells, because that's what they're written up as.


I think that trying to make martials equal to casters is not necessarily good and leads to something like 4th edition.

I don't understand how you look at 4e and think it came from buffing martials up to the level of casters. Where is the 4e equivalent of planar binding, teleport, fabricate, true creation, genesis, or wish? And if 4e doesn't have those things, doesn't it mean that some nerfs were applied to casters on the way to getting there?


I think planar binding should be based off of CR, and wish shouldn't be able to create magic items except maybe off of a strict basic list.

The problem with planar binding isn't really the HD limit. I mean, that's a problem, and some things are broken on that axis (e.g. the 12 HD CR 18 demon in the MM II), but outsiders have a relatively strong correlation between CR and HD all things considered. The problem with planar binding is limits. Using planar binding to summon a demon to serve as a messenger, or manual labor, or for a utility spell is an entirely reasonable thing to do. Using planar binding to summon a demon to serve as a bodyguard is probably too good, but it's the sort of thing that could be balanced fairly easily by making it a PrC benefit or something. The problem is that if you can use planar binding to summon a demon, why not use it to summon two demons? Or ten demons? That is where the problem arises (and the similar problem with charm person, or animate dead, or simulacrum).


I don't like every class being overtly magical, even if its from magical items, but things like grappling hooks, building scaffolding, or just shooting it down. up to the flying dragon to cut it with a sword, are things that could be options.

Why not? That's how it works in the source material. Fantasy doesn't support high level mundane characters. Aragorn becomes a Ghost King and gains the ability to walk the roads of the dead. Thor has his aforementioned hammer. King Arthur has a magical sword that makes him invincible in battle. The fantasy genre has very clearly established that high level characters are not simply normal dudes. They are magical dudes.


What's much harder to solve for is approximate narrative contribution. A fighter can organize the peasants to build a wall, but the wizard can summon monsters to do it, or use telekinesis, or teleport in an army of stonemasons, or uh ... cast wall of stone.

The thing is though, the Fighter can't even do that. He doesn't have any more "organize the peasants" ability than the Wizard does, and he probably has less than e.g. the Beguiler. The Fighter's problem is that all he can do is try to convince the DM that his plan will work, rather than relying on abilities that achieve his goals directly.


I can keep going, but I think I've made my point: at a certain point, your fighter is a wizard with the word "fighter" tattooed on his forehead.

Sure. But fundamentally, if "Wizard" means "has useful non-combat abilities", then it is completely impossible to fix the imbalance while still letting the Wizard use his non-combat abilities. Even if you accept Fighters being worse than Wizards, that just means the Wizard doesn't get to use his abilities at all, because the group is not going to tell the Fighter he has to sit down and shut up while non-combat stuff happens. We have to move past this definition to make any progress.

[Lans]

I would change the skill system so that it scales better with ranks. For example ranks in jump up to 6 works normally, but for the next 6 ranks the formula changes to distance being twice the jump check and height being half the jump check. Jumping down reduces damage by 20 feet.

When you have 13 ranks you now jump 4 times the check distance accross and up by your score. At 20 ranks you jump 8 times your check accross and double your rank up.

[Lans]

The problem with planar binding isn't really the HD limit. I mean, that's a problem, and some things are broken on that axis (e.g. the 12 HD CR 18 demon in the MM II), but outsiders have a relatively strong correlation between CR and HD all things considered. The problem with planar binding is limits. Using planar binding to summon a demon to serve as a messenger, or manual labor, or for a utility spell is an entirely reasonable thing to do. Using planar binding to summon a demon to serve as a bodyguard is probably too good, but it's the sort of thing that could be balanced fairly easily by making it a PrC benefit or something. The problem is that if you can use planar binding to summon a demon, why not use it to summon two demons? Or ten demons? That is where the problem arises (and the similar problem with charm person, or animate dead, or simulacrum). True, these are spells that really should be looked at just from a paper keeping perspective, but the HD thing is one that shouldn't have been used.



Why not? That's how it works in the source material. Fantasy doesn't support high level mundane characters. Aragorn becomes a Ghost King and gains the ability to walk the roads of the dead. Thor has his aforementioned hammer. King Arthur has a magical sword that makes him invincible in battle. The fantasy genre has very clearly established that high level characters are not simply normal dudes. They are magical dudes. I'm not saying they have to be normal dudes, building 100 feet of scaffolding in 6 seconds rules that out, but just an option to being more normal.




The thing is though, the Fighter can't even do that. He doesn't have any more "organize the peasants" ability than the Wizard does, and he probably has less than e.g. the Beguiler. The Fighter's problem is that all he can do is try to convince the DM that his plan will work, rather than relying on abilities that achieve his goals directly.

I think he was explaining what he wanted his fighter adjustment to be.

[Goaty14]

What's much harder to solve for is approximate narrative contribution. A fighter can organize the peasants to build a wall, but the wizard can summon monsters to do it, or use telekinesis, or teleport in an army of stonemasons, or uh ... cast wall of stone. So now we give the fighter the power to stamp his foot and pull a wall out of the ground, earthbender style, right? Okay now the party needs to adventure underwater - the wizard casts water breathing on everyone, or the fighter can, uh ... give everyone preemptive CPR and then hold his breath? Oops, the party rogue got cursed, so either the wizard can cast break enchantment, or the fighter can ... use his curse enchantment-breaking punch, I guess. Gotta read minds? The fighter uses Body Language Discerning Mantra, which looks suspiciously like detect thoughts. I can keep going, but I think I've made my point: at a certain point, your fighter is a wizard with the word "fighter" tattooed on his forehead.

How about instead of trying to make the fighter as omnipotent as the wizard, we just improve what the fighter can already do? I mean, the fighter should not be as omnipotent as the wizard, but still has things that he should be able to do reasonably well out of combat. Also note that the do-it-all-party shouldn't be a fighter and a wizard, instead it's a fighter, wizard, rogue, and cleric (and then maybe a bard). The rogue got cursed? Call the cleric. Gotta read minds? Intimidate them into submission or call up the rogue w/ Sense Motive. Gotta swim to the other side of the underwater cave? Have the fighter carry everybody else, back and forth. Gotta read the magical runes on the wall? Call the wizard. Etc. My point: The fighter shouldn't be as omnipotent as the wizard because we play D&D to be a part of a team, but the fighter should instead git gud at the stuff in his niche.


Being good at tanking vs. mundane foes is a legit role, and it's certainly one thing that baseline mundanes can't do better in the core game.

Yea, but 1) You're giving that to literally every mundane, not heavy-armor exclusive (also screws monks -- what armor??) 2) It's not tanking, it's being a damage sponge until the monster feels like he'll go for the nerd in robes out back.


[snip]

TL;DR Add moar epic uses of skills.

Oh, and I'm not going to say that casters shouldn't be nerfed, but it annoys me to death that some people just say "Oh, if we nerf casters in the ground enough, then eventually we get balance", which you don't. You have to buff martials at some point in between.

[gkathellar]

@Cosi @Goaty14:

I agree.

One solution is not to worry about narrative balance, and just make sure that everyone has some mechanically backed ability to contribute. For many groups, that will be enough. If the wizard's potential contribution has a value of [0, infinity), giving the fighter a potential of [0, 10], is still going to be a solid improvement.

My broader point, though, is not that fighter means or should mean, "does nothing." It's that wizard, at least as 3.5 goes, means "does everything." To balance against it, you need to be able to do anything ... which makes you a wizard. If your goal is narrative power balance, then either everyone is a wizard, or no one is. Asymmetric narrative balance is possible only beneath that level of narrative omnipotence, just as asymmetric combat balance isn't possible in a game where some characters have infinite stats.

My solution is to cut both the fighter and the wizard, and give every character the ability to shape the narrative in some ways, without any being able to do it in all the ways. But that's a can of worms unto itself: all I'm trying to say is that when you bring the fighter up to the level of the wizard in terms of narrative power, the result is a pair of wizards.

tl;dr Sure buff the fighter, but nerfing the wizard is non-optional if you want narrative balance.

[Cosi]

I would change the skill system so that it scales better with ranks. For example ranks in jump up to 6 works normally, but for the next 6 ranks the formula changes to distance being twice the jump check and height being half the jump check. Jumping down reduces damage by 20 feet.

Having unlocks off of skill ranks is something I like. Generally, I think those should probably be things like flight, rather than upgrades to existing functionality.


True, these are spells that really should be looked at just from a paper keeping perspective, but the HD thing is one that shouldn't have been used.

This is true, but the real answer on that score is that HD should equal CR.


I'm not saying they have to be normal dudes, building 100 feet of scaffolding in 6 seconds rules that out, but just an option to being more normal.

I don't know that doing that is really more normal, and it's certainly more genre breaking. I think getting magic powers -- and in particular magical weapons -- is very much on theme for high level martial characters in a fantasy setting.


How about instead of trying to make the fighter as omnipotent as the wizard, we just improve what the fighter can already do?

It's that wizard, at least as 3.5 goes, means "does everything." To balance against it, you need to be able to do anything ... which makes you a wizard.

I heavily disagree with this. It's not correct to assess the Wizard as "doing everything". There are lots of areas in which other (yes, generally caster) classes have better abilities, or abilities the Wizard lacks entirely. What the Wizard has is the ability to contribute to pretty much any kind of encounter, and that is something that is both necessary and good. The Wizard is not always going to be the MVP (again, in a party of mostly casters), but he's always going to have something to do. Think about how combat works. Different characters have different combat strategies. Some people do single target damage. Some people do BFC. Some people have buffs. Depending on the particular encounter, those abilities will be more or less valuable. But every character has something to do in every encounter. And that's roughly the balance point I'd like to see in the rest of the game. So you have a challenge where the party has to get from point A to point B, and the characters have different abilities that make different trade offs. Sometimes you'll use Thor's access to the Bifrost. Sometimes you'll use Strange's dimensional travel. Sometimes you'll use Quill's spaceship. In different cases, a different one of those abilities will be the best choice. But no character is in the position of not having any option for defeating the challenge.

[theblasblas]

TL;DR Add moar epic uses of skills.



Actually, the point I was kinda trying to make is that we should make these uses of skills be non-epic, make them easier to reach similar to what Lans suggested, except only for skills that rely on physical stats. Also, tweaking the rules for certain things like breaking, saves and x-foot step.



I mean, the fighter should not be as omnipotent as the wizard,


In my opinion the wizard shouldn't be omnipotent at all as that kinda defeats the purpose of having a party consisting of a wizard, fighter, rogue and cleric if the wizard can do the jobs of everyone else just as well or even better. A way of doing that without directly nerfing the wizard is by making it easier for other classes to counter the wizard's spells, as per my suggestion. Nifft's suggestions could be viable as well.

[gkathellar]

I may also be using wizard and fighter as bywords for caster and mundane at times, fwiw. Bad habit.

That said, lemme see if I can simplify: try writing a T1 or even T2 class without giving it a spell list at least comparable to the druid's. It's, uh ... you're gonna need a lot of ink.

[radthemad4]

Making martials that are good at combat without a lot of optimization has been proven to be doable, e.g. Dungeonomicon Monk, Races of War, Path of War but even those can't really contribute much outside combat. How about creating a bunch of quasi gestalt 'tracks' with mostly non-combat abilities in them that people who aren't casters get for free? e.g.


Healer
You gain all the class features of the Healer class at the levels they normally get them. You don't need the required ability scores to cast spells from the Healer list, and your DCs (are there any?) are always 15+1/2HD or something?

They could be written so that 'Otherwise useless outside combat martial' + a few tracks has comparable utility to Wizards, CoDzilla and domain shuffling Beguilers.

[Ignimortis]

I think you're conflating (or perhaps confusing) "martial" with "mundane". "Martial" is just a way of fighting. Gishes are martial. DMM Clerics are martial. Those characters have magic, but they're still quite clearly martial in many respects. None of the suggested changes give martials enough magical juice to fight like a BFC Wizard, but they do give them the non-combat tools they need -- and those tools have to be spells, because that's what they're written up as.


That's what the guys over at the Den say too. But the issue is twofold.

First, the only thing good enough to rival spells is...more spells. There's no other system (maybe psionics if you use StP) that has this much power baked into it.

Second, somehow magic gets a free pass to do whatever is written on the spell. There is no other system that would just expend a resource and produce an effect. Spells are both the most complicated system due to breadth and the least complicated one due to almost always working by saying "I cast X".
You can't say "I jump a thousand miles over that mountain range" because there's no ability for that, but there's teleport which does the exact same thing or better, because you can take friends.

This is what the underlying problem is - that magic is allowed to be all-powerful and scales quadratically in usefulness and power, and everything else isn't and instead scales linearly if at all.

Therefore, I would prefer nerfing the casters simultaneously with improving martials, because omnipotence, even theoretical, is usually undesirable in a game system. If that's how you get your kicks, I don't mind, but I much prefer fixed list casters and T2 sorcerer-like small list casters to the big three. I even buff them somewhat, not in terms of breadth of arsenal, but by removing any advantage a wizard would have over them besides his versatility and adaptability. Free metamagic? Gone, given to sorcerer (casting times patched too). Cleric's proficiency with arms and armor, Divine Favor, DMM stacking? All gone, Cloistered Cleric (which is still very good) is the default. Druid loses animal companion and most wildshapes outside of MM1, because they either don't exist or nobody has seen then in ages. Meanwhile, Fighters are buffed...and are still either a free gestalt for certain things or an NPC class. You can't have all the cosmic power in your hands and still get to do the other person's specific job better than they would.

P.S. I do not consider gishes to be 100% martial. The term implies not using spells - magic is fine, supernatural abilities are probably fine, even spell-likes get a pass, but if you're getting a caster/manifester level, then you're not exactly martial anymore.

[Goaty14]

tl;dr Sure buff the fighter, but nerfing the wizard is non-optional if you want narrative balance.

Then we can come to an agreement that you don't need a dramatic nerf to full casters, instead a moderate nerf to full casters, and a moderate buff to everybody else?

[Lans]

This is true, but the real answer on that score is that HD should equal CR.
That sounds reasonable, but is more of a system overhaul than I would want to do. I think making it CR and maybe lowering the CR that it can obtained to what the level that the spell should be obtained at -2 or something along those lines.



I don't know that doing that is really more normal, and it's certainly more genre breaking. I think getting magic powers -- and in particular magical weapons -- is very much on theme for high level martial characters in a fantasy setting.
Yeah, your reference to Thor and King Author lead me to interpret it as more of a 'chosen ones' weapon, but I realized that wasn't the case after I posted.




Having unlocks off of skill ranks is something I like. Generally, I think those should probably be things like flight, rather than upgrades to existing functionality.
I think flight would be more balance, or maybe a combo between balance, climb and jump. I was also thinking of things like being able to travel between the planes with knowledge planes.

[skunk3]

I don't want to see anything get nerfed.

I don't have a huge problem with the so-called 'imbalance' within 3.5. Everything works the way it does for a reason, more or less. Sure, I think that certain martial classes could be buffed a bit in terms of getting more skill points and a wider array of class skills, but I wouldn't want to see a drastic overhaul. We all know that casters are going to outshine non-casters and I don't have a problem with it because everyone has to play their part. With Tome of Battle and some pretty decent homebrew classes / PrC's out there mundanes can be formidable... they just need a little extra nudge, or do they?

[Bucky]

You could always allow temporary flight with a high Jump check. This is a video-gamey mechanic, with characters jumping and doing midair horizontal dashes.

[Florian]

Personally, I´d rather shift the stance what magic is a bit. Personally, I´d rather split the one category "spell" down into three categories of "spell", "class spell" and "ritual".

To explain that a bit, I see a huge difference in how game-breaking spells can be. No-one talks about the humble fireball, what we talk about is planar binding, while similarly, no-one really talks about meteor swarm, we talk about wish.

So, I´ve nothing against moving the real game-breakers into the "ritual" category, available for all classes (and be extension, completely removable when that style doesn't fit a particular group). That makes it a choice whether to learn and potentially use a ritual or not. Overall, that's very simple and can basically be done even now with 3.5E/PF without too much hassle.

Ok, why "class spells" and not maneuvers? The PF Paladin has some very good examples with the "Litany" line of spells, that directly tie in to the class features of the Paladin. Using a litany is vastly more enjoyable then going for some of the generic divine spells, like Divine Favor, while still being part of the overall resource management that is the basis of slot-based magic.

[ericgrau]

I like the idea of buffing non-casters.

However, the example of Thor, especially the part where he hurls lighting, really looks like a caster.

If the solution is to make everyone a caster -- well, that works, and it would be fine with me personally. But I suspect some people will object.

I think that's what magic items are for. Everyone already gets magic and the system practically requires it. If you don't want any magic on your mundanes, then you're playing the wrong rpg.

For most casual games I don't think it's a big deal, unlike forum TO. But if you want to nudge things towards non-casters you could always give them a little more WBL. A simple way to WBL tax casters (if you don't want to give them the same boost) would be to make them require expensive gear to cast spells. Not to give them extra spells if they have extra gear, just require x gp to function normally and more than x gp doesn't do anything more. I wouldn't go extreme with the tax; if your problem is that big then maybe your optimization needs to be more casual instead. Again it's just a nudge. Most gaming tables that don't heavily browse forums work well enough as-is.

[lord_khaine]

I think that's what magic items are for. Everyone already gets magic and the system practically requires it. If you don't want any magic on your mundanes, then you're playing the wrong rpg.

I guess this is the age-old cliche about people wanting to play as Conan the barbarian.

[gkathellar]

Then we can come to an agreement that you don't need a dramatic nerf to full casters, instead a moderate nerf to full casters, and a moderate buff to everybody else?

Yeah, definitely.

If you can say, "fighters are good at A and passable at B and C, rogues are good at B and passable at A and D, Wizards are good at C and D, clerics are good at D and passable at C and B, and bards are passable at A and B and C and D," that's probably pretty good. It's just that if wizards and clerics are good at A, B, C, D, and E, then there's a problem.

FWIW, there's a 3pp developer I know who's pretty adamant about the notion that 6-casters are great design almost by accident. I believe she feels they hit a sweet spot, as it were.

[Karl Aegis]

I may also be using wizard and fighter as bywords for caster and mundane at times, fwiw. Bad habit.

That said, lemme see if I can simplify: try writing a T1 or even T2 class without giving it a spell list at least comparable to the druid's. It's, uh ... you're gonna need a lot of ink.

This class can deal 100 damage per class level to everything, excluding themselves, within 1 mile per class level. A Reflex Save is allowed for half damage.


T2 class.

[Remuko]

This class can deal 100 damage per class level to everything, excluding themselves, within 1 mile per class level. A Reflex Save is allowed for half damage.


T2 class.

there is no way thats tier 2. too narrowly focused. it only does damage.

[ryu]

there is no way thats tier 2. too narrowly focused. it only does damage.

To be fair, tier 2 doesn't much care about multiple tricks. It only cares about you having at least one trick that would obviously bend a standard game over your knee. That technically has that especially i it bypasses resistances and can be done often.

The post stating the challenge should've limited it to tier 1 because their whole definition is having all the tricks. Not just one.

[JoshuaZ]

What's much harder to solve for is approximate narrative contribution. A fighter can organize the peasants to build a wall, but the wizard can summon monsters to do it, or use telekinesis, or teleport in an army of stonemasons, or uh ... cast wall of stone. So now we give the fighter the power to stamp his foot and pull a wall out of the ground, earthbender style, right? Okay now the party needs to adventure underwater - the wizard casts water breathing on everyone, or the fighter can, uh ... give everyone preemptive CPR and then hold his breath? Oops, the party rogue got cursed, so either the wizard can cast break enchantment, or the fighter can ... use his curse enchantment-breaking punch, I guess. Gotta read minds? The fighter uses Body Language Discerning Mantra, which looks suspiciously like detect thoughts. I can keep going, but I think I've made my point: at a certain point, your fighter is a wizard with the word "fighter" tattooed on his forehead.

Some of these are easier to fluff than others. For example, if Sherlock Holmes notices really subtle aspects of body language, we're all ok with that being mundane. In The Avengers when Black Widow clears Hawkeye's mind by slamming his head really hard against a metal bar. If we had one character do both of those, it wouldn't seem that bad. I agree though that some of the other examples are very hard to fluff, and if one is able to do pretty much all of them, it doesn't meet what people think of as a fighter. Part of the issue is that people want to play someone like John McClane who is really badass but not supernaturally seeming badass. They want to play a character who could plausibly exist in our world even if it was extreme. By nature, such a character isn't going to be do every single thing a magical person can because at the end of the day, wizards do magical things.

[Goaty14]

This class can deal 100 damage per class level to everything, excluding themselves, within 1 mile per class level. A Reflex Save is allowed for half damage.


T2 class.

The DFA and/or Dragon Shaman (depending on your reading of metabreath) does exactly this, and isn't T2

Checkmate.

[ryu]

The DFA and/or Dragon Shaman (depending on your reading of metabreath) does exactly this, and isn't T2

Checkmate.

Possibly due to the shakiness of the wording uncheck.

[Cosi]

In my opinion the wizard shouldn't be omnipotent at all as that kinda defeats the purpose of having a party consisting of a wizard, fighter, rogue and cleric if the wizard can do the jobs of everyone else just as well or even better. A way of doing that without directly nerfing the wizard is by making it easier for other classes to counter the wizard's spells, as per my suggestion. Nifft's suggestions could be viable as well.

The Wizard isn't omnipotent. It can't do the job of the Cleric, or the Beguiler, or the Druid. It can do the job of (depending on optimization level, either most or all) non-casters, but that's what I'm suggesting we fix. The balance point for classes should be the Wizard v. the Cleric. Both have options that are applicable in (almost) every situation, both have situations where they would rely on the other.


How about creating a bunch of quasi gestalt 'tracks' with mostly non-combat abilities in them that people who aren't casters get for free? e.g.

This idea is good, but I don't like the example you've picked. The Healer is a bad choice for a non-combat track, at least on its own. Healing is, while necessary, fundamentally reactive. It would make martials more powerful, but it wouldn't address their inability to advance the plot. I could see tracks like "Planar Power" or "Nature Power" working.


First, the only thing good enough to rival spells is...more spells. There's no other system (maybe psionics if you use StP) that has this much power baked into it.

Sure. But that's not fundamental. And since the only things on par with spells right now are spells, your choices are "Fighters suck", "nerf Wizards", "give Fighters spells", or "write a new subsystem as large as the largest existing subsystem". It's possible that the last is the most desirable solution, but it is also by far the most effort-intensive solution. Giving Fighters spells which mostly work outside combat (and as such don't modify the part of the game where they already have an identity) is the best solution in terms of bang-for-buck.


P.S. I do not consider gishes to be 100% martial. The term implies not using spells - magic is fine, supernatural abilities are probably fine, even spell-likes get a pass, but if you're getting a caster/manifester level, then you're not exactly martial anymore.

That's where I disagree. Mundane implies not using spells/magic. Just as you can be a buffer who doesn't use spells to buff people (e.g. a DFI Bardblade), and you can be a buffer who does use spells to buff people (e.g. a War Weaver), you can be a martial who fights without spells (e.g. a Barbarian), and you can be a martial who fights with spells (e.g. a Duskblade).


there is no way thats tier 2. too narrowly focused. it only does damage.

I don't care if something is Tier One or Tier Four or whatever. The tiers are barely functional as a system for describing the existing classes in 3e, and the focus on entirely the wrong things if your goal is to fix the system. Ideally, you would match whatever tier you think means "everyone has abilities that are useful in each situation, different people have abilities that are decisive in different situations", and practically you would combine some traits of Tier Three (variety of resource management options) with some traits of Tier One (characters have a wide variety of abilities, characters have abilities that are powerful both in and out of combat). You wouldn't try to make characters "Tier Two", because as the suggested class demonstrates, that is a garbage design guideline. "AoE nuke powerful enough to end any encounter, no other abilities" might be Tier Two, but it is an obviously garbage design, and the fact that the tiers output that as an appropriate design means they are a garbage standard.

[Peat]

You don't need to make Martials as potentially good as Wizards for them to be balanced, as witnessed by the fact there' not many threads asking "How do we balance Partial Casters vs Wizards". We all know the Bard doesn't have the same potential, but it has enough that it's not a big deal.

I'd therefore suggest allowing Martials to hit the T3-ish area if they want is sufficient for balance.

Making Martials better skillmonkies gets you some of the way. You don't even have to give them all 8 skill points either. Handing out a class feature allowing them to pick from a small list of skills that involves some good utility ones and then just use their class level for skill level (or BAB) would be helpful and help retain flavour.

Alternately, you could give the Martials the chance to take a good utility spell as a spell-like ability, representing prowess so superhuman it becomes supernatural.

In combat, arguably you want to condense some of the feat chains that allow for combat styles other than "I roll to hit, I roll to damage".

Finally, I think including a free scaling magic weapon (or armour, or amulet of mighty fists, or whatever) in class would be useful for granting more utility, as then they can use their WBL for a bunch of things.

[martixy]

Over the years of homebrewing I have arrived at a certain design philosophy about the game.

Which can be boiled down to the following single sentence:
What makes the game fun is being able to make meaningful and cool decisions in as many situations as possible.

That is the problem with mundanes - they lack tools which can be applied to many situations. Even if we restrict the discussion to combat, many times their only option is "I go there and hit it with a stick" with minor variances on how you go there and what stick you hit it with.

One problem that contributes to this issue is the significant power imbalance, but I wanna specifically make the point that balance is overrated. You see, I'm all for buffing the mundanes. But it is not necessary to make them the equal of caster. The current problem is that they have to spend all of their character building resources to stay competitive with casters - only in their specific niche, while the casters can serve tons of roles. Viewed this way, the most immediate fix becomes apparent: Allow mundanes the ability to compete in their niche as a baseline. Then they can spend their available character building resources to diversify their contribution to the game, rather than just fight to contribute at all!

The mechanical details of this include alleviating feat taxes, addressing MAD issues, increasing skill points, merging skills(e.g. use PFs skill system), and other basic mechanical tweaks, around the action economy, combat options, skill use and the like.

[BassoonHero]

My own personal starting point shortlist is more or less:

1. Nerf the magical "I win" buttons.

- Fix/ban some of the obvious stuff.
- Make battlefield control easier to resist.
- Generally lower the power of mind-control effects.
- Rewrite spells like Freedom of Movement to do something sane.
- Write less unwieldy rules for ability damage.

2. Remove unnecessary restrictions on martial characters.

- Let everyone move and full-attack.
- Reduce or eliminate iterative attack penalties.
- Remove "taxes" like Precise Shot, Brutal Throw, etc.
- Significantly beef up combat feats and abilities.
- Add a robust parrying mechanic.

3. Fix the skill system.

- Consolidate and harmonize skills.
- Fix extraordinary senses.
- Add a skill trick system with level-appropriate payoffs (blindsight, jumping a hundred feet straight up, charging through stone walls like the Kool-aid man, etc).

Honestly, just bumping the mundanes up to tier 3 would probably be enough for me. There's no need to fix the entire system at once.

[Goaty14]

Possibly due to the shakiness of the wording uncheck.

DFA?... Maybe. But the Dragon Shaman 100% has a breath weapon with a recharge, which qualifies.

https://image.ibb.co/kKwSAo/Chess.jpg


Even if we restrict the discussion to combat, many times their only option is "I go there and hit it with a stick" with minor variances on how you go there and what stick you hit it with.

My character never leaves home without his vials of acid, vials of alchemist fire, holy water, heavy crossbow, greatbow, 10 foot pole, glaive, stick, thunderstone, sling, dagger, throwing hammers, and wand of magic missile, but somehow you just expect him to hit it with his stick?

[ColorBlindNinja]

The DFA and/or Dragon Shaman (depending on your reading of metabreath) does exactly this, and isn't T2

Checkmate.

I do believe that the Metabreath feat in question states that it does not stack.

[death390]

Alright, I will share a few of my "easy fix" ideas, that would be quick means to moving forward.

1. All casters get 2 skill points per level+ int. All non-casters get access to ALL skills, 6 skill points per level, and have individual features per class which max out 2 or 3 skills automatically, without use of skill points; And every level provides another rank in said skills.

Example. Rogue gets automatic maxed out slots in Hide,Move silently, and slight of hand.
Fighter gets maxed out ride, swim, Jump. Scout gets Spot,Listen,Survival.

The point is that spell casting takes up so much learning that regular skills aren't paid attention to, but the non-spellcasting classes earn their bread and butter by them.

2.All non-spellcasting classes get TOB Maneuvers, but only have choice between two schools. Advance as warblade.

3.Armor provides DR=to AC.

4.Artificer's Item Creation Class feature is now a feat. Requires 4 ranks in craft, 4 ranks in spell craft, and 4 ranks in Use Magic device.

WALLAH.
Ideally I would build the game from ground up, but We ain't got that long a character limit.

I have a particular issue with #1, reducing skill points for characters is never the way to go as others have stated buffs are simply the better thing to do. for example if you reduce ALL casters to 2+int then the beguiler which relies on skills gets neutered horribly, the bard as well, and so on. a better thing to do would be give the mundane classes more skill points and do like pathfinder and make skill ranks 1:1. this still limits cross class skills to 1/2 ranks but makes skill points more useful since they aren't being "lost" on cross class. not to mention all characters should have some split of spot/search/listen. fighters should have all 3 as they are the "watchmen/ guard" class. barbarians should have spot/listen, rangers all 3, ect ect. giving all of the mundane classes spellcraft and decipher script as class skills is weird.

#2 is decent way to go about it but many people don't want to use ToB stuff because its "like magic". i would recommend something like a techniques list similar to trip/ sunder/ disarm are. i'll put those below.

#3 is a variant rule in Unearthed Arcana

#4 makes no sense in any theme i have ever heard of. instead just removing the caster pre-req should be fine, and only requiring 1 scroll to make a enchantment should balance it. similar to the crafting of Aegis Fang in the Drizzt Forgotten Realms series.


My own personal starting point shortlist is more or less:

1. Nerf the magical "I win" buttons.

- Fix/ban some of the obvious stuff.
- Make battlefield control easier to resist.
- Generally lower the power of mind-control effects.
- Rewrite spells like Freedom of Movement to do something sane.
- Write less unwieldy rules for ability damage.

2. Remove unnecessary restrictions on martial characters.

- Let everyone move and full-attack.
- Reduce or eliminate iterative attack penalties.
- Remove "taxes" like Precise Shot, Brutal Throw, etc.
- Significantly beef up combat feats and abilities.
- Add a robust parrying mechanic.

3. Fix the skill system.

- Consolidate and harmonize skills.
- Fix extraordinary senses.
- Add a skill trick system with level-appropriate payoffs (blindsight, jumping a hundred feet straight up, charging through stone walls like the Kool-aid man, etc).

Honestly, just bumping the mundanes up to tier 3 would probably be enough for me. There's no need to fix the entire system at once.


i see a lot of good and bad in here, my opinions are:
#1:fix/ban i agree with, Battlefield control is already negated easily by smart GM/ Monsters so it doesn't need a nerf, Mind-Control is always a problem even if limited lower due to the fact that you are taking out a PC for awhile it would need to be neutered to unusable territory to "fix", rewrite is in the fix/ban section and freedom of movement doesn't need to be fixed in my opinion, i didn't know ability damage was unwieldy?

#2 i would disagree with move/full attack since it is a full action, HOWEVER i would agree with allowing 1/2 # attacks (including TwF/flurry/ect) as a standard action; feat taxes are a problem due to the fighter in the first place, i would suggest just folding in the feats that are taxes with other feats; for example PBS is not precise shot but has PBS folded into it, dodge/mobility are a single feat, remove spring attack from whirlwind attack, collapse TWF tree to about 3-4 feats instead of the 12 it seems to have, maybe add a few new feats to make new techniques see below.

Things like weapon focus/ specialization make sense to beef up they aren't worth a feat in the first place (BaB scaling maybe?), but others like leap attack/ shocktrooper boost HELL NO!
A Parry/dodge mechanic would be a good idea but then its more Palladium(rifts) then DnD, maybe just sacrificing attacks to get better AC? mixed with fighting defensively would be a major boost to AC. could use the 1/2 Attacks idea to get more attacks to defend with while moving.

#3 the skill system is mostly fine, just needs tweeks. 1:1 skill: rank cost; better Class skill setups (who has a fighter guard with no spot/listen/search!?); we already have skill tricks but more could always help, HOWEVER what it looks like you want is the unchained system from pathfinder where having enough skill ranks alters the skill itself, like 5 ranks in jump reducing the DC/ft by 1 or something.



Ideas for new feats/ techniques for mundanes mainly. (first 3 new feats taken from KotOR combat system btw)

variations of old feats. (only PHB ones)
Mobility: (replaces dodge) +4 to AC while moving in threatened areas, designate 1 target per round to gain a +1 AC bonus (scales with Bab +1/ natural iterative gained)
Precise shot (replaces Point blank shot): remove -4 penalty when firing into melee, +1 to attack and Damage rolls when target within 30 ft (scales with BaB +1/ natural Iterative gained)
Rapid Shot: acts like Two weapon fighting See below but improved/ greater version get +1 DR negation instead of +AC.
Weapon Focus: +1 to attack rolls/ natural iteratives gained
Weapon Specialization: +1 weapon damage, daggers deal 1d4 damage for medium creatures so they get +2 to their weapon damage, d6 get +3, d8 get +4, d10 +5, d12 +6, and any 2dx get +x.
Greater Weapon Focus/ Specialization gets x2 effect.
Whirlwind attack: Prerequisite change: Dex 13, Mobility, Combat expertise, BaB +4
All Craft Magic X feats (not brew potion/ forge ring/ scribe scroll): remove spellcaster requirement replace with ECL equivalent. also 1 scroll may be used per spell needed in magic item crafting.
Weapon finesse: add 1/2 dex to damage.
Toughness: (replace with improved toughness ability +3 base hit-points)
Tracking/ Trapfinding: as feats but all can track/ trapfinding, instead acts as skill focus(See Below) needed skill.

Skill Focus: +3 to specified skill +1/3 levels after feat is taken. (so if taken @ level 1 +1@ lvls 4,7,10,ect; but if taken @lvl 3 then +1@ lvls 6,9,12,ect)
2 skill feats (alertness/acrobatics/nimble fingers/ect) +2 to both skills +1 to 1 skill/ 3 lvls after feat is taken, pick which skill to upgrade when both have equal bonus from feat but other skill must be upgraded when unequal.

Straight up remove Endurance & Run feats, and Manyshot if using 1/2 # of attacks on full attack per standard attack.

Two weapon fighting: gain an extra attack when picking the feat & and extra attack @ BaB 8, 13, 18. all attacks made during a round are made at -2. (characters without this using two weapons/double weapons are made at -6)
Improved TWF: reduce attack penalty by 1, gain +1 AC due to offhand parrying
Greater TWF: Reduce attack penalty by 1, gain an additional +1 AC due to offhand parrying.


New Feats:
Flurry: +1 attack -2 to hit, improved/greater variants are like TWF (see above). melee only.
Precision: -2 to all attacks for +1 crit threat range [stacking with improved crit/ keen/ect. Improved reduces penalty by 1, greater increases threat range by 1. works for melee/ ranged.
Brutal Hit: combine attacks to deal 1/2 2nd strike damage for -2/ iterative separation [ie if using the -0 and -5 iterative as sacrifice reduce atk by 2, if using -10 instead of the -5 iterative reduce by 4, if -0 iterative no reduced attack]). Improved variant would reduce Atk Penalty by 1 per iterative separation, Greater Increases damage to 1/1.
NOTE that you don't get any bonus from weapon enchantments (fiery, shocking, ect) from this just weapon damage (including +1-10 enhancement), Strength, and power attack like feats/skills. works for melee/ ranged

Improved Tech (similar to sunder/trip/ect): +4 to specific technique, no AoO, Can be used at range.


New Techniques:
Hamper: using a called shot (see pathfinder for location chart) impair an opponent. Target Legs: -1d2 Dex -1/2 movement (-5 minimum, if target @ 0 then fall prone): Target Arms: -1d2 Str & Dex: Target Chest -1d2 Con & Str, Target Head: -1d2 Int & Wis & Cha. this is ability damage so it is temporary. this cannot reduce an opponent below 1 point in the attribute until all attributes are @1.
Sunder Limb: Resolve as Sunder attempt with -2 to attack roll (called shot modifier). when resolving damage reduce damage by armors hardness, if 1/3 opponents HP is dealt as damage limb is removed, for more than 1/4 HP dealt then treat as Hamper result, for less than 1/4 health treat as normal attack. can only be used for arms/legs.

[Dr_Dinosaur]

For anyone who likes the idea of moderately nerfing casters and buffing martials, check out Spheres of Power and Spheres of Might. My group uses them along with DSP stuff and the disparity is much less

[BassoonHero]

Battlefield control is already negated easily by smart GM/ Monsters so it doesn't need a nerf
The problem I'm concerned about is that a martial PC is negated easily by a smart GM/Monsters using common BFC. The necessary countermeasures are specific magic items that every martial character is effectively required to have unless the GM is deliberately having opponents go easy on them.

The solutions I'm working on are to allow a reflex save to escape the area of effect and to allow an Athletics skill check in place of a strength check to move.


freedom of movement doesn't need to be fixed in my opinion
At the very least, it's poorly written. I also believe that flat-out negating a tactically interesting class of spells is a bad idea, not to mention grappling. It's too strong of a silver bullet, in my opinion.


i didn't know ability damage was unwieldy?
The unwieldy part is recalculating attack bonuses, damage, ability DCs, hit points, saves, etc. I would much rather do what 3.5 did for negative levels, which is to replace the calculated effects with a simple loose approximation.


i would suggest just folding in the feats that are taxes with other feats; for example PBS is not precise shot but has PBS folded into it
The problem with this is that it doesn't really address hyperspecialization. In 3.5, if you want to do something in combat other than swing a stick for damage, you have to pay a feat tax to not suck at it. It's rarely worth paying a tax of even one feat to not suck at something that you're not going to specialize in. 5e got this right in one respect: javelins are a reasonable ranged option for strength-based martial characters. In 3.5, you need to spend a feat on Brutal Throw and two feats on Precise Shot to reach that competence baseline. Folding Precise Shot into Point Blank Shot is less bad, to be sure, but still hardly worth considering.


others like leap attack/ shocktrooper boost HELL NO!
Shock Trooper is a good example of a feat that's already at the right power level. Other feats could learn a lot from Shock Trooper.


A Parry/dodge mechanic would be a good idea but then its more Palladium(rifts) then DnD,
That's the dividing line between D&D and Rifts?


maybe just sacrificing attacks to get better AC? mixed with fighting defensively would be a major boost to AC. could use the 1/2 Attacks idea to get more attacks to defend with while moving.
Eh. It feels bad to give up attacks in exchange for numerical bonuses. Parrying should feel active. If it isn't fun to use, what's the point?


the skill system is mostly fine, just needs tweeks
I have quite a lot of objections to the skill system, but that may be a story for another time.


HOWEVER what it looks like you want is the unchained system from pathfinder where having enough skill ranks alters the skill itself, like 5 ranks in jump reducing the DC/ft by 1 or something.
The Unchained system is a good idea wasted through timidity. For one thing, most of the unlocks are minor numerical bonuses. For another, the default implementation requires spending feats to use the unlocks. Removing the latter restriction is a good start, but the granted abilities remain largely unexciting. The later abilities are wildly level-inappropriate, particularly the rank-20 capstones.

[Dr_Dinosaur]

Yeah, the Occult Skill Unlocks are somewhat better and 2E’s skill system looks like one of its stronger points imo from what little we know of it

[BassoonHero]

Without derailing the thread (I hope), my chief problems with the skill system are as follows:

- Allocating skill points requires way too many tiny decisions that are individually consequential.
- Skill advancement is boring.
- Many skills don't make sense as skills in the first place, or don't merit the complexity of the skill system.
- Interesting skill-related abilities are often locked behind prestige classes and cannot be acquired within the skill system itself. The base skills do not scale adequately.

The solutions I'm working on are as follows:

- Consolidate skills to reduce "fiddliness".
- Add more uses to skills to interact with magic in a scaling-friendly way, like using Athletics to power through Solid Fog.
- Make skill tricks a core part of the system, making advancement more interesting.
- Add high-powered skill tricks that are relevant at high levels.

[lord_khaine]

Shock Trooper is a good example of a feat that's already at the right power level. Other feats could learn a lot from Shock Trooper.

No. I think Shock Trooper is a horrible feat. It twists the gameplay into an arms race, where the GM either have to follow suit.
And it makes combat even more of a game of rocket tag. I wish it had newer been printed.

[ColorBlindNinja]

No. I think Shock Trooper is a horrible feat. It twists the gameplay into an arms race, where the GM either have to follow suit.
And it makes combat even more of a game of rocket tag. I wish it had newer been printed.

All Shock Trooper does is allow you to take the penalty from power attack from to hit to AC.

It's feats like Leap Attack that actually allow charging to deal obscene levels of damage. Shock Trooper on its own doesn't do that.

[BassoonHero]

I concur with ColorBlindNinja's assessment. Uberchargers are a problem, but a single feat is not to blame. Ideally, I would like to nerf the combo back to sanity while buffing other combat options.

[Ignimortis]

All Shock Trooper does is allow you to take the penalty from power attack from to hit to AC.

It's feats like Leap Attack that actually allow charging to deal obscene levels of damage. Shock Trooper on its own doesn't do that.

But it does turn an offensive penalty for offensive benefit into a defensive penalty for offensive benefit, therefore encouraging players to kill stuff before it can actually attack.

[ColorBlindNinja]

But it does turn an offensive penalty for offensive benefit into a defensive penalty for offensive benefit, therefore encouraging players to kill stuff before it can actually attack.

Players already are incentived to kill enemies before they attack. Shocktrooper just means that melee characters can hit for extra damage without missing.

EDIT: Also, why are we complaining about Shocktrooper when charging builds are one of the martials best answer to dealing massive amounts of damage? Without it, they fall even farther behind than they already are.

[EldritchWeaver]

Alright, I will share a few of my "easy fix" ideas, that would be quick means to moving forward.


1. All casters get 2 skill points per level+ int. All non-casters get access to ALL skills, 6 skill points per level, and have individual features per class which max out 2 or 3 skills automatically, without use of skill points; And every level provides another rank in said skills.

Example. Rogue gets automatic maxed out slots in Hide,Move silently, and slight of hand.
Fighter gets maxed out ride, swim, Jump. Scout gets Spot,Listen,Survival.

The point is that spell casting takes up so much learning that regular skills aren't paid attention to, but the non-spellcasting classes earn their bread and butter by them.


2.All non-spellcasting classes get TOB Maneuvers, but only have choice between two schools. Advance as warblade.



3.Armor provides DR=to AC.


4.Artificer's Item Creation Class feature is now a feat. Requires 4 ranks in craft, 4 ranks in spell craft, and 4 ranks in Use Magic device.


In regards to #1: Does not affect the wizard. Hurts all other casters, which aren't Int-based. In particular the bard, who is supposed to be a skill-monkey. Also, effectively you give 9 + Int to martials, but with 3 fixed skills. The inversion is enormous, since this does make casters dependent on spells which circumvent or improve skills or they can't participate in skills that much (except for wizard).

#1 and #2: Multiclassing is a thing. What happens if you cross the streams? Do you get access to the benefits? Do you lose them? Does it only depend on the respective levels?

#4: PF2 is going to grant this kind of access, too. But why do you require these prereqs at all, if everyone can take it? As it is, since wizard doesn't have UMD, a wizard needs level 5 to reach that limit. Which makes ironically the iconic item crafter worse than mundanes.

[death390]

double damage on leap attack is fine as printed when it was only considered to affect a single strike, the pounce combo with it broke uberchargers damage wise. whereas shocktrooper broke uberchargers to-hit wise by shunting the penalty from to-hit to AC.

the "massive" numbers that uberchargers put out are due to this feat combo nearly alone. without the penalty to attack that power attack generated in the first place then dumping as much as possible to the point of even reducing to negative AC doesn't much matter (easier to hit than a die roll) since you kill almost everything in one shot + 30 damage from PA lvl 20 dumping all BaB 2H weapon but almost no miss change since to-hit is not harmed.

whereas leap attack/pounce doubles the power attack damage. even just a greatsword (2d6) + 30 Str (+10) + 10 PA (15) *2 + 5 weapon = 2d6 + 45 Per hit @ lvl 10 with only a -10 to hit. with shock trooper that adds an extra 15 damage to every hit with -0 to-hit bringing it up to 2d6+ 60 but everything has a much higher chance of hitting; @ lvl 20 its 2d6 + 90. hell for -2 to hit you could add a number of odd weapons for TWF (tail blade/ armor spikes/ ) ect to add about 1d3-4 + 5 Str dmg from Leap attack for only -2 to-hit if considered light or -4 if the extra weapon is considered 1handed (1d4-8 +10 Str + PA damage: x2) then all the two weapon fighting iteratives.




i am pretty sure that the tail blades are considered 1H weapons due to the fact they are 3.0 medium sized weapons (and if you look at the PHBs the 3.0 medium weapon list was straight converted to 1H weapons) and it would only take 1 feat to get a tail (if you picked a dragonblood race, 2 if not) and 1 more for EWP (tail blade/club). that would net you an extra weapon to use for TWF that is 1H and can make use of PA. so 1d8 + 30 STR (5 damage) + 20 *2 PA. for a total of -4 -4 of regular and tail weapon attacks. then it only depends on how many extra attacks you get from TWF line. should be easy as a fighter to spend some of those.

silverbrow human Kensai Variant fighter (tail blade[get WP tail blade free]) (each fighter feat (Fx is offset by 1 as normal for uberchager build F4 is ECL 5 for example)
1: Dragon Tail
H: TWF
F1: tail blade expert (+1 attack/ damage +1 @5, 10, 15, 20)
Lion totem barb @ lvl 2 (can now full attack on charge with greatsword and tail blade)
F2: Power attack
3: Improved Bull Rush
F4: Leap Attack
6: shocktrooper
F6: Imp TWF
F8:
9:
F10: Greater TWF
12:
F12:
F14:
15:
F16:
18:
F18:

as you can see like normal the fighter has a lot of open slots left but @ lvl 20 (assuming 30 STR) has 4 greatsword attacks dealing 2d6 + 90 @-4 to-hit and 3 tail club attacks dealing 1d8+ 50 @ +1 to hit (iterative negatives applied as they go). totals are 8D6 + 360 & 3d8 +150. so about an additional 1/3 damage. then there is all the OTHER feat slots to deal with weapon focus/ spec/ect. (& 2 more feats if playing with flaws)

[Ignimortis]

Players already are incentived to kill enemies before they attack. Shocktrooper just means that melee characters can hit for extra damage without missing.

EDIT: Also, why are we complaining about Shocktrooper when charging builds are one of the martials best answer to dealing massive amounts of damage? Without it, they fall even farther behind than they already are.

Not complaining, just pointing out that Shock Trooper turns an (assumed) even trade into an uneven one. I don't think it's bad for the game or anything, since if Shock Trooper didn't exist, fighter wouldn't even have ubercharging.

[Cosi]

Uberchargers are a bad game design. They're some of the most binary characters in the game. Either they can charge you (in which case you die) or they can't charge you (in which case they do nothing). The fact that they are the best martial build is exactly why I view all solutions that aspire to bring the Wizard down to the level of the Fighter as fundamentally wrongheaded. That said, if you are going to remove the ubercharger (which, to be clear, you should), you can't replace it with nothing. But you should replace it with things like Tome of Battle, where martial characters have dynamic-ish sets of options.


You don't need to make Martials as potentially good as Wizards for them to be balanced, as witnessed by the fact there' not many threads asking "How do we balance Partial Casters vs Wizards". We all know the Bard doesn't have the same potential, but it has enough that it's not a big deal.

I think the weakness of the Bard is a big deal. A Core Bard is an anemic waste of space that doesn't have any core competency in which he is level appropriate. It just happens that Bards got enough buffs from splats that people forgot how bad they were to begin with, and even then they don't play as a Jack of All Trades type -- Bardblades are melee/buffs, DFI are straight buffs, Sublime Chords are straight magic, and so on.


Finally, I think including a free scaling magic weapon (or armour, or amulet of mighty fists, or whatever) in class would be useful for granting more utility, as then they can use their WBL for a bunch of things.

I like "Weapon of Legacy, but no penalties". The penalties are stupid and turn what would otherwise be a perfectly good system for stealth-buffing underperformers into an underpowered mess. Also, it fits the source material. Mjolnir isn't just a +5 bonus to attack rolls, it's flight and lightning powers too. Also probably some level of super strength.


Fix/ban some of the obvious stuff.

This is covering a lot of ground in very little detail. What is "the obvious stuff"? What needs to be banned? What do the fixes look like?


Make battlefield control easier to resist.

Battlefield control is already fairly easy to resist, martials just don't have those resistances.


Write less unwieldy rules for ability damage.

Ability damage is terrible and breaks the game. In any amount that isn't lethal it's either a minor debuff (everything but CON damage if you hit a relevant stat), regular damage attached to a debuff (CON damage), or meaningless (everything but CON damage if you don't hit a relevant stat). If you can do lethal amounts, it allows you to crap all over the level system. There's no version of it that's good, but it's ingrained enough that you can't easily dump it.


Add a robust parrying mechanic.

I don't think combat needs more die rolls to be resolved. I'm not convinced parrying is cool enough for the overhead that would be required here. Can't "parry" just be a defensive option offered by Iron Heart or Setting Sun maneuvers?


variations of old feats. (only PHB ones)

Shock Trooper is a good example of a feat that's already at the right power level. Other feats could learn a lot from Shock Trooper.

None of these do enough to be meaningful if you get one feat every three levels. You (by which I mean "the game") need(s) to decide whether feats are a minor bonus that is nice to have or unlocks a novel technique (most feats) or are character transforming powerups (as is suggested by the slowness with which you get feats, and also things like DMM or Natural Spell). Asking for people to pay the same price for Weapon Focus and Energy Substitution as Lord of the Uttercold and Greenbound Summoning is insane. You either need to commit to "feats are minor flavor buffs", in which case people should get one a level or more, or "feats are big and character defining", in which case people should be taking things like the Races of War Combat Feats.

This is a fairly general problem with 3e. Many things are not so much horribly imbalanced as operating wholly or partially at several different power levels. This gives you the opportunity to pick any of the power levels, depending on your preference, but it leaves the rules as they exist in an imbalanced state.


For anyone who likes the idea of moderately nerfing casters and buffing martials, check out Spheres of Power and Spheres of Might. My group uses them along with DSP stuff and the disparity is much less

"Have you heard the good word of Spheres of Power?"


At the very least, it's poorly written. I also believe that flat-out negating a tactically interesting class of spells is a bad idea, not to mention grappling. It's too strong of a silver bullet, in my opinion.

I think anything that causes people to not have to think about the grapple rules is an unalloyed good.

[ColorBlindNinja]

Not complaining, just pointing out that Shock Trooper turns an (assumed) even trade into an uneven one. I don't think it's bad for the game or anything, since if Shock Trooper didn't exist, fighter wouldn't even have ubercharging.

Alright, I get what you're saying.

[BassoonHero]

This is covering a lot of ground in very little detail. What is "the obvious stuff"? What needs to be banned? What do the fixes look like?
I'm talking about spells like alter self, shivering touch, and planar binding that are obviously broken or that have extreme potential for abuse. I'm being deliberately vague because I think that this point is largely outside the scope of the present discussion.


Battlefield control is already fairly easy to resist, martials just don't have those resistances.
In other words, BFC is very difficult for martial characters to resist. One way to address this is to give martial characters magical tools to resist them. Another answer is to provide alternative ways to resist those spells. For instance, a fighter might power through solid fog with an Athletics check.


Ability damage is terrible and breaks the game.
Well, I did imply I don't like the current system. :-) I don't have finished rules for this. I think that in some cases ability damage could be a partial substitute for one-shot save-or-die spells.


I don't think combat needs more die rolls to be resolved.
In the draft I'm looking at, parrying is a combat maneuver; it does not add die rolls. The mechanic as a whole could add die rolls to the extent that it might incentivize dual-wielding or shields.


None of these do enough to be meaningful if you get one feat every three levels.
Eh. Feats every other level are probably a good thing, but the difference is three feats over twenty levels — significant, but not a game-changer.


Asking for people to pay the same price for Weapon Focus and Energy Substitution as Lord of the Uttercold and Greenbound Summoning is insane.
Greenbound Summoning is insane, and Weapon Focus is useless. I think there's a reasonable middle ground. Power Attack, Rapid Shot, Karmic Strike — there's quality stuff out there.


I think anything that causes people to not have to think about the grapple rules is an unalloyed good.
Grappling should be a standard option, but it's a pain in the assn. This is easily fixable by rewriting the mechanic. I don't think of that as a balance change, though. Along the same lines, the rules for unarmed combat, multiweapon fighting, and natural weapons need to be rewritten.

[Mordaedil]

I hear a lot of grief about grappling (it was even one of the big advertisements for 4th edition), but isn't the function of grappling at the table fairly straight forward, despite the rules being fairly large? I've seen it become kind of a mess at the table because people start to look it up, but it's essentially just all about opposed grapple checks or escape artist if you want to evade it. The rules aren't even very specific (for instance, how do you free someone who is being grappled by someone else?), but at the table, it can be essentially narrowed down to "okay, roll me a grapple check to see if you succeed".

And I don't think anyone is confused about what weapons they can use in a grapple.

[EldritchWeaver]

Do I interpret this correctly?


Uberchargers are a bad game design. They're some of the most binary characters in the game. Either they can charge you (in which case you die) or they can't charge you (in which case they do nothing). The fact that they are the best martial build is exactly why I view all solutions that aspire to bring the Wizard down to the level of the Fighter as fundamentally wrongheaded. That said, if you are going to remove the ubercharger (which, to be clear, you should), you can't replace it with nothing. But you should replace it with things like Tome of Battle, where martial characters have dynamic-ish sets of options.

You recommend the use of supplement A to solve this problem.


"Have you heard the good word of Spheres of Power?"

Someone else recommends the of supplement B to solve the same problem. And then you mock them? If you do, that's hypocritical.

[Mordaedil]

Do I interpret this correctly?



You recommend the use of supplement A to solve this problem.



Someone else recommends the of supplement B to solve the same problem. And then you mock them? If you do, that's hypocritical.

It isn't hypocritical if he doesn't like one of the supplements, but likes the other. Besides, one is official and the other... Exists.

[EldritchWeaver]

It isn't hypocritical if he doesn't like one of the supplements, but likes the other.

Like or dislike doesn't factor in being hypocritical. Fact is, both approaches have the same solution - "use different rules".


Besides, one is official and the other... Exists.

Being produced by WotC is making rules automatically really great, everything else is so bad you can just ignore it? If that would be true, then the core classes wouldn't be so imbalanced in the first place. And people wouldn't be willing to recommend SoP/SoM so readily.

[Mordaedil]

Like or dislike doesn't factor in being hypocritical. Fact is, both approaches have the same solution - "use different rules".
I can't speak on Cosi's behalf with regards to this, but I think you are misrepresenting the argument here. He doesn't make any value statement with regards to using different rules. He just simply offers his own and dismisses another. That doesn't mean he's being hypocritical at all. That's just dismissing his viewpoint without trying to understand where he comes from.


Being produced by WotC is making rules automatically really great, everything else is so bad you can just ignore it? If that would be true, then the core classes wouldn't be so imbalanced in the first place. And people wouldn't be willing to recommend SoP/SoM so readily.
People recommend SoP/SoM because they have played with it and find it great for their games. But this isn't an universal opinion of those rules. Everybody is entitled to their own opinions on them.

Also, I'm not saying "because WotC made them, the rules are automatically better". That's putting words in my mouth. Official products carry clout. That's the only difference. SoP/SoM is no better than homebrew content and fact is every homebrew content works really well for the tables that make them and they work for the games they are made with in mind. SoP/SoM simply has a goal to be better managed than most homebrew content, but they lack that clout that any official printed book has. And there is no way around that for them.

[Cosi]

In other words, BFC is very difficult for martial characters to resist. One way to address this is to give martial characters magical tools to resist them. Another answer is to provide alternative ways to resist those spells. For instance, a fighter might power through solid fog with an Athletics check.

My point there was to suggest that since there exist counters, it is easier and safer to provide broader access to those counters rather than add new ones. In particular, adding new counters that work for anyone has the potential to screw up encounter balance. Lots of monsters (e.g. giant vermin) exist in the space of big dumb bruisers and are supposed to be beaten by BFC, or otherwise negating their ability to melee. If you make it possible for big dumb bruisers to avoid being crowd controlled, those monsters become a lot more dangerous. Therefore, I think a solution that makes Fighters not be big dumb bruisers is preferable to one which makes big dumb bruiser a more effective thing to be.


Well, I did imply I don't like the current system. :-) I don't have finished rules for this. I think that in some cases ability damage could be a partial substitute for one-shot save-or-die spells.

I think ability damage should just not exist. Long duration conditions and negative levels handle most of what it should do (provide lasting debuffs as a result of a fight), and don't have the property of one-shotting certain classes of monster. However, it is very ingrained in the system, and trying to cut it out of the game as it exists may well be more trouble than it's worth.


Eh. Feats every other level are probably a good thing, but the difference is three feats over twenty levels — significant, but not a game-changer.

I meant feats every level. If I'm expected to be taking Spontaneous Summoner or Wolverine's Rage as a feat, I should be getting a huge pile of feats. Not waiting as long as many games last to get your third feat.


Greenbound Summoning is insane, and Weapon Focus is useless. I think there's a reasonable middle ground. Power Attack, Rapid Shot, Karmic Strike — there's quality stuff out there.

I think Greenbound Summoning is at or close to the correct power level if you get one feat every three levels. At that rate, feats should be character defining or character transforming. Not "I can hit less accurately to do more damage".


Someone else recommends the of supplement B to solve the same problem. And then you mock them? If you do, that's hypocritical.

That comment (like the one about the grapple rules) was meant largely in jest. People who support Spheres of Power tend to be fairly aggressive in their advocacy for using it (to the point that I've seen at least one poster explicitly request not to have it recommended as a solution). It's worth noting in this context that I've suggested a bunch of things which aren't Tome of Battle.


Like or dislike doesn't factor in being hypocritical. Fact is, both approaches have the same solution - "use different rules".

What possible solution to "the rules are bad" that isn't "use different rules" exists? Also, rulesets have strengths and weaknesses and can be evaluated on that basis. I personally think Spheres of Power is a bad ruleset that works towards a solution I don't like (making casters more mechanically focused on a few abilities), and it's off topic for this thread.

[BassoonHero]

...isn't the function of grappling at the table fairly straight forward, despite the rules being fairly large?
Yep. That's why I feel it could be rewritten pretty easily.


My point there was to suggest that since there exist counters, it is easier and safer to provide broader access to those counters rather than add new ones. In particular, adding new counters that work for anyone has the potential to screw up encounter balance. Lots of monsters (e.g. giant vermin) exist in the space of big dumb bruisers and are supposed to be beaten by BFC, or otherwise negating their ability to melee. If you make it possible for big dumb bruisers to avoid being crowd controlled, those monsters become a lot more dangerous. Therefore, I think a solution that makes Fighters not be big dumb bruisers is preferable to one which makes big dumb bruiser a more effective thing to be.
Easier, yes. Preferable... well, that's a matter of preference.


I meant feats every level.
I admit that's not a suggestion I've often heard.


If I'm expected to be taking Spontaneous Summoner or Wolverine's Rage as a feat, I should be getting a huge pile of feats. ... I think Greenbound Summoning is at or close to the correct power level if you get one feat every three levels.
These are all feats for spellcasters, and they span the range from "broken" to "okay" without occupying the center of "good". So this hard for me to evaluate in the context of martial characters. Are there any martial feats that you would consider to be at an appropriate power level? What would a Greenbound-Summoning-level martial feat even look like?

[Cosi]

Easier, yes. Preferable... well, that's a matter of preference.

I think if you are not rewriting the system, whatever requires you to make less changes (and in particular, to add less new interactions) is better.


I admit that's not a suggestion I've often heard.

Feats are tiny and stupid, but you get them very rarely. That's obviously not functional, but you could fix it in either direction. Either give people more minor feats, or the same number of feats that are bigger.


These are all feats for spellcasters, and they span the range from "broken" to "okay" without occupying the center of "good". So this hard for me to evaluate in the context of martial characters. Are there any martial feats that you would consider to be at an appropriate power level? What would a Greenbound-Summoning-level martial feat even look like?

In RAW (and mostly ignoring prerequisites), Shock Trooper would be the standout. But really I'd want people to be taking the Races of War Combat Feats (http://www.dandwiki.com/wiki/Races_of_War_(3.5e_Sourcebook)/Warriors_with_Style#The_New_Combat_Ready_Feats). Those are explicitly designed to work for martials and to fix exactly this problem.

[BassoonHero]

I'm not a fan of the Races of War feats. I think that if you want to give a character a bunch of different abilities, there's no need to group them into feats that do a bunch of different things.

Take the first one on the list, Blind Fighting. The first two abilities are a sort of fixed version of the original Blind-Fight feat. (As it happens, it's almost identical to a skill trick in the system I'm working on.) Then, at sixth level, you get the capstone -- I approve, although myself I just make this another skill trick. Then, at level 11, you get a slightly longer-range ability that doesn't work on flying enemies. Finally, at level 16 you get slightly-better Uncanny Dodge.

Then look at Blitz, the next one on the list. It gives you two alternate combat options right away, but while the mechanics are different they're doing the same thing in principle. At level 6, you get a great ability. At 11, you get another new option, tied to the Intimidate skill. At 16, you get an ability you needed ten levels ago (and that I would give away for free anyway).

Combat Looting is useless unless you're a grappler rogue or something. Combat School is just plain broken.

Overall, the Races of War feats look like one or maybe two good ideas with a bunch of random filler. They just don't seem to hold together; they're too fiddly for the benefits. Obviously, your mileage may vary.

[upho]

First off, I appreciate you having an actually serious go at this difficult challenge, Cosi. And for trying to maintain a focus on both what needs changing and how to change it with a minimum of work. IMO, over the years there have been too many threads and posts simply whining about more or less relevant related issues without offering solutions, and too many suggesting solutions which require far too massive and laborious changes to be anywhere near practical for most people.

Disclaimer: It's been nearly a decade since I last played 3.5, so please bear with if I don't remember certain details correctly and take my comments with a grain of salt. That said, I do believe I'm sufficiently up to speed when it comes to PF, and I think the general C/MD problem exists in PF in pretty much the same way as it does in 3.5 (and with some minor tweaks the solutions suggested should be applicable to PF as well).


Several people have posted threads recently about how to balance casters. Mostly these threads aren't terribly serious (though at least one of them (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?557889-I-ve-had-a-game-balance-thought) was), but there are various comments, in those threads and elsewhere that express the same incorrect belief -- the correct solution to the balance problems 3e has is to make casters less powerful. This is wrong, and its wrong for a two major reasons. First, people don't like nerfs. In general, they dislike nerfs more than they like buffs. So we should be very careful to avoid nerfing things to as large a degree as possible when addressing imbalance (though I will admit there are some things that need to be nerfed, e.g. planar binding and wish). Second, casters are better than mundanes. I don't mean that in the sense that they are more powerful (although, yes, that is obviously true), I mean that Wizard is better designed than Fighter.I'm not sure I agree with the extent of caster nerfing you believe to be the minimum required, nor with your last claim about wizard being better designed than fighter.

With regards to the minimum nerfing required, I believe there are quite a few spells - besides those most obvious higher level ones - which aren't necessarily nearly as unbalanced, but nevertheless have a very high risk of becoming disruptive and bad for the game at the level when they're first made accessible. Examples include freedom of movement, dimension door, polymorph, teleportation and similar, many spells offering effect immunity or the ability to flat-out ignore a target's immunity, and most SoD/SoL spells (sleep is awful game design). That is, even in game where "mundanes" have similar abilities, some of these spells remain "I win" buttons with boring binary effects similar to the overkill caused by a successful charge by an optimized übercharger, while others frequently require the DM puts in a ton of tedious additional prep work simply to prevent major interesting challenges from being easily bypassed.

While I agree it wouldn't be practical to change all of these high-risk spells, I believe at least the most problematic ones should be addressed. How do you intend to do that, and if not, why not?

Regarding whether the wizard is better designed than fighter, I believe that's entirely dependent on the game they're supposed to be in. So I think it would be far more accurate to say the fighter is very poorly designed for a game including the wizard, and vice versa. Which in itself says quite a lot about how great the C/MD is.


So clearly, when confronted with the imbalance between casters and martials, we should attempt to move martials up before we attempt move casters down. To do that, we need to address two things.

First, the difficulty of building an effective martial character. To this end, the obvious solution is access to high-floor options like Tome of Battle (likely as a free Gestalt with whatever martial class the player would otherwise take), or the homebrew scaling feats from Races of War (http://www.dandwiki.com/wiki/Races_of_War_(3.5e_Sourcebook)/Warriors_with_Style#The_Failure_of_Feats). An important thing to remember is that the goal of buffs like these should not be to give people the resources to create a 20 level build that can be notionally effective if they are allowed to dumpster dive through every printed splat, but to give people options that allow them to make an effective character quickly and cleanly. This also has the advantage of mitigating the linearity of martial characters. Races of War feats are designed to replace entire feat chains, meaning it is no longer prohibitively expensive to be effective with both a bow and a sword.ToB gestalt and the scaling Races of War feats will certainly up the power floor of martials and add plenty of combat versatility. But I still fail to see how these suggestions are enough to allow martials to take on new combat roles, much less perform them at a level comparable to that of a wizard. That is, martials will generally still crowd the single-target "striker" niche, at least while also meeting the "make an effective character quickly and cleanly" goal. To make their combat versatility and effectiveness comparable to that of a wizard, martials must actually have comparable options, many of which simply doesn't exist for martials. I mean, Races of War feats (like Command) and ToB maneuvers are still far from able to grant control power on a level comparable to that of a BFC/summoning focused conjurer, nor do these options allow a martial to take on any combat focus/role to the extent their damage output can be ignored as completely as full casters built for the same role can.

In short, I don't see how martials are supposed to be as effective and versatile in combat as casters without supporting abilities as strong as those casters have. How do you intend to address this issue?


Second, the dearth of utility options available to martials, particularly outside combat. A Fighter needs something to do when the combat music is not playing. Not just because that makes his character more effective, but because extended sequences where a character is unable to act are unfun for the corresponding player, which means that for extended non-combat sequences to occur (allowing casters to use their non-combat abilities), martials need something to contribute to those sequences. The obvious solution would be to simply give martials casting, but there isn't an elegant way of doing that without also allowing them to use that casting in combat. Instead, I suggest some combination of custom Weapons of Legacy (with penalties removed), access to Infusions as an Artificer (which have few in-combat applications without access to Action Points), or a free Factotum Gestalt (which also provides some in-combat utility).I'm not a fan of the Weapons of Legacy idea, as I believe it would require too much customization work in order to transform the relevant benefits into suitable class options, and/or would further increase magic item dependency in both mechanics and flavor. IIRC Artificer Infusions could work for out of combat/utility stuff, though I don't really remember whether they could also give enough of a boost to martial combat related things like melee reach, AoOs/round and opposed Str checks. The Factotum Gestalt might be the easiest to just slap on, but it wouldn't exactly make building a martial less complex, and the casting feels like giving up on finding a more elegant solution not dependent on spells IMO.

Hmm... One possible option may be stealing the PF Summoner's eidolon evolutions (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/classes/base-classes/Summoner/eidolons/#TOC-1-Point-Evolutions-) along with a fitting pool of evolution points. Evos are fantastically fun and flavorful IMO, and can greatly improve versatility both in and outside of combat (see my Wrathblood (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?442363-Wrathblood-The-Monster-Bloodrager-Archetype-New-and-Improved-Monstrous-Thread!) homebrew bloodrager archetype for an example of this now tried and tested in several different games and groups). It's definitely not a suitable general solution for all martials, but it may very well be one possible option for certain martial character concepts instead of say Artificer Infusions.

[upho]

Overall, the Races of War feats look like one or maybe two good ideas with a bunch of random filler. They just don't seem to hold together; they're too fiddly for the benefits. Obviously, your mileage may vary.Yeah, I have to say I agree with this. They don't exactly come off as quality material, many of them merely offering a somewhat vague conceptual idea with what I'd best describe as place-holder mechanics, having a lot of gaping holes and providing poorly balanced benefits seemingly chosen almost randomly (or possibly in order to suit the needs of specific PCs in the creators' games). As written, I wouldn't recommend using any of them except possibly the two or three most finished and well-designed ones.

Are there no good alternatives? Maybe homebrew feats similar to these PF ones (http://michaeliantorno.com/feat-taxes-in-pathfinder/) (which are great, but few applicable to 3.5), but perhaps providing a bit more drastic and scaling benefits?

[Cosi]

Take the first one on the list, Blind Fighting.

I disagree that those abilities are thematically unlinked. To me, that looks like a group of abilities that are very clearly evocative of a concept that is basically Daredevil.


Then look at Blitz, the next one on the list. It gives you two alternate combat options right away, but while the mechanics are different they're doing the same thing in principle. At level 6, you get a great ability. At 11, you get another new option, tied to the Intimidate skill. At 16, you get an ability you needed ten levels ago (and that I would give away for free anyway).

Again, I think "free Intimidate" matches pretty well to "reckless aggression". Certain, you could give away the final ability earlier or for free, but I don' think that's required.


Combat Looting is useless unless you're a grappler rogue or something. Combat School is just plain broken.

Combat Looting is a niche option, but niche options are fine. I'm not really sure what you think is broken about Combat School. It's good, and I could see maybe swapping the daze with either the +11 or the +16, but I don't think it's broken. Dazing on your attacks doesn't seem much more deadly than dropping a stinking cloud on a fight.

Incidentally, that link cuts off partway through the combat feats. The full sourcebook (with the full list of feats) is here (http://www.tgdmb.com/viewtopic.php?t=33294).


With regards to the minimum nerfing required, I believe there are quite a few spells - besides those most obvious higher level ones - which aren't necessarily nearly as unbalanced, but nevertheless have a very high risk of becoming disruptive and bad for the game at the level when they're first made accessible. Examples include freedom of movement, dimension door, polymorph, teleportation and similar, many spells offering effect immunity or the ability to flat-out ignore a target's immunity, and most SoD/SoL spells (sleep is awful game design). That is, even in game where "mundanes" have similar abilities, some of these spells remain "I win" buttons with boring binary effects similar to the overkill caused by a successful charge by an optimized übercharger, while others frequently require the DM puts in a ton of tedious additional prep work simply to prevent major interesting challenges from being easily bypassed.

freedom of movement: I could certainly see an argument for nerfing the immunity spells, but I think that in general they provide a valuable service by preventing the game from falling into "I do my one thing" ad infinitum. If some enemies are immune to grappling/illusions/death effects/whatever, characters can't just be one trick ponies, which is desirable.
dimension door: This spell seems totally fine to me, and I have never seen complaints about it previously.
polymorph: I agree that this spell needs to be nerfed. It should probably be replaced with a choice from a menu of buffs and a disguise.
teleportation: I have seen lots of complaints about this, but I think they are fundamentally misguided. The effect of teleportation isn't to skip encounters, it is to allow the party to only participate in encounters they want to participate in. If you are observing players using teleport to skip to the end of your adventures, that probably means that you have written an adventure whose only interesting encounter is at the end. Generally, I think most complaints about "I win" buttons and encounter bypassing come from DMs who are Dming badly. I can go into more detail if you would like.
SoD/SoL: I think Save or Dies have advantages (4e pretty clearly demonstrated the flaws of a combat system where there's no quick way to end a fight), but I could see arguments for nerfing them. If I were redesigning the system entirely, I would probably require that targets be at half HP or lower to be vulnerable to spells that take them out of the fight. As is, I don't think the negative impact of these spells is enough to justify sweeping changes.


Regarding whether the wizard is better designed than fighter, I believe that's entirely dependent on the game they're supposed to be in. So I think it would be far more accurate to say the fighter is very poorly designed for a game including the wizard, and vice versa. Which in itself says quite a lot about how great the C/MD is.

I think that's leaning too heavily on balance point as a part of design. Yes, the Wizard and the Fighter aren't compatible because of their power gap, but that's a different question from "which one is better designed", and the answer to the design question is something that should guide us in determining which balance point is preferable. Once you stop including balance in your game design assessment, it becomes very difficult for me to imagine anyone looking at the Fighter as well designed. The Fighter ... isn't a class. It's a citation to a bunch of rules shared by all the classes. The only things that are definitively Fighter exclusive are the Weapon Focus line of feats, and those feats are both boring and garbage. I certainly think there are classes that are better design than the Wizard (even some non-casting classes), but I think the literal Fighter versus Wizard comparison is very clearly favorable to the Wizard (and I also think the abstract Mundane versus Caster comparison is favorable to the casters).


ToB gestalt and the scaling Races of War feats will certainly up the power floor of martials and add plenty of combat versatility. But I still fail to see how these suggestions are enough to allow martials to take on new combat roles, much less perform them at a level comparable to that of a wizard.

I think those options would allow martials to fill a reasonable variety of combat roles. Even allow characters to fight passably effectively at range is a big bump. But between those options, they afford the ability to do a reasonable variety of combat things (albeit usually mediated via damage). A martial character with those options could pull off single target damage, AoE damage, some on-attack debuffs, some buff and support abilities, and possibly trip-based BFC. Consider something like a Warblade//Marshall. You get an aura that provides some minor bonuses, the ability to grant your allies actions (both via white raven tactics and Grant Move Action), taking Horde Breaker and Whirlwind and wielding a Spiked Chain allows you to do a passable job threatening large groups of enemies, and your maneuvers give you good defenses or additional offensive options. Plus potentially some Weapon of Legacy stuff. Certainly, it's not as much as a Wizard can, but it's enough to be viable.


I'm not a fan of the Weapons of Legacy idea, as I believe it would require too much customization work in order to transform the relevant benefits into suitable class options, and/or would further increase magic item dependency in both mechanics and flavor.

Not super sure what you mean by too much customization work. You pick from a set of menu options. As far as magic item dependency goes, it does sort of increase that, but it does so in a way that is much more in line with the source material D&D is trying to emulate. King Arthur doesn't have a +5 Holy Longsword, he has Excalibur, a legendary weapon that turns aside the blades of his enemies and entitles him to the kingship of England. In fantasy, characters do have single, powerful weapons that grant unique abilities. They don't have lots of little magic items that grant numeric bonuses. Moving to a paradigm where people have things like Weapons of Legacy instead of the assortment of items they do now is probably net-neutral in terms of item requirements, but makes characters much close to genre expectations.


IIRC Artificer Infusions could work for out of combat/utility stuff, though I don't really remember whether they could also give enough of a boost to martial combat related things like melee reach, AoOs/round and opposed Str checks.

In-combat, infusions get you some basic buffs, the ability to add enhancement effects to magic weapons, a bunch of stuff that does things to constructs, spell storing item, and at high levels some BFC. All in all, basically reasonable stuff


The Factotum Gestalt might be the easiest to just slap on, but it wouldn't exactly make building a martial less complex, and the casting feels like giving up on finding a more elegant solution not dependent on spells IMO.

Factotum doesn't really add that much build complexity. You can take some different skills (and if there were more non-core skills, dumpster diving for them might be a real issue), but the only real complexity is at play time when you try to find the perfect spell. It does give you spellcasting, but that spellcasting is really crappy for use in combat, and if you had access to maneuvers (or simply more effective attack actions), you wouldn't try to use it there. You would use it outside combat, but outside combat you have to give people spells because nothing else is written up with non-combat effects. I mean, I guess "psionic powers", but I don't think that fixes anyone's issues.


Hmm... One possible option may be stealing the PF Summoner's eidolon evolutions (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/classes/base-classes/Summoner/eidolons/#TOC-1-Point-Evolutions-) along with a fitting pool of evolution points. Evos are fantastically fun and flavorful IMO, and can greatly improve versatility both in and outside of combat (see my Wrathblood (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?442363-Wrathblood-The-Monster-Bloodrager-Archetype-New-and-Improved-Monstrous-Thread!) homebrew bloodrager archetype for an example of this now tried and tested in several different games and groups). It's definitely not a suitable general solution for all martials, but it may very well be one possible option for certain martial character concepts instead of say Artificer Infusions.

Certainly there are other things you could feasibly give other characters.

[BassoonHero]

I disagree that those abilities are thematically unlinked. To me, that looks like a group of abilities that are very clearly evocative of a concept that is basically Daredevil.
Blind-Fighting is definitely the one that holds together the best.


Again, I think "free Intimidate" matches pretty well to "reckless aggression".
You and I are looking for different things here. One of the things I like best about feats is that they are discrete. In my mind, that sets them apart from, say, prestige classes. The Blitz feat doesn't feel like an ability that scales, but like a pile of separate abilities.


'm not really sure what you think is broken about Combat School. ... Dazing on your attacks doesn't seem much more deadly than dropping a stinking cloud on a fight.
I strongly disagree. For one thing, daze is a much more powerful condition than nauseated. For another, you can force a single opponent to save several times in a single round. You never run out, and there is no opportunity cost to use the ability. Every melee character should take this feat, including dexterity-based characters.


If some enemies are immune to grappling/illusions/death effects/whatever, characters can't just be one trick ponies, which is desirable.
Martial characters are forced to be one-trick ponies anyway (Tome of Battle excluded). The feat taxes in 3.5 are too severe for a martial character to be good at more than one thing. On the other hand, spellcasters are never forced to be one-trick ponies.

There's a common pattern in 3.5 where an offensive option is powerful and difficult to resist via ordinary means, but is utterly nullified by a silver bullet (freedom of movement, true seeing, death ward, mind blank). The typical result is that access to the silver bullet is [considered mandatory at higher levels](http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?187851-3-5-Lists-of-Necessary-Magic-Items). The end result is that the offensive ability is either overpowered or ineffective depending on the players' access to answers. This is uninteractive, and it's a significant contributor to the "rocket tag" of high-level combat.

Adding insult to injury, it's almost always easier and cheaper for spellcasters to acquire the necessary immunities. This subproblem can be addressed by granting martial characters broader access to those immunities, but to me this looks like adding epicycles. The underlying dynamic needs to change. In some cases, the offensive abilities can be powered down. This is basically the save-or-die problem, and it's a whole other discussion.

In other cases, I prefer to come up with mundane resistances, like using Athletics to charge through solid fog. This is fundamentally interactive in a way that buying freedom of movement is not. From the martial character's perspective, it feels a lot more awesome than spending 12,000 gp and a swift action to ignore the effect. And it's a way to differentiate characters -- the wizard uses a spell, the barbarian brute-forces it, and the rogue (perhaps) dives out of the way before the fog solidifies. A subtle benefit of this example implementation is that the action economy slightly favors the non-casters: the Athletics check can be made as part of regular movement, whereas casting a spell or activating an item takes an action of some kind.


Once you stop including balance in your game design assessment, it becomes very difficult for me to imagine anyone looking at the Fighter as well designed. The Fighter ... isn't a class. It's a citation to a bunch of rules shared by all the classes.
I actually disagree here. I don't think there's anything wrong in principle with a class that just gives a pile of bonus feats. In practice, of course, the fighter sucks, because the feats don't stack up.

Regarding items, I think that a significant part of a system upgrade should be reducing the number of boring magic items that characters have. Numerical bonuses for ability scores, weapons and armor, and so on should be baked into character advancement.

[Vaern]

I almost always play some sort of spellcaster, but 4th edition actually made martial characters enjoyable to play. Outside of planning out your overall build, there isn't a lot of decision making involved in playing a martial character in 3.5. Your attacks are simple and straightforward, which can become boring if it's the one thing your character is built to do. 4E giving martial characters a variety of different maneuvers that can push or pull enemies into strategically advantageous positions, inflict status effects, or allow them to to take a blow for a nearby ally makes them a lot more interesting to play.
Martials would still be outshined by casters if you let them pick up abilities like that in 3.5, but it would add a lot of extra utility to them and make them more appealing if for no other reason than a bit of extra fun factor.

[Arbane]

(I've been posting this rant a lot in these threads, because I think it's a good one.)



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

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

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

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

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

And I think he's right. Given D&D's "Magic ALWAYS beats Non-Magic" bias, "Fighter with no magic" is a concept that tops out around level 6, if not sooner. Magic geegaws can spackle the cracks a bit longer, but actual magicians can use geegaws too.

(For a good laugh, find Gary Gygax's effort to stat up Conan the Barbarian for AD&D - he had to break ALL THE RULES to do it, as Conan is just too _competent_ to be a Fighter. He also gave Conan psionic powers. :smallbiggrin: )

[ColorBlindNinja]

(For a good laugh, find Gary Gygax's effort to stat up Conan the Barbarian for AD&D - he had to break ALL THE RULES to do it, as Conan is just too _competent_ to be a Fighter. He also gave Conan psionic powers. :smallbiggrin: )

I'm not overly familiar with Conan, but I think he wouldn't be too difficult to model in 3.5.

[Morty]

Conan's big problem in 3.x D&D is the system's insistence that if a non-magical character can tie their own shoelaces outside of combat, they're a rogue or ranger, not a fighter or any other "warrior" type.

[death390]

I almost always play some sort of spellcaster, but 4th edition actually made martial characters enjoyable to play. Outside of planning out your overall build, there isn't a lot of decision making involved in playing a martial character in 3.5. Your attacks are simple and straightforward, which can become boring if it's the one thing your character is built to do. 4E giving martial characters a variety of different maneuvers that can push or pull enemies into strategically advantageous positions, inflict status effects, or allow them to to take a blow for a nearby ally makes them a lot more interesting to play.
Martials would still be outshined by casters if you let them pick up abilities like that in 3.5, but it would add a lot of extra utility to them and make them more appealing if for no other reason than a bit of extra fun factor.

4th edition basically EVERYONE is a caster with a re-skinning of their abilities.

also loved that rant because it is too true. my group is basically having this same problem right new WE ARE IN GOD DAMN E6 AND THEY ARE BITCHING I'M TOO POWERFUL @ lvl 3!!! i diluted my character concept to fit all the roles we are missing; trapfinding, out of combat healing, magic damage, magic identification, trap/ lock disabling, AC/ miss chance melee as a character with 11 HP, ranged combat, scouting, stealth. hell the only things i don't cover are BFC cause i ran out of spells availible and track because 3 of my 7 man group are F&#* RANGERS, 2 Fighters, and a guy who changes character every other game! in order to reach everything we needed i am M.A.D., those not great feats/traits, and dumped a buch of my skill points in cross class skills. i have an AC of 20 with 20-50% miss chance (if i use hide its 50% but that takes part of a move action), i do 1d6/lvl with kelgores acid bolt as my only damage spell, 1d8 with my blade, and thats it for damage.

[ColorBlindNinja]

Conan's big problem in 3.x D&D is the system's insistence that if a non-magical character can tie their own shoelaces outside of combat, they're a rogue or ranger, not a fighter or any other "warrior" type.

Barbarians actually have a half way decent skill list, as do Warbldaes. Plus, a dip in another class helps with skills in general.

[Snowbluff]

Disregard fighters.
They lack mechanical depth.
Play casters.

[zlefin]

was trying to follow the conversation; but the link to the races of war stuff isn't working. is it workin for other people?

[ColorBlindNinja]

was trying to follow the conversation; but the link to the races of war stuff isn't working. is it workin for other people?

You mean this link? (http://www.dandwiki.com/wiki/Races_of_War_(3.5e_Sourcebook)/Warriors_with_Style#The_New_Combat_Ready_Feats) Because I'm getting a Error 502 Bad Gateway message.

EDIT: I think that site is just down at the moment.

[ryu]

Disregard fighters.
They lack mechanical depth.
Play casters.

Did.... Did you just Haiku all over it? Well that's one method of spreading the good argument.

[ColorBlindNinja]

Did.... Did you just Haiku all over it? Well that's one method of spreading the good argument.

Wizards are red...
Fighters are blue...

I think martials suck!
And now, so do you!

:smallwink:

[Snowbluff]

Did.... Did you just Haiku all over it? Well that's one method of spreading the good argument.
let me fix it, my meter is off
Disregard fighters.
They lack mechanical depth.
Instead play casters.

[Dr_Dinosaur]

My point there was to suggest that since there exist counters, it is easier and safer to provide broader access to those counters rather than add new ones. In particular, adding new counters that work for anyone has the potential to screw up encounter balance. Lots of monsters (e.g. giant vermin) exist in the space of big dumb bruisers and are supposed to be beaten by BFC, or otherwise negating their ability to melee. If you make it possible for big dumb bruisers to avoid being crowd controlled, those monsters become a lot more dangerous. Therefore, I think a solution that makes Fighters not be big dumb bruisers is preferable to one which makes big dumb bruiser a more effective thing to be.



I think ability damage should just not exist. Long duration conditions and negative levels handle most of what it should do (provide lasting debuffs as a result of a fight), and don't have the property of one-shotting certain classes of monster. However, it is very ingrained in the system, and trying to cut it out of the game as it exists may well be more trouble than it's worth.



I meant feats every level. If I'm expected to be taking Spontaneous Summoner or Wolverine's Rage as a feat, I should be getting a huge pile of feats. Not waiting as long as many games last to get your third feat.



I think Greenbound Summoning is at or close to the correct power level if you get one feat every three levels. At that rate, feats should be character defining or character transforming. Not "I can hit less accurately to do more damage".



That comment (like the one about the grapple rules) was meant largely in jest. People who support Spheres of Power tend to be fairly aggressive in their advocacy for using it (to the point that I've seen at least one poster explicitly request not to have it recommended as a solution). It's worth noting in this context that I've suggested a bunch of things which aren't Tome of Battle.



What possible solution to "the rules are bad" that isn't "use different rules" exists? Also, rulesets have strengths and weaknesses and can be evaluated on that basis. I personally think Spheres of Power is a bad ruleset that works towards a solution I don't like (making casters more mechanically focused on a few abilities), and it's off topic for this thread.

I don’t see how “here’s an alternate system that balances casters and martials by nerfing one and buffing the other” is off-topic, but keep in mind you can use Spheres of Might without Spheres of Power

[digiman619]

I don’t see how “here’s an alternate system that balances casters and martials by nerfing one and buffing the other” is off-topic, but keep in mind you can use Spheres of Might without Spheres of Power

Hey, now; we got him to say something positive about Tome of Battle. Let's not press our luck.

[Cosi]

This link (http://www.tgdmb.com/viewtopic.php?t=33294) should work for the Races of War stuff. That's to the whole thing where it was originally posted, because the version I was linking cuts off partway through the feats.


You and I are looking for different things here. One of the things I like best about feats is that they are discrete. In my mind, that sets them apart from, say, prestige classes. The Blitz feat doesn't feel like an ability that scales, but like a pile of separate abilities.

I suppose that's a reasonable position, but it's not one I agree with.


I strongly disagree. For one thing, daze is a much more powerful condition than nauseated. For another, you can force a single opponent to save several times in a single round. You never run out, and there is no opportunity cost to use the ability. Every melee character should take this feat, including dexterity-based characters.

Sure, there are ways that it's better. But there are also ways that it's worse. stinking cloud sits there passively hitting anyone in the AoE with its effect, Combat School requires you to attack to activate it. Combat School can hit multiple targets in a round, but it's fairly hard to pull off. I don't find "you never run out" to be terribly compelling, because I consider "try to exhaust the resources of the party" to be a fairly foolish tactic that mostly gets play as a way to mitigate imbalance.


Martial characters are forced to be one-trick ponies anyway (Tome of Battle excluded). The feat taxes in 3.5 are too severe for a martial character to be good at more than one thing. On the other hand, spellcasters are never forced to be one-trick ponies.

Hence why you either need to give people more feats (one feat per level, and probably some consolidation even then), or make feats bigger (like Races of War). Also give martials more class abilities.


There's a common pattern in 3.5 where an offensive option is powerful and difficult to resist via ordinary means, but is utterly nullified by a silver bullet (freedom of movement, true seeing, death ward, mind blank). The typical result is that access to the silver bullet is [considered mandatory at higher levels](http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?187851-3-5-Lists-of-Necessary-Magic-Items).

Why isn't "having freedom of movement" the normal means for resisting movement restricting abilities? Certainly, you could weaken those abilities and provide multiple classes with chunks of freedom of movement you thought were thematically appropriate, and such a design might even be better in the abstract, but it is sufficiently better to be worth the effort of writing it?


Disregard fighters.
They lack mechanical depth.
Play casters.

Fighters have plenty of mechanical depth. They just suck ass. "Pick one of a thousand different feats ten times" is not mechanically shallow, it just never adds up to anything you care about.


I don’t see how “here’s an alternate system that balances casters and martials by nerfing one and buffing the other” is off-topic, but keep in mind you can use Spheres of Might without Spheres of Power

What part of "nerf casters" seems on topic for a thread about buffing martials? I don't go to the Spheres of Power thread and loudly proclaim that what really needs to happen is giving martials extra actions in combat, or using Races of War feats. If you had posted that people could use Spheres of Might, that would have been an entirely reasonable (if underdeveloped) contribution.

As it happens, I also think Spheres of Power tends to solve the problem of imbalance exactly wrong. It promotes casters engaging in narrow mechanical specialization, which while balanced with martials who are narrowly mechanically specialized, is throwing away the most interesting part of the game. Also, I find the tendency of Spheres of Power advocates to claim that we should replace all other resource management mechanics with Spheres of Power entirely wrongheaded. The diversity of casting mechanics that exists between Wizards, Beguilers, Clerics, and Sorcerers is good, and the goal of new content should be to expand that (which necessarily implies that new content should not explicitly attempt to be less powerful than those classes).


Hey, now; we got him to say something positive about Tome of Battle. Let's not press our luck.

The fact that you still can't tell the difference between qualified praise and criticism is deeply bizarre to me. My position on Tome of Battle has always been that it is good, but insufficient. Hence why the first post contained more information than "give people Tome of Battle".

[zlefin]

ok, thanks for the link.
interesting to read; I don't really like the way that races of war reworked the feats; while the core principles of a rework are decent, alot of the stuff felt off, and i'm not so keen on scaling by BAB rather than char level, but I guess it makes some sense for combat oriented feats. not one of the feat reworks I'd choose to use.

[BassoonHero]

Why isn't "having freedom of movement" the normal means for resisting movement restricting abilities?
The problem is that if everyone has freedom of movement, then standard BFC basically doesn't exist. I like BFC; it's the “good” kind of complexity. If it's irresistible, it's too powerful, but if everyone is immune to it, it's pointless.

A solid fog spell should be a challenge to be overcome. A challenge should involve a choice (how do I overcome this challenge?), an attempt (will I succeed?) and a risk (what are the consequences of failure?) Freedom of movement is hardly a choice; it's so much better than the alternatives that it's considered mandatory at high levels. In addition, there is no choice at the time of use; it's a passive effect. There's no attempt — it's blanket immunity, no matter the obstacle, and if it doesn't work then it just doesn't work. There's no risk at the time of use, because in most cases there is no chance of failure and no opportunity cost. There's no real risk when you buy the item, because it's virtually guaranteed to be useful in the long run.

A world where any high-level character with sense is immune to most BFC is a world where BFC is not a useful tactic. BFC deserves to be useful, because it makes combat more interesting.


it is sufficiently better to be worth the effort of writing it?
This is a matter of opinion. It's worth talking about even if — especially if — our opinions differ.

[digiman619]

What part of "nerf casters" seems on topic for a thread about buffing martials? I don't go to the Spheres of Power thread and loudly proclaim that what really needs to happen is giving martials extra actions in combat, or using Races of War feats. If you had posted that people could use Spheres of Might, that would have been an entirely reasonable (if underdeveloped) contribution.

As it happens, I also think Spheres of Power tends to solve the problem of imbalance exactly wrong. It promotes casters engaging in narrow mechanical specialization, which while balanced with martials who are narrowly mechanically specialized, is throwing away the most interesting part of the game. Also, I find the tendency of Spheres of Power advocates to claim that we should replace all other resource management mechanics with Spheres of Power entirely wrongheaded. The diversity of casting mechanics that exists between Wizards, Beguilers, Clerics, and Sorcerers is good, and the goal of new content should be to expand that (which necessarily implies that new content should not explicitly attempt to be less powerful than those classes).
Consider the following scenario: A character with magical power has a small list of abilities it uses everyday. Looking ahead, they realize that their usual repertoire won't cut it against an upcoming threat, so they prepare themselves and get a new ability they never had before to combat it. Once the fight is over, they can return to their standard layout no problem.

Why is this okay for a Sorcerer getting a Page of Spell Knowledge (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/magic-items/wondrous-items/wondrous-items/m-p/page-of-spell-knowledge/) and not for an Incanter using a Ritual? (http://spheresofpower.wikidot.com/rituals)


The fact that you still can't tell the difference between qualified praise and criticism is deeply bizarre to me. My position on Tome of Battle has always been that it is good, but insufficient. Hence why the first post contained more information than "give people Tome of Battle".
With respect, this was the first time I've ever seen you bring it up as even a partial solution. Pretty much every other time I've seen you talk about it is when someone else brings it up and you go on to poo poo it for not being enough... and then not give any suggestions yourself on what they could use instead. Even "Replace uberchargers with Tome of Battle" is a recommendation on using the system

[Dr_Dinosaur]

What part of "nerf casters" seems on topic for a thread about buffing martials? I don't go to the Spheres of Power thread and loudly proclaim that what really needs to happen is giving martials extra actions in combat, or using Races of War feats. If you had posted that people could use Spheres of Might, that would have been an entirely reasonable (if underdeveloped) contribution.

I *did* say people shoul use Spheres of Might, and only intended to suggest SoP as a potentially interesting supplement to the incomplete but helpful changes Might presents. It’s not me that saw “Spheres” and zeroed in on SoP

[Quertus]

You know, the thing I love about fighters is that they're consistent. They may only be able to do one thing - put their sword in the other being to give it the "dead" condition - but they do so with unfailing accuracy. Nothing can stop them. Except distance. And HP bloat. And AC. And DR. And flying. And incorporeal. And invisibility. And miss chance. And astral projection. And BFC. And...

Ok, so... fighters can be no-sold a great many ways. And that makes them feel not awesome. But, at least we've got the internet, and we've told these tales, and no one will ever again suggest that it's a good idea to let everyone and his brother no-sell someone, to make them feel like their abilities are garbage. Right? Oh, wait...


In other cases, I prefer to come up with mundane resistances, like using Athletics to charge through solid fog. This is fundamentally interactive in a way that buying freedom of movement is not. From the martial character's perspective, it feels a lot more awesome than spending 12,000 gp and a swift action to ignore the effect. And it's a way to differentiate characters -- the wizard uses a spell, the barbarian brute-forces it, and the rogue (perhaps) dives out of the way before the fog solidifies. A subtle benefit of this example implementation is that the action economy slightly favors the non-casters: the Athletics check can be made as part of regular movement, whereas casting a spell or activating an item takes an action of some kind.

Giving everyone and their cousin some trick to no-sell an ability just makes the ability's user feel not awesome. Look at this from the PoV of the caster: how awesome does their BFC feel when, every time they use it, their foe has a counter?

In other words, active abilities are good; negation / countering abilities like you suggest - especially when common - do the exact opposite of what your want: they reduce the amount of awesome in the world. Fighters need more active abilities to feel awesome, not more ways to make everyone else feel bad about themselves.

That having been said, I'm all for elitism, and no-selling mooks. If you want to give Fighters and Monks erratic movement class features to no-sell BFC created by casters 4 levels or more lower than themselves, that's fine. Same for Clerics and Monks getting mission from God class features to let them no-sell mind control from sources 4 or more levels lower than themselves. Or Rogues and Barbarians no-selling SA damage from sources 4 or more levels before them. Or Rogues and Monks no-selling AoE damage from sources 4 or more levels below them.

Heck, I'd even be ok with a point-buy style, where everyone got X of these, so people could roll their own themes, and my Wizard could claim to have honed his intellect and perception to such a fine focus that he, say, ignores flanking, SA damage, and illusions from sources 4 or more levels before his. Whereas your Rogue could be just so nimble that he ignores BFC, AoO, and AoE from anything 4 or more levels lower than himself.

But, IMO, the key is to make negation abilities feel rare and special. Otherwise, the people whose abilities you are negating feel, well, like the Fighter. :smallfrown:

EDIT: and, as a rule, give these abilities to the PCs, not to the monsters that they fight.


As it happens, I also think Spheres of Power tends to solve the problem of imbalance exactly wrong. It promotes casters engaging in narrow mechanical specialization, which while balanced with martials who are narrowly mechanically specialized, is throwing away the most interesting part of the game. Also, I find the tendency of Spheres of Power advocates to claim that we should replace all other resource management mechanics with Spheres of Power entirely wrongheaded. The diversity of casting mechanics that exists between Wizards, Beguilers, Clerics, and Sorcerers is good, and the goal of new content should be to expand that (which necessarily implies that new content should not explicitly attempt to be less powerful than those classes).

I'm a Fighter. I can't contribute. This is terrible. Therefore, everyone else should be unable to contribute, too. That way, we can all be equally miserable together.

I never cease to be amazed how many times it must be pointed out that there are other, better ways to solve this problem.

[BassoonHero]

Giving everyone and their cousin some trick to no-sell an ability just makes the ability's user feel not awesome.
To “no-sell” an attack means to shrug it off completely. This is more or less the current state of affairs; fighter PCs are either flatly immune to solid fog or at most spend an action to ignore the effect (depending on how they obtained freedom of movement). This is precisely the problem that I wish to rectify. The Athletics skill shouldn't let a character “no-sell” solid fog. Rather, a skill check would allow them to move at a reduced rate. This has the key elements of approach (using your character's strength to fight force with force), attempt (a skill check), and risk (wasting your turn).


Look at this from the PoV of the caster: how awesome does their BFC feel when, every time they use it, their foe has a counter?
Flip it again. How awesome does your character feel if you have absolutely no answer to an extremely common broad class of spells? If solid fog removes you from combat for several turns at the cost of a single action for an enemy spellcaster, with no save?

Of course, if freedom of movement isn't nerfed, it's a moot point.

[digiman619]

As it happens, I also think Spheres of Power tends to solve the problem of imbalance exactly wrong. It promotes casters engaging in narrow mechanical specialization, which while balanced with martials who are narrowly mechanically specialized, is throwing away the most interesting part of the game. Also, I find the tendency of Spheres of Power advocates to claim that we should replace all other resource management mechanics with Spheres of Power entirely wrongheaded. The diversity of casting mechanics that exists between Wizards, Beguilers, Clerics, and Sorcerers is good, and the goal of new content should be to expand that (which necessarily implies that new content should not explicitly attempt to be less powerful than those classes).

I'm a Fighter. I can't contribute. This is terrible. Therefore, everyone else should be unable to contribute, too. That way, we can all be equally miserable together.

I never cease to be amazed how many times it must be pointed out that there are other, better ways to solve this problem.
First things first, you take that argument down to the farm and use it to scare off birds, because that's a huge strawman. No one is saying that we want Wizards to be brought to the level of Fighters. We've never said that. What we've said, time and time again, is that we want classes to meet at the middle. We want our characters who specialize in a given field to be the best in that particular field. We want the generalists still be able to have a wide variety of things that they can do, but we want them all to be notably worse than the experts. Because that's the level that most greatly promotes teamwork, and given that 95%+ of the time, D&D/PF is a shared experience with multiple characters, teamwork should be a core aspect.

Moreover, what "other better ways"? Other than your "Hard Mode" nonsense (no, 90%+ of players won't want to handicap themselves so you get bragging rights. No one looks for "replay value" on modules unless you're really broke and you can only afford one module to use.), what other ways have you recommended? Or to reuse an old favorite: How will giving more classes the power and versatility of Wizards break things less?

[Arbane]

Consider the following scenario: A character with magical power has a small list of abilities it uses everyday. Looking ahead, they realize that their usual repertoire won't cut it against an upcoming threat, so they prepare themselves and get a new ability they never had before to combat it. Once the fight is over, they can return to their standard layout no problem.

Why is this okay for a Sorcerer getting a Page of Spell Knowledge (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/magic-items/wondrous-items/wondrous-items/m-p/page-of-spell-knowledge/) and not for an Incanter using a Ritual? (http://spheresofpower.wikidot.com/rituals)


Why is that OK a spellcaster, but not for a fighter?


What part of "nerf casters" seems on topic for a thread about buffing martials?

Because the less powerful spellcasters are, the less brain-straining it is to come up with ways for fighters to keep up with them. If a wizard's best trick is throwing fireballs, that's easier for a fighters to equal than if their best trick is "Summon a horde of angels" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zFuMpYTyRjw). And when the spellcasters' best trick is literally "Do Anything" (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/wish.htm)....

[Quertus]

To “no-sell” an attack means to shrug it off completely. This is more or less the current state of affairs; fighter PCs are either flatly immune to solid fog or at most spend an action to ignore the effect (depending on how they obtained freedom of movement). This is precisely the problem that I wish to rectify. The Athletics skill shouldn't let a character “no-sell” solid fog. Rather, a skill check would allow them to move at a reduced rate. This has the key elements of approach (using your character's strength to fight force with force), attempt (a skill check), and risk (wasting your turn).


Flip it again. How awesome does your character feel if you have absolutely no answer to an extremely common broad class of spells? If solid fog removes you from combat for several turns at the cost of a single action for an enemy spellcaster, with no save?

Of course, if freedom of movement isn't nerfed, it's a moot point.

Well, there's a few issues here. First and foremost, casting Solid Fog is not at the cost of a single action, it's at the cost of a single action, and some potentially very finite resources. If all casters had all spells as at-will abilities, then this kind of move / counter-move 5d chess could make for engaging gameplay, and could be balanced accordingly. How much of an action is it worth to give how many opponents what chance of losing how much of an action? That is much easier to balance. To make it apples to apples, you could try something like giving the Fighter a permanent 4-point penalty to his Strength score, healable only by rest, for attempting to muscle through the Solid Fog. Then every move / counter move puts the characters one step closer to needing to rest, and balances the Fighter's infinite attack resources better against the caster's finite spells.

Next, there's the assumption that, if the Fighter doesn't have an answer, that it takes him out of combat for several rounds, rather than the teamwork answer of his caster buddy dealing with the issue for him - just like he dealt with the issue of "suddenly, pointy things" that threatened his caster buddy earlier.

Lastly, there's the notion of Solid Fog being used against the Fighter. Honestly, I think most of these problems would be more readily solved by having the party fight monsters exclusively, and just banning GMs from using casters as opponents. Yes, you'll get the occasional rare caster monster with BFC, but that just makes them special - oh, look, more awesome in the world, win/win!


Moreover, what "other better ways"? Other than your "Hard Mode" nonsense (no, 90%+ of players won't want to handicap themselves so you get bragging rights. No one looks for "replay value" on modules unless you're really broke and you can only afford one module to use.), what other ways have you recommended? Or to reuse an old favorite: How will giving more classes the power and versatility of Wizards break things less?

Let's break that down.


Other than your "Hard Mode" nonsense

May everyone who poo-poos "hard mode" get what they deserve: always playing with people who don't care about the fun of the people that they game with, and who never play down to the group's level.

Because, honestly, that's what I'm talking about when I discuss hard mode as a balancing technique (which, IIRC, I haven't done in this thread, nor was it what I was alluding to above, seeing as how it is antithetical to the balance techniques proposed in this thread): players caring about the fun of everyone at the table, caring about not overshadowing the other players, and choosing to find some way to create balance.

But, clearly, you don't care for that. So may you get what you want and deserve in that regard.

Or would you care to reconsider your position?


no, 90%+ of players won't want to handicap themselves

I'm sorry if your experience is that 90+% of players don't care about the group, or the metagame, and are unwilling to play to the group balance range. On the plus side, you'd only expect about 50% of them to be "above average".


so you get bragging rights

Just to spell it out for you, you're the one thinking it has anything to do with bragging rights. Might I suggest you give "thinking in terms of the fun of the group" a try.


No one looks for "replay value" on modules unless you're really broke and you can only afford one module to use.

Even counting other threads, I'm not sure where you're getting the notion of replay value for modules from. :smallconfused: I'm equally confused by those who enjoy playing through a module multiple times.

Nor do I have a clue what the relevance of that comment is to this thread.


How will giving more classes the power and versatility of Wizards break things less?

You're conflating two concepts: broken, and unbalanced. This isn't a conversation about things being broken, only about balance. Giving everyone the power and versatility of Wizards will make things balanced. You do agree that if characters are mechanically balanced, they'll be mechanically balanced, right?

Now, there's still two little improvements to this very simple stance.

The first is, Cosi has shown the wisdom to point out that, maybe, they don't have to be equal to still be fun. To still have a role to play. So maybe exact balance isn't a strict requirement.

Second, sure, there's a few broken things that need to be fixed - whether in terms of infinite loops, or just vague rules. It's not entirely unreasonable to feel that it's like putting the cart before the horse to try to boost muggles before fixing those flaws. Thing is, most of us have quite a few years of experience with these things, and can kinda see the power level of PO casters, so we can reasonably aim for that general area, then go back to our endless debates about RAW pedantry, without losing too much in the process.


Moreover, what "other better ways"? what other ways have you recommended?

Good question.

[BassoonHero]

First and foremost, casting Solid Fog is not at the cost of a single action, it's at the cost of a single action, and some potentially very finite resources.
Such is the nature of caster-dom. Plenty of spells do absolutely nothing if the target makes their save. In this scenario, solid fog would still have a lesser effect even if the target can overcome it. Remember too that solid fog affects an area, so the caster has a lot of chances to get value out of the spell even if it doesn't flat-out remove an enemy from combat.


Next, there's the assumption that, if the Fighter doesn't have an answer, that it takes him out of combat for several rounds, rather than the teamwork answer of his caster buddy dealing with the issue for him - just like he dealt with the issue of "suddenly, pointy things" that threatened his caster buddy earlier.
This is problematic, because it requires that the caster teammate have the right answer and that they take a turn off to use it. Dispelling is not guaranteed to work. Should the caster teammate spend an action and a spell attempting to dispel so that the fighter can attempt to attack, or attempting to attack the enemy directly? Or, for that matter, simply cast a spell (like solid fog) that is guaranteed to adversely affect the enemy? Sure, the friendly thing is to dispel the solid fog affecting the fighter, but the fighter's ability to contribute shouldn't depend on teammates choosing a friendly option over more effective options.

Some people say that fighters shouldn't depend on casters at all; they should be entirely self-sufficient. I wouldn't go so far, myself. I feel that a mixed party should be most effective. But I think that every character should have answers to mitigate standard, easily accessible offensive tactics other than waiting for a spellcaster to bail them out. The problem with solid fog and other BFC spells is that nonmagical characters have no mitigation at all — no save, no way to resist or overcome the effect. Every character should have a chance.


Lastly, there's the notion of Solid Fog being used against the Fighter. Honestly, I think most of these problems would be more readily solved by having the party fight monsters exclusively, and just banning GMs from using casters as opponents. Yes, you'll get the occasional rare caster monster with BFC, but that just makes them special - oh, look, more awesome in the world, win/win!
If this works for you, that's fine, but it can't work for me. One of the best parts of 3.5, in my opinion, is that the rules are more or less symmetrical. Anything that the players can do, NPCs or monsters can do. This makes the system flexible, but it also makes the world fair in some sense: everyone is playing by the same rules. I find this to be more immersive as well as more fun. Again, this is not meant to be prescriptive.

[digiman619]

Well, there's a few issues here. First and foremost, casting Solid Fog is not at the cost of a single action, it's at the cost of a single action, and some potentially very finite resources. If all casters had all spells as at-will abilities, then this kind of move / counter-move 5d chess could make for engaging gameplay, and could be balanced accordingly. How much of an action is it worth to give how many opponents what chance of losing how much of an action? That is much easier to balance. To make it apples to apples, you could try something like giving the Fighter a permanent 4-point penalty to his Strength score, healable only by rest, for attempting to muscle through the Solid Fog. Then every move / counter move puts the characters one step closer to needing to rest, and balances the Fighter's infinite attack resources better against the caster's finite spells.
Let's break that down and explain why it's stupid. First things first, the only cost solid fog has is a standard action and a 4th level spell slot. Sure, at level 7, this is a notable cost since you've only got one 4th level slot, but this will screw over the fighter just as much at 10th and by that time the Wizard will have 3 of them. Secondly, using a spell has no interaction with your other spell slots, You can have gate in your 9th level slot or a heightened magic missile; until you have to use that slot, it has no effect on anything you do. A fighter getting a -4 penalty to strength for daring to try and interact with the game negatively effects his primary shtick as he's now 10% less accurate and does notably worse damage, especially when power attacking as they have to effectively take a -4 penalty just to break even now. It's also worth noting that his also ignores the possibility of archers or finesse builds.


Next, there's the assumption that, if the Fighter doesn't have an answer, that it takes him out of combat for several rounds, rather than the teamwork answer of his caster buddy dealing with the issue for him - just like he dealt with the issue of "suddenly, pointy things" that threatened his caster buddy earlier.
Except the even at low levels, the "Wizard stuck in melee" has things they can do. The Fighter vs solid fog (or even worse, vs wall of wind) has no options. They are stuck until the caster deigns to help them, even assuming they can in the first place; there are plenty of scenarios that might prevent the caster from helping here.


Lastly, there's the notion of Solid Fog being used against the Fighter. Honestly, I think most of these problems would be more readily solved by having the party fight monsters exclusively, and just banning GMs from using casters as opponents. Yes, you'll get the occasional rare caster monster with BFC, but that just makes them special - oh, look, more awesome in the world, win/win!
Except this is 3.5 we're talking about. This is the high water mark of caster superiority; in no edition before or since was the wizard more powerful at almost every level. Magic has few if any countermeasures, and the few that exist are also magic. Suggesting that we stop having them face magic in opposition is a) not going to make the Wizard any more balanced, and b) increasingly harder to do as the game progresses.



Let's break that down.

May everyone who poo-poos "hard mode" get what they deserve: always playing with people who don't care about the fun of the people that they game with, and who never play down to the group's level.

Because, honestly, that's what I'm talking about when I discuss hard mode as a balancing technique (which, IIRC, I haven't done in this thread, nor was it what I was alluding to above, seeing as how it is antithetical to the balance techniques proposed in this thread): players caring about the fun of everyone at the table, caring about not overshadowing the other players, and choosing to find some way to create balance.

But, clearly, you don't care for that. So may you get what you want and deserve in that regard.

Or would you care to reconsider your position?
I never said that you should take a selfish "my fun is the only fun that matters" mentality to the game. It's totally fine to for those with more system mastery to hold back for the good of the group if that's what they want. It's your idea that we should somehow cater to that by making "hard mode" classes that makes no sense, and the fact that your two favorite characters were "intentionally sandbagged for character reasons Wizard that still was the party MVP" and "totally overshadowed in 95% of the game Fighter who was fun because of the 5% of the time I was useful." still confuses me.


I'm sorry if your experience is that 90+% of players don't care about the group, or the metagame, and are unwilling to play to the group balance range. On the plus side, you'd only expect about 50% of them to be "above average".

Just to spell it out for you, you're the one thinking it has anything to do with bragging rights. Might I suggest you give "thinking in terms of the fun of the group" a try.
You're the one who's interested in making D&D a Self-Imposed Challenge. That kind of handicapping can only be detrimental on the rest of the party.


Even counting other threads, I'm not sure where you're getting the notion of replay value for modules from. :smallconfused: I'm equally confused by those who enjoy playing through a module multiple times.

Nor do I have a clue what the relevance of that comment is to this thread.
I seem to recall you talking about how hard mode increases the "replay value" of the game, but looking back, you meant "Playing a Wizard again" rather than "Playing The Lost Caverns of Tsojecanth again". My bad.


You're conflating two concepts: broken, and unbalanced. This isn't a conversation about things being broken, only about balance. Giving everyone the power and versatility of Wizards will make things balanced. You do agree that if characters are mechanically balanced, they'll be mechanically balanced, right?
Yes, though that doesn't mean that if the problem with the seesaw is that there's a 750 lb rock on one end that the solution is to put a 750 on the other end.


Now, there's still two little improvements to this very simple stance.

The first is, Cosi has shown the wisdom to point out that, maybe, they don't have to be equal to still be fun. To still have a role to play. So maybe exact balance isn't a strict requirement.

Second, sure, there's a few broken things that need to be fixed - whether in terms of infinite loops, or just vague rules. It's not entirely unreasonable to feel that it's like putting the cart before the horse to try to boost muggles before fixing those flaws. Thing is, most of us have quite a few years of experience with these things, and can kinda see the power level of PO casters, so we can reasonably aim for that general area, then go back to our endless debates about RAW pedantry, without losing too much in the process.
First, it's totally fine that the Ideal Fighter will have a different niche than the Ideal Wizard. The thing is that whatever the niche of the Ideal Fighter is, it has to be as important as the niche of the Fixed Wizard. Just looking at the monsters, it's clear that a major rewrite is needed in order to them to be remotely effective at high level play as pretty much every CR 15+ monster a) has multiple SLAs b) is a full-blown caster themselves c) has huge anti-magic countermeasures or c) some combination of the above. There's nothing that they can do to interact with these enemies in any meaningful way.


Good question.
That's not an answer. Even if I accepted your "Hard Mode" ideal, that's not an "other better way". It'd be a perfectly viable one, but why is "I am unhappy with the current set-up, let me look for and/or design something better" inherently inferior to "Sure, the game's not perfect, but you'll grow accustomed to its flaws soon enough and if you twist it like this and squint, we can get something fun out if it"?

[upho]

I disagree that those abilities are thematically unlinked.Having had a more thorough look at the complete list, I must say I sorta share BassoonHero's concern. Not so much that their level abilities aren't thematically linked (although that's also a problem in a few cases), but rather that many level benefits are thematically and/or mechanically cross-linked between feats that otherwise have little in common. Meaning it's easy to end up with a pile of these feats which only provide one or two benefits of any real value to whatever it is you do in combat. While this of course doesn't mean they're less useful than normal feats, I feel it kinda it defeats one of their main purposes.


Again, I think "free Intimidate" matches pretty well to "reckless aggression". Certain, you could give away the final ability earlier or for free, but I don' think that's required.I also don't really see the problem with the theme here, but I do believe it's also an example of a benefit which actually could fit equally well with many of the other melee related feats. I would've preferred a proper demoralization-themed feat instead, and the same goes for most of the other benefits suffering the most from this kind of problem.

Honestly, I think a far better solution would be to let the player choose the scaling benefits from a short list of say two to five options related to the initial benefit, sorta like the PF ranger's combat style feats (https://www.d20pfsrd.com/classes/core-classes/ranger/#TOC-Combat-Style-Feat-Ex-) feature. In this case, the more generic benefits - like the free action Intimidate - could of course be put in the +6 or +11 bab list of options of more than one feat.

Also, many of the feats are unfortunately poorly written, as if they haven't been properly vetted and play tested, often using inconsistent and vague wording and lacking explanations of how to solve pretty obvious contradictions, on top of allowing for combos with powerful and seemingly unintended effects. For example, at +11 bab, PBS + Mage Slayer + Whirlwind + Sniper grants the ability to threaten as normal out to 60' with any ranged weapon (except enemies provoke when entering squares instead of leaving), and enemies cannot cast defensively within that range and treat all damage as ongoing from same source when making concentration checks. So pretty damn nasty for casters, especially when combined with some targeting abilities/buffs, ranged debuffs, additional AoOs (Horde Breaker) and/or damage boosts. Note also how thematically and mechanically disconnected the seemingly melee focused Mage Slayer and Whirlwind - not to mention Horde Breaker if added for additional AoOs - are with PBS and Sniper, yet one or two of these feats' benefits have fantastic mechanical synergy with the two ranged feats.

So even if not making any major changes to these feats, much of their wording and mechanics still need to be sharpened up IMO.


I'm not really sure what you think is broken about Combat School. It's good, and I could see maybe swapping the daze with either the +11 or the +16, but I don't think it's broken. Dazing on your attacks doesn't seem much more deadly than dropping a stinking cloud on a fight.I wouldn't go as far as calling it broken, but it's certainly OP. Especially when combined with reach, TWF and/or the iterative attack rules these feats were intended to be used with (max -5 penalty for all iteratives, or -2 with Blitz @ bab +6).

Try running the numbers of a basic high Str build, like say a barb, using this with TWF and Blitz against some level-appropriate enemies. Already at 6th level, such a barb's full attack will likely be at the very least +16/+16/+14/+14, each triggering a DC 20+ Fort or 1 round daze, on top of quite a bit of damage. So I think you'll find the barb will on average remove about twice as many enemy actions as those he needs to spend to achieve the effect at 6th level, and more during later levels as he gains additional attacks and each attack and daze attempt gains greater success probabilities.

This will typically be true also in a real game, making this ability an exceptionally great trade in the action economy. Especially since using it doesn't otherwise hamper normal combat effectiveness in any regard, meaning aside from the initial insignificant opportunity cost, there's no trade-off whatsoever to use it constantly. In short, I think it's a rare example of the limited vs. unlimited abilities balance issue where the unlimited has advantage, at least in most adventuring days including combat other than perhaps a single encounter against a few strong enemies.

That said, being limited to melee is of course likely to put a damper on this cheese fiesta, especially in later levels. So it may be enough to simply have this benefit switch places with the +11 benefit, limit the daze duration to "until the start of your next turn", and perhaps introduce a scaling max number of enemies affected/round limit. Personally, I also wouldn't mind seeing an active trade-off for using this ability, preferably in the form of a damage reduction, possibly decided by the player and reflected in the save DC. You know, making it a meaningful tactical option instead of yet another constant martial attack ability.

But aside from the implementation, I really like the concept of truly useful melee debuff/control options. Precisely what is desperately needed in order to pump up the effectiveness of martials in combat roles other than striker.

As a sidenote, PF has a feat, Dazing Assault (https://www.d20pfsrd.com/feats/combat-feats/dazing-assault-combat/), with a very similar benefit, except it requires bab +11 (and Power Attack), imposes a -5 attack penalty on all attacks during the round, the Fort save DC is a typically much lower 10 + bab, and last but not least the daze only lasts until your next turn. Still a very strong option in low to mid op games, despite the higher average saves of opponents in PF.


freedom of movement: I could certainly see an argument for nerfing the immunity spells, but I think that in general they provide a valuable service by preventing the game from falling into "I do my one thing" ad infinitum. If some enemies are immune to grappling/illusions/death effects/whatever, characters can't just be one trick ponies, which is desirable.I've had great results by simply replacing immunity with a numeric bonus and/or attaching a penalty to "ignore immunity"-abilities. Makes things feel considerably less binary. One trick ponies should be mechanically sub-par regardless, and if they're not, I'd take it as a sure sign something's not working as intended.


dimension door: This spell seems totally fine to me, and I have never seen complaints about it previously.Admittedly, I haven't had issues with this either, but I have seen quite a few posts with DMs complaining about it.


polymorph: I agree that this spell needs to be nerfed. It should probably be replaced with a choice from a menu of buffs and a disguise.This is one of the changes I think was done mostly right in PF. Might be easiest to steal those versions.


teleportation: I have seen lots of complaints about this, but I think they are fundamentally misguided. The effect of teleportation isn't to skip encounters, it is to allow the party to only participate in encounters they want to participate in. If you are observing players using teleport to skip to the end of your adventures, that probably means that you have written an adventure whose only interesting encounter is at the end. Generally, I think most complaints about "I win" buttons and encounter bypassing come from DMs who are Dming badly. I can go into more detail if you would like.You may be right, at least to some extent. However, when it comes to teleportation, IME skipping combat encounters is rarely the issue, nor something I've often heard about (I guess even a bad DM can often rely on player greed if nothing else). Instead, it's mostly stuff like completely ignoring physical obstacles/traps/defenses to get to important enemies/NPCs/items/places otherwise hard to get to, using scry and die shenanigans, bypassing enemy speed advantages, etc.

I'm personally also hesitant on how to "fix" this, if at all. On the one hand, teleportation is often extremely powerful in the hands of creative players, and safe-guarding a challenge from being too easily bypassed by it often means a lot of additional prep work. On the other hand, I really think player creativity should be rewarded, and tools like teleportation which allow for creative uses are often the most fun and exciting for the game. I dunno, maybe just a simple level increase may be just the thing, making the often more rare, expensive and/or higher level stuff guarding against poofaporting seem less out of place.


SoD/SoL: I think Save or Dies have advantages (4e pretty clearly demonstrated the flaws of a combat system where there's no quick way to end a fight), but I could see arguments for nerfing them. If I were redesigning the system entirely, I would probably require that targets be at half HP or lower to be vulnerable to spells that take them out of the fight. As is, I don't think the negative impact of these spells is enough to justify sweeping changes.Not sweeping changes, I agree. Which is also a part of the problem, since such changes would probably have been easier to implement. The spells that I believe deserve attention are those that are (or are easily made into) true encounter end buttons largely in and of themselves and which can be used to great effect in a very large majority of combats with a minimum of tactical considerations, such as the aforementioned sleep during early levels and stuff like wings of flurry later on. So I guess primarily multi-target spells with devastating effects and no or low risks of friendly fire.

I also agree that one should be careful not to over-nerf and end up with boring marathon fights à la 4e. The focus should be on removing the effective but boring stuff which don't require any meaningful tactical considerations or teamwork, and especially the most universally and indiscriminately applicable such nukes which reward extremely focused spam-type caster builds (like wings of flurry).


I think that's leaning too heavily on balance point as a part of design. Yes, the Wizard and the Fighter aren't compatible because of their power gap, but that's a different question from "which one is better designed", and the answer to the design question is something that should guide us in determining which balance point is preferable. Once you stop including balance in your game design assessment, it becomes very difficult for me to imagine anyone looking at the Fighter as well designed. The Fighter ... isn't a class. It's a citation to a bunch of rules shared by all the classes. The only things that are definitively Fighter exclusive are the Weapon Focus line of feats, and those feats are both boring and garbage. I certainly think there are classes that are better design than the Wizard (even some non-casting classes), but I think the literal Fighter versus Wizard comparison is very clearly favorable to the Wizard (and I also think the abstract Mundane versus Caster comparison is favorable to the casters).Well, as implemented in 3.5 the fighter class is clearly not as well designed as the wizard, but on a conceptual level they're also quite similar, both being basically buckets to be filled with options from subsystems which aren't class exclusive. Though I guess a better comparison to the fighter would be the sorcerer, which also more clearly shows the design problem lies primarily with the huge power gap between spells and feats, and I think that is largely a balance issue.

But admittedly, in the context of the topic of this thread, I think my point may also boil down to a largely irrelevant semantic nit-pick. It doesn't really matter if the viewpoint is more valid, since the aim is to achieve acceptable balance without having to rewrite a thousand feats and/or spells.


I think those options would allow martials to fill a reasonable variety of combat roles. Even allow characters to fight passably effectively at range is a big bump. But between those options, they afford the ability to do a reasonable variety of combat things (albeit usually mediated via damage). A martial character with those options could pull off single target damage, AoE damage, some on-attack debuffs, some buff and support abilities, and possibly trip-based BFC. Consider something like a Warblade//Marshall. You get an aura that provides some minor bonuses, the ability to grant your allies actions (both via white raven tactics and Grant Move Action), taking Horde Breaker and Whirlwind and wielding a Spiked Chain allows you to do a passable job threatening large groups of enemies, and your maneuvers give you good defenses or additional offensive options. Plus potentially some Weapon of Legacy stuff. Certainly, it's not as much as a Wizard can, but it's enough to be viable.I may have unrealistically high demands in this particular area, but to me the problems are very much "usually mediated via damage" and "Certainly, it's not as much as a Wizard can". That said, I've built and played quite a few focused martial controllers/debuffers in PF which arguably equal or even supersede wizards in terms of pure combat effectiveness, even those pretty highly optimized for the same role and even at high levels. So I know those problems can be addressed in PF, and although it does typically require DSP options (meaning PoW and Psionics) and a lot of optimization if done according to RAW, I think it's possible to introduce a few things which should make similar builds easier to put together in PF as well as 3.5.

Thankfully, there are a few quite distinct mechanical strengths commonly shared by mentioned PF martial control builds. As can be expected, the most notable ones and some of their most significant related PF options being:

High special attack/combat maneuver bonus: Dueling (PSFG (http://www.archivesofnethys.com/MagicWeaponsDisplay.aspx?ItemName=Dueling%20(PSFG) ))/(Psionic (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/psionics-unleashed/equipment/psionic-items/psionic-weapons/#TOC-Dueling)) weapon, Leveraging weapon, barb rage, Huge+ size (metamorphosis, Large race), fiendbound marauder warder
Superior reach or seamless switch-hitting: reach weapon, bloodrager aberrant bloodline 4 Unnatural Reach bloodline power, long arm, longarm bracers, warder 1 Focused Defense feature, shield champion brawler 7 Throw Shield (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/classes/hybrid-classes/brawler/archetypes/paizo-brawler-archetypes/shield-champion) feature, Powerful Throw, formless master PrC 2 Sudden Reach feature
Free action riders: Maelstrom Shield, Tempest Shield, Seize the Opportunity, Savage Dirty Trick rage power, Kitsune Vengeance, Cornugon Smash, Enforcer, Greater [combat maneuver], Pushing Assault, Vicious Stomp, Ki Throw, Broken Dreams Style feat chain, Dirty Trick Master, Black Seraph’s Glare, Fear the Reaper, tetori monk 4 Graceful Grappler feature, fiendbound marauder warder 1 Fiend's Grip feature
Active party defense: Combat Reflexes based on Dex or a mental stat (warder 1, myrmidon fighter 1 or zealot 2), Come and Get Me rage power, swashbuckler 1 Opportune Parry and Riposte deed, Stance of the Thunderbrand, Unexpected Strike rage power, Fortuitous weapon, several warder and zealot class features, several counter martial maneuvers
Spell Sunder: Spell Sunder rage power (duh!)
Scary enough to make Cthulhu pee his proverbial pants: Black Seraph Annihilation, Soulless Gaze, Intimidating Prowess, several items

The key mechanical benefits of these shouldn't be too hard to transform into Races of War style scaling feats, while also replacing the few flat-out broken benefits (notably Soulless Gaze and Dirty Trick Master) with more reasonable ones. A few suggestions to illustrate the general idea:

Dirty Fighting
Benefit You can perform a dirty trick (see below) special attack as a standard action without provoking an attack of opportunity.
+1 You can perform a dirty trick as a move action once per round, and the duration of a condition you inflict with a dirty trick increases to 1d4 rounds.
+6 You can perform a dirty trick in place of any one single melee attack you can make during your turn, and in place of any one single attack of opportunity you can make during a round, in addition to the above benefit (for a maximum total of 3 dirty trick attempts per round). An enemy must spend a standard action rather than a move action to remove a condition inflicted by a dirty trick performed by you.
+11 Whenever you successfully perform a dirty trick against an enemy still affected by a condition inflicted by a previous dirty trick (whether your own or another creature’s), you can cause a serious condition (see below). The attack roll penalty you take when performing a dirty trick is reduced to -2.
+16 You can perform a dirty trick in place of any melee attack, and you do not take the penalty to the attack roll when doing so.

You can attempt to hinder a foe in melee as a standard action. This special attack covers any sort of situational attack that imposes a penalty on a foe for a short period of time. Examples include kicking sand into an opponent’s face to blind him for 1 round, pulling down an enemy’s pants to halve his speed, or hitting a foe in a sensitive spot to make him sickened for a round. The GM is the arbiter of what can be accomplished with this attack, but it cannot be used to impose a permanent penalty, and the results can be undone if the target spends a move action. If you do not have the Improved Dirty Trick feat or a similar ability, attempting a dirty trick provokes an attack of opportunity from the target of your attack.

Make a normal melee attack with a -5 penalty, if your attack is successful, the target takes a penalty. The penalty is limited to one of the following conditions: blinded, dazzled, deafened, entangled, shaken, or sickened.

This condition lasts for 1 round. For every 5 by which your attack exceeds your opponent’s AC, the penalty lasts 1 additional round. Any additional successful attempts to inflict the same condition are added to this duration. This penalty can be removed if the target spends a move action.

If you can inflict a serious condition, you cause an opponent who is dazzled to become dazed, entangled to become pinned, shaken to become frightened, and sickened to become nauseated. This worsened condition replaces the previous dirty trick condition, and lasts for the duration of the dirty trick (including any rounds remaining from the previous dirty trick condition) or until the opponent uses a full round action to remove the condition (whichever comes first). The opponent can always take this action to remove a serious condition, even if the condition does not normally allow the opponent to take full round actions (such as in the case of dazed or nauseated).

It's... CAPTAIN ANDORAN! (or Shield Champion)
Prerequisite Two-Weapon Fighting
Benefit You do not lose your shield bonus to AC when making a shield bash with a light or heavy shield.
+1 You can make a ranged shield bash with a light or heavy shield you have donned, treating it as a thrown weapon with a 20 feet range increment. You may use the higher of your Strength or Dexterity Modifier when making this ranged attack, and the shield returns to you immediately after your attack has been resolved (regardless of whether you hit or miss). As part of this ranged attack, you remove the shield with a quick-release mechanism and secure the shield in place when it returns to you.
+6 You can perform a bull rush, disarm, sunder or trip special attack with a ranged shield bash, without provoking an attack of opportunity. You do not have to move with the opponent if you make a ranged bull rush. The shield bonus to AC provided by your shield also applies to your touch AC and Reflex saving throws (not including any enhancement bonuses).
+11 You may treat the shield enhancement bonus provided by your shield as a weapon enhancement bonus when performing a shield bash. The shield bonus to AC provided by your shield increases by +2.
+16 You may make a bull rush, disarm, sunder or trip special attack as a free action against an enemy you hit with a shield bash, without provoking an attack of opportunity.

Spell Destroyer
Prerequisite Mage Slayer
Benefit You gain a +1 morale bonus to saving throws against supernatural abilities, spell-like abilities and spells. This bonus increases by +1 when your base attack bonus reaches +6, +11 and +16, for a maximum bonus of +4.
+1 You gain a +1 bonus on damage rolls against creatures possessing spells or spell-like abilities. This damage bonus increases by +1 when your base attack bonus reaches +6, +11 and +16, for a maximum bonus of +4.
+6 Once per round, you can attempt to sunder an ongoing spell or psionic power effect by succeeding at a sunder special attack. For any effect other than one on an enemy creature, you must make a successful sunder attempt against an AC equal to 10 + the effect’s caster or manifester level. To sunder an effect on an enemy, you must succeed at an attack roll against an AC equal to 10 + the effect's caster or manifester level + the enemy's Dexterity Modifier. Your sunder attack ignores any miss chance caused by a spell, psionic power, spell-like ability or psi-like ability. If successful, you suppress the effect for 1 round, or 2 rounds if your attack exceeded the AC by 4 to 9. If your attack exceeded the AC by 10 or more, the effect is dispelled.
+11 When you successfully sunder an effect on an enemy, the enemy cannot be affected by any teleportation effects for 1 round. If you dispelled the effect, the enemy is instead bound as by dimensional anchor for 1d4 rounds.
+16 When you successfully sunder an effect on an enemy, the enemy loses 1 unused spell/day of 4th level (determined randomly if prepared) or 7 power points, as appropriate for the dispelled effect. If you dispelled the effect, the enemy instead loses 1 unused spell/day of 7th level or 13 power points. If the enemy has no unused daily spell slot of the appropriate level, it instead loses a spell of the next lower level (3rd or 6th, respectively), or the next lower level after that (2nd or 5th, respectively), and so on. If the enemy does not have enough power points left, it is instead exposed to psychic burn.




Not super sure what you mean by too much customization work. You pick from a set of menu options. As far as magic item dependency goes, it does sort of increase that, but it does so in a way that is much more in line with the source material D&D is trying to emulate. King Arthur doesn't have a +5 Holy Longsword, he has Excalibur, a legendary weapon that turns aside the blades of his enemies and entitles him to the kingship of England. In fantasy, characters do have single, powerful weapons that grant unique abilities. They don't have lots of little magic items that grant numeric bonuses. Moving to a paradigm where people have things like Weapons of Legacy instead of the assortment of items they do now is probably net-neutral in terms of item requirements, but makes characters much close to genre expectations.To clarify, the problem I'm seeing is that IIRC Legendary Weapons used as written simply won't add more than a bit of WBL, and require players to sift through tons of options, 95% of which amount to generic enhancement bonus/weapon special ability/low CL and DC standard action combat spell crap. Now it's been a very long time since I last had a look in that book, so my memory may be failing me, but I recall being thoroughly disappointed by how little actually useful new effects it contains. You can probably easily put together a suitable thematic mix of effects, but each specific effect is still very generic in terms of both crunch and fluff. And many/most of them also require activation and/or have daily use limits, right? If so, this also adds additional moving parts to a chassis I feel is already very close to the tolerable limit in that regard.

The existing magic weapon/item effects martials really DO want and which aren't already found as special abilities or big six items are tied to more unique stuff, and those effects unfortunately aren't available for Legendary Weapons. A few PF examples: Tempest Shield (https://www.d20pfsrd.com/magic-items/magic-armor/specific-magic-shields/tempest-shield/), Maelstrom Shield (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/magic-items/magic-armor/specific-magic-shields/maelstrom-shield/), Hooked Massacre (https://www.d20pfsrd.com/magic-items/magic-weapons/specific-magic-weapons/hooked-massacre/) (in PF the spiked chain is a double weapon w/o reach), Shadowbound Chains (https://www.d20pfsrd.com/magic-items/magic-weapons/specific-magic-weapons/shadowbound-chains/), Giant Fist Gauntlets (https://www.d20pfsrd.com/magic-items/wondrous-items/wondrous-items/e-g/gauntlets-giant-fist/), Fleshwarped Scorpion’s Tail (https://www.d20pfsrd.com/magic-items/magic-weapons/specific-magic-weapons/fleshwarped-scorpion-s-tail/), Helm of the Mammoth Lord (https://www.d20pfsrd.com/magic-items/wondrous-items/wondrous-items/h-l/helm-of-the-mammoth-lord/), Axe of Felling (https://www.d20pfsrd.com/magic-items/magic-weapons/specific-magic-weapons/axe-of-felling/). You'll probably notice the common combat action economy theme.

In short, for this to actually do something meaningful, I think you need to add a whole bunch of stuff to the menu of Legendary Weapon ability options, and also rewrite as many non-free action activated benefits as possible to provide constant or passive benefits. And for the sanity of less experienced players, probably also remove a lot of pointless crap. Otherwise, to help bring martials up to par with casters, I'm having a hard time seeing how Legendary Weapons could even be as useful as simply granting freely chosen magic items of roughly equal value.


In-combat, infusions get you some basic buffs, the ability to add enhancement effects to magic weapons, a bunch of stuff that does things to constructs, spell storing item, and at high levels some BFC. All in all, basically reasonable stuffSounds pretty good. I also seem to recall infusions are pretty easy to use, right? If so, this should be even better.


Factotum doesn't really add that much build complexity. You can take some different skills (and if there were more non-core skills, dumpster diving for them might be a real issue), but the only real complexity is at play time when you try to find the perfect spell. It does give you spellcasting, but that spellcasting is really crappy for use in combat, and if you had access to maneuvers (or simply more effective attack actions), you wouldn't try to use it there. You would use it outside combat, but outside combat you have to give people spells because nothing else is written up with non-combat effects.Ah, yes. I think I remember the "try to find the perfect spell"-thing, especially since the longest game I've played which included a factotum also had a sorcerer with Arcane(?)/Spell(?) Pool who behaved pretty much the same way. And both were played by perfectionist types, so yeah, a lot of dumpster diving...


I mean, I guess "psionic powers", but I don't think that fixes anyone's issues.Probably not. That said, there may be a couple of noteworthy powers with unique effects many martials would probably love (such as the size increases granted by metamorphosis), but those can probably be offered as items instead.


Certainly there are other things you could feasibly give other characters.The more I think about it, the more I feel having a few optional building blocks would be the best solution. But it would make balancing stuff quite a bit more complex, of course.


I almost always play some sort of spellcaster, but 4th edition actually made martial characters enjoyable to play. Outside of planning out your overall build, there isn't a lot of decision making involved in playing a martial character in 3.5. Your attacks are simple and straightforward, which can become boring if it's the one thing your character is built to do. 4E giving martial characters a variety of different maneuvers that can push or pull enemies into strategically advantageous positions, inflict status effects, or allow them to to take a blow for a nearby ally makes them a lot more interesting to play.
Martials would still be outshined by casters if you let them pick up abilities like that in 3.5, but it would add a lot of extra utility to them and make them more appealing if for no other reason than a bit of extra fun factor.This. For all of 4e's flaws, at least melee was done better than in any other edition.

Tip: In PF PoW (https://www.d20pfsrd.com/path-of-war/) offers many similar mechanics using a system based on ToB. So if you feel the ToB classes and maneuvers don't quite cut it, you might ask your DM to allow back-porting some PoW stuff (which should be simple enough). I'd especially recommend the warder and zealot classes, plus for example the Eternal Guardian, Riven Hourglass and Cursed Razor disciplines for fun tactical 4e-style melee defender/controller stuff.


4th edition basically EVERYONE is a caster with a re-skinning of their abilities.Eh...? When you say "EVERYONE is a caster" are you referring to 3.5 casters? In that case, you'd be correct, considering 3.5 spells allow for more mechanical differentiation than all classes of all other editions put together, making it kinda difficult for any class not to be a 3.5 caster in some sense. But then I cannot help but wonder what your point is.

(FYI: there's considerably more mechanical difference between say a fighter and a paladin in 4e than in 3.5, despite both being primary "defenders" in 4e. The same could be said about sorcerers and wizards, especially when considering the classes even largely share handbooks in 3.5. And while the 4e versions of the casters may be less different from the 4e martials than their counterparts are in 3.5, that is largely because the 3.5 casters play a different game than the 3.5 martials. Also, the 4e wizard is without question the strongest controller class in the game, and the 4e pally arguably the strongest defender, and you can very clearly tell them apart by seeing them in play and clearly see how neither of them can do what the other does, despite both being designed for basically just two different variants of control.)

[Nifft]

I'm sorry if your experience is that 90+% of players don't care about the group, or the metagame, and are unwilling to play to the group balance range. On the plus side, you'd only expect about 50% of them to be "above average".

The poster said they didn't want to handicap themselves.

The poster did not say that they managed to avoid handicapping themselves in spite of their best efforts.

There are a lot of bad builds played by poorly-informed players out there.

[Quertus]

@BassoonHero - I'm not ignoring you! The rest of this post just took longer than I expected. I'll try to reply to your ideas tomorrow.


Good question.


That's not an answer.

You are correct, it is not. It is an acknowledgement that you have asked a good question - probably better than you realize.

However, you have and continue to repeatedly misrepresent my position on a number of things, many of which do not seem, from my PoV, to be particularly relevant to this thread. And most of which I'm pretty sure I've not brought up in this thread.

As you are laboring under a number of false beliefs about my position, and cannot seem to separate out and discuss individual components of my position without importing the entirety of my position on gaming*, we are at a bit of an impasse. Even were I ready to answer your question (and I am not**), you would not be ready to hear my answer.

So, instead, it would seem that I will need to try to correct your misunderstandings of my position, and work to develop a dialog with you, whereby we can understand one another better, before attempting to put new information atop a hopefully much less shaky a foundation.

* which is understandable - just like with the individual components of my characters' personalities, the various components of my position are often highly related and interdependent.
** like I said, the question is bigger than you probably realized.


I never said that you should take a selfish "my fun is the only fun that matters" mentality to the game. It's totally fine to for those with more system mastery to hold back for the good of the group if that's what they want. It's your idea that we should somehow cater to that by making "hard mode" classes that makes no sense,

I really can't understand this mindset. We should allow hard mode, because it's good for the game, but we shouldn't make it easy? To me, that's like saying we should allow the Fighter to contribute, but shouldn't make it easy, and should require them to use massive optimization and splat diving to make it playable.

So, what were you actually trying to say?


and the fact that your two favorite characters were "intentionally sandbagged for character reasons Wizard that still was the party MVP" and "totally overshadowed in 95% of the game Fighter who was fun because of the 5% of the time I was useful." still confuses me.

My two favorite characters? Hmmm... My best guess is, you're talking about Quertus, my signature tactically-inept academia mage for whom this account is named, and Armus.

Quertus was decidedly not party MVP. The party MVP was the Monk, who could pretty much single-handedly solo the world, let alone whatever individual "module" / quest we happened to be pursuing, followed very closely by the party Fighter. They only kept Quertus around so that they didn't have to nit-pick their toolkit to perfection. They even joked that they'd "boot him off the island" if it weren't for how convenient his spells made traveling from place to place.

Armus doesn't match your description, at all. He was the least effective mechanical playing piece I could build, who was still party MVP by virtue of superior tactics. Not that that was terribly hard a lot of the time - in his first fight, the 7th level better builds just attacked targets chosen seemingly at random, while Armus held his attack to disrupt the casting of the Drow High Priestess. I'd explain his more advanced tactics, but, honestly, nobody's ever engaged my test of why he'd open most combats by moving to protect someone with better defenses, so I don't expect it to make sense, or be particularly interesting to the Playground.

Hmmm... Actually, it's almost like you merged the two stories, and, when you picked them apart, you got pieces of each. Quertus is totally overshadowed 95% of the time by the party Fighter and Monk, but I'm fine with his only occasional contribution, because I play Quertus for the RP much more than the G - at least, as far as the tactical combat minigame goes. Quertus is, however, nearly ideal to Engage the Exploration minigame, with more custom sights than there were published spells in core, and a strong focus on cataloging new data to publish in his books. Best. Character. For. Exploration. Ever. :smallbiggrin:

Armus is mechanically overshadowed by every* character he's ever adventured with. He may only contribute 5% of what the party does, but he does so with surgical precision, making him almost always the party MVP.

So, Quertus is role-playing and Exploration, Armus is role-playing and a chance to actually play the tactical minigame without completely overshadowing the party.

Still confused why I like playing them?

* technically, when Armus was in his teens, and the new players came in at first level, there was a brief moment where that wasn't true, where there were technically less powerful playing pieces on the board than Armus. That is, until he... "aggressively redistributed" the party's "artifacts".


You're the one who's interested in making D&D a Self-Imposed Challenge. That kind of handicapping can only be detrimental on the rest of the party.

If you're talking about Armus, he was party MVP. I really don't think you can get away with saying that he was holding the party back...


I seem to recall you talking about how hard mode increases the "replay value" of the game, but looking back, you meant "Playing a Wizard again" rather than "Playing The Lost Caverns of Tsojecanth again". My bad.

Hard mode was Armus. So, senile and lacking context, I'm guessing I was talking about "playing D&D again", not "Playing a Wizard again" or "Playing The Lost Caverns of Tsojecanth again".


First, it's totally fine that the Ideal Fighter will have a different niche than the Ideal Wizard. The thing is that whatever the niche of the Ideal Fighter is, it has to be as important as the niche of the Fixed Wizard. Just looking at the monsters, it's clear that a major rewrite is needed in order to them to be remotely effective at high level play as pretty much every CR 15+ monster a) has multiple SLAs b) is a full-blown caster themselves c) has huge anti-magic countermeasures or c) some combination of the above. There's nothing that they can do to interact with these enemies in any meaningful way.

Welcome to the thread!

Sorry if I'm misrepresenting you, Cosi, but my understanding is that this - the inability of the Fighter to meaningfully contribute to oh so many challenges - is exactly why you're looking to buff the Fighter.


why is "I am unhappy with the current set-up, let me look for and/or design something better" inherently inferior to "Sure, the game's not perfect, but you'll grow accustomed to its flaws soon enough and if you twist it like this and squint, we can get something fun out if it"?

How is "let's buff the Fighter" in any way equivalent to latter, rather than the former?

[digiman619]

You are correct, it is not. It is an acknowledgement that you have asked a good question - probably better than you realize.

However, you have and continue to repeatedly misrepresent my position on a number of things, many of which do not seem, from my PoV, to be particularly relevant to this thread. And most of which I'm pretty sure I've not brought up in this thread.

As you are laboring under a number of false beliefs about my position, and cannot seem to separate out and discuss individual components of my position without importing the entirety of my position on gaming*, we are at a bit of an impasse. Even were I ready to answer your question (and I am not**), you would not be ready to hear my answer.

So, instead, it would seem that I will need to try to correct your misunderstandings of my position, and work to develop a dialog with you, whereby we can understand one another better, before attempting to put new information atop a hopefully much less shaky a foundation.

* which is understandable - just like with the individual components of my characters' personalities, the various components of my position are often highly related and interdependent.
** like I said, the question is bigger than you probably realized.
Okay. It's entirely possible i misremembered or misconstrued something you had previously said so getting everything stright here and now seems reasonable.


I really can't understand this mindset. We should allow hard mode, because it's good for the game, but we shouldn't make it easy? To me, that's like saying we should allow the Fighter to contribute, but shouldn't make it easy, and should require them to use massive optimization and splat diving to make it playable.

So, what were you actually trying to say?
I'll get more into this later, but you keep confusing player agency with character agency. Also, unless you have your "hard mode" character take NPC classes, the concept of "Here's a class that's notably weaker than <base class> that only exists so you can challenge yourself playing it" is baffling to me.



My two favorite characters? Hmmm... My best guess is, you're talking about Quertus, my signature tactically-inept academia mage for whom this account is named, and Armus.

Quertus was decidedly not party MVP. The party MVP was the Monk, who could pretty much single-handedly solo the world, let alone whatever individual "module" / quest we happened to be pursuing, followed very closely by the party Fighter. They only kept Quertus around so that they didn't have to nit-pick their toolkit to perfection. They even joked that they'd "boot him off the island" if it weren't for how convenient his spells made traveling from place to place.

Armus doesn't match your description, at all. He was the least effective mechanical playing piece I could build, who was still party MVP by virtue of superior tactics. Not that that was terribly hard a lot of the time - in his first fight, the 7th level better builds just attacked targets chosen seemingly at random, while Armus held his attack to disrupt the casting of the Drow High Priestess. I'd explain his more advanced tactics, but, honestly, nobody's ever engaged my test of why he'd open most combats by moving to protect someone with better defenses, so I don't expect it to make sense, or be particularly interesting to the Playground.

Hmmm... Actually, it's almost like you merged the two stories, and, when you picked them apart, you got pieces of each. Quertus is totally overshadowed 95% of the time by the party Fighter and Monk, but I'm fine with his only occasional contribution, because I play Quertus for the RP much more than the G - at least, as far as the tactical combat minigame goes. Quertus is, however, nearly ideal to Engage the Exploration minigame, with more custom sights than there were published spells in core, and a strong focus on cataloging new data to publish in his books. Best. Character. For. Exploration. Ever. :smallbiggrin:

Armus is mechanically overshadowed by every* character he's ever adventured with. He may only contribute 5% of what the party does, but he does so with surgical precision, making him almost always the party MVP.

So, Quertus is role-playing and Exploration, Armus is role-playing and a chance to actually play the tactical minigame without completely overshadowing the party.

Still confused why I like playing them?

* technically, when Armus was in his teens, and the new players came in at first level, there was a brief moment where that wasn't true, where there were technically less powerful playing pieces on the board than Armus. That is, until he... "aggressively redistributed" the party's "artifacts".
See, I did misremember some things. Getting all the data here, I think what intended to say about Quertus was "Intentionally sandbagged and playing support next to optimized martials" rather than "was still MVP". Most players I've seen hate being on either side of this arrangement; the wizards hate being shackled with the weaker martials and never get to cut loose and martials have that they are being patronized.


If you're talking about Armus, he was party MVP. I really don't think you can get away with saying that he was holding the party back...
It's later. Armus was fun for you because he was a tactician and had great plans in directing the party in handling the foes they faced. The thing is, he wasn't the one with the ideas on what to do, you were. You used your knowledge of the system on how the various monsters worked and used it to formulate plans. Now maybe if Armus wasn't an IC tactician, you wouldn't have gone through those thought processes to get the tactics, but here's the thing: you could have just as easily mage Legus, a master tactician and BFC wizard. There was nothing on Armus' character sheet that helped him figure these out save maybe the knowledge skills (which the Wizard gets as class skills anyway).

Contrariwise, if you made Armus as your first character, your "master tactician" character would have had no good ideas to earn the moniker. He'd walk into traps and use weapons that enemies are immune to because he wouldn't know better. Because you wouldn't have known better. The entire concept only worked because of the player. In the hands of someone less experienced, it all falls apart.


Hard mode was Armus. So, senile and lacking context, I'm guessing I was talking about "playing D&D again", not "Playing a Wizard again" or "Playing The Lost Caverns of Tsojecanth again".
This was me misremembering and I already apologized about it. Moving on.


How is "let's buff the Fighter" in any way equivalent to latter, rather than the former?
You know what? That's fair. In my mind, the problems of "Fighters are underpowered" is intrinsically linked to "Wizards of overpowered", but talking about wizards isn't helpful to this line of conversation, so I guess I'll drop the topic unless asked about it.

[Bucky]

Let's look at this from a different angle.

If a Fighter could spend a bonus feat on a Sorcerer spell, castable once per day with CL = BAB, how many of them would an average mid-op Fighter take in a 20-level build?

[EldritchWeaver]

Let's look at this from a different angle.

If a Fighter could spend a bonus feat on a Sorcerer spell, castable once per day with CL = BAB, how many of them would an average mid-op Fighter take in a 20-level build?

Is it off-topic to say that 1/day abilities are bad for the single reason that you end up wondering if there is a better use of that ability in the future? Which results in risking to waste the use too early or risking to waste the opportunity, because later there is no situation where you could use it.

Otherwise, has the fighter the same rules to follow as the sorcerer like ACF and material components?

[Cosi]

not one of the feat reworks I'd choose to use.

That's entirely fair, and I'm not saying you have to use it. I am saying that a) it buffs Fighters, and is therefore a useful tool if your goal is to make Fighters more effective and b) something fairly close to it is necessary if you want to continue giving people a single digit number of feats in the game and not have casters be getting more out of feats. I think the alternative of "you get one feat every level, DMM, Natural Spell and friends are banned" is also entirely viable (though even then e.g. Weapon Focus is garbage).


The problem is that if everyone has freedom of movement, then standard BFC basically doesn't exist. I like BFC; it's the “good” kind of complexity. If it's irresistible, it's too powerful, but if everyone is immune to it, it's pointless.

freedom of movement (barring deranged readings) doesn't stop wall of stone or any of the other BFC effects that put up physical barriers. It also doesn't stop the BFC effects that put up zones that simply inflict an unpleasant condition (e.g. stinking cloud, wall of fire, cloudkill).


A solid fog spell should be a challenge to be overcome.

I disagree. You don't encounter a solid fog spell (I mean, I guess you could encounter a Living Solid Fog). You encounter some enemy that has solid fog. They probably have other abilities too. That's the challenge you have to overcome, and I think in that context it is reasonable to be largely unaffected by solid fog. Certainly, you could have some abilities (though I maintain they should be actual abilities, not skill uses) that make solid fog type effects less useful but not useless against you, but you don't have to do that.


Consider the following scenario: A character with magical power has a small list of abilities it uses everyday. Looking ahead, they realize that their usual repertoire won't cut it against an upcoming threat, so they prepare themselves and get a new ability they never had before to combat it. Once the fight is over, they can return to their standard layout no problem.

Why is this okay for a Sorcerer getting a Page of Spell Knowledge (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/magic-items/wondrous-items/wondrous-items/m-p/page-of-spell-knowledge/) and not for an Incanter using a Ritual? (http://spheresofpower.wikidot.com/rituals)

I reject the comparison. First because I think the Sorcerer should get more spells known, and second because those classes have opposite incentives in terms of their (persistently) known abilities. When the Sorcerer picks up a new trick, that trick is at full power (for whatever spell level) regardless of investment. This means that the Sorcerer's optimal play pattern is to take a variety of abilities. When the Incanter picks up a new trick, that trick is a level one effect with scaled numbers until she puts in more points. This means that the Incanter's optimal play pattern is to take a small number of abilities and put points into pumping them up.


Pretty much every other time I've seen you talk about it is when someone else brings it up and you go on to poo poo it for not being enough

That's exactly what I'm saying you don't understand. I'm not "poo poo"ing it, I'm saying that it doesn't deserve unreserved praise. And I do offer solutions, I just get told those solutions are "turning martials into casters". Since I get told that pretty much regardless of what solution I offer, I suspect that most people on this forum believe that it is impossible for anything that is not a caster to compete with casters, not just in terms of RAW effectiveness, but as an abstract design principle.


I *did* say people shoul use Spheres of Might, and only intended to suggest SoP as a potentially interesting supplement to the incomplete but helpful changes Might presents. It’s not me that saw “Spheres” and zeroed in on SoP

This was the post I first responded to:

For anyone who likes the idea of moderately nerfing casters and buffing martials, check out Spheres of Power and Spheres of Might. My group uses them along with DSP stuff and the disparity is much less.

I suppose it's possible to read that as primarily an endorsement of Spheres of Might, but it doesn't particularly look like that to me. You don't really dedicate any time to talking up Spheres of Might in particular, and you also don't have any disclaimer about your intention to point to Spheres of Power as secondary.


No one is saying that we want Wizards to be brought to the level of Fighters. We've never said that. What we've said, time and time again, is that we want classes to meet at the middle.

People aren't claiming you want to bring people down to the power level of the Fighter, they're claiming you want classes to behave like the Fighter -- have a narrow field of competence in which they are encouraged to heavily invest. You could do that at pretty much any power level. Just as you could have characters be like the Wizard or like the Rogue but at lower or higher power levels.


Or to reuse an old favorite: How will giving more classes the power and versatility of Wizards break things less?

It seems obviously true that making the gap between characters smaller will reduce the stress on the game by whatever amount you shrink that gap. I continue to reject the notion that Wizard spells are unhealthy for the game (with the exception of spells that allow MM diving, and possibly spell emulation and action economy). teleport is good for the game, and if teleport ruins your adventures you are writing bad adventures.


Meaning it's easy to end up with a pile of these feats which only provide one or two benefits of any real value to whatever it is you do in combat.

If you end up in that situation, you also have some incidental abilities that might be useful when your primary shtick is disabled, which is desirable. Maybe you took Horde Breaker to get extra AoOs, but that doesn't give you any less fear aura.


Honestly, I think a far better solution would be to let the player choose the scaling benefits from a short list of say two to five options related to the initial benefit

Gated branching requires an enormous amount of content. You might be able to produce something reasonable if you have just one level of gating and cross-list benefits, but people very often underestimate how much work you have to do to get a reasonable level of choice when previous choices influence which future choices are available.


Note also how thematically and mechanically disconnected the seemingly melee focused Mage Slayer and Whirlwind - not to mention Horde Breaker if added for additional AoOs - are with PBS and Sniper, yet one or two of these feats' benefits have fantastic mechanical synergy with the two ranged feats.

Of course the question is -- is that a bug or a feature? If people can get synergistic effects from disconnected abilities, people are less likely to hyperspecialize into a particular ability. If, for example, each of the Ubercharger feats came stapled to three other useful options for different combat styles, Uberchargers would have much less of a problem with being one trick ponies.


Admittedly, I haven't had issues with this either, but I have seen quite a few posts with DMs complaining about it.

DMs complain about a lot of things. My perception is that many of these complaints are a result of those DMs running their games poorly. If you've prepped out ten thousand years of history, but no answers for 4th level spells, either you're playing E6 or you're a bad DM.


You may be right, at least to some extent. However, when it comes to teleportation, IME skipping combat encounters is rarely the issue, nor something I've often heard about (I guess even a bad DM can often rely on player greed if nothing else). Instead, it's mostly stuff like completely ignoring physical obstacles/traps/defenses to get to important enemies/NPCs/items/places otherwise hard to get to, using scry and die shenanigans, bypassing enemy speed advantages, etc.

Those obstacles and traps are encounters too, and are subject to the same pressures as combat encounters. If you want players to navigate through the labyrinth there has to be a reason for them to want to navigate through it. That's true whether they get teleport or not. If they don't get it, they'll just find some other way around. Frankly, there's some merit to giving them a known path of least resistance. In terms of motivations, the obvious one is to notice what teleport does -- let you skip to the finish line. Remove that finish line, and teleport suddenly stops being able to skip stuff. If the players' goal is to explore the labyrinth, they're damn well going to explore it whether they have teleport or not.

Scry and Die shenanigans are mostly a function of the same thing that makes Persistent Spell broken -- temporary buffs are very strong, but have short durations, so arranging to have your temporary buffs while the enemy doesn't have theirs is overpowering. That's what you have to fix. Otherwise people will just go to whatever the next best thing is.

Bypassing enemy speed advantages doesn't really make sense to me, and is not a complaint I've ever seen. Doesn't the enemy also have teleport?


Well, as implemented in 3.5 the fighter class is clearly not as well designed as the wizard, but on a conceptual level they're also quite similar, both being basically buckets to be filled with options from subsystems which aren't class exclusive.

The Wizard's options are definitely class exclusive. Other classes get spells, but there Wizard (well, Wizard and Sorcerer) only spells. I'm willing to credit the feats that require Fighter levels (rather than the ones the Fighter can simply take as Fighter Bonus Feats) as part of the Fighter class.


Though I guess a better comparison to the fighter would be the sorcerer, which also more clearly shows the design problem lies primarily with the huge power gap between spells and feats, and I think that is largely a balance issue.

I don't think it's a balance issue that class options are better than non-class options. Ideally, the majority of your power should come from your class. The problem is the lack of Fighter class options.


To clarify, the problem I'm seeing is that IIRC Legendary Weapons used as written simply won't add more than a bit of WBL, and require players to sift through tons of options

I don't think those weapons should be counted against WBL, and I think they should probably be DM created to at least some degree. The ideal system is probably that the DM drops hints about which special magic loot you could get from which adventures and then you go on whichever adventure has the one you think is coolest.


Now it's been a very long time since I last had a look in that book, so my memory may be failing me, but I recall being thoroughly disappointed by how little actually useful new effects it contains.

Honestly I'm mostly using "Weapons of Legacy" as shorthand for "something mostly like Weapons of Legacy but with whatever changes are required to make it not suck". Note my repeated mention of removing the penalties existing weapons have on their progressions.


Probably not. That said, there may be a couple of noteworthy powers with unique effects many martials would probably love (such as the size increases granted by metamorphosis), but those can probably be offered as items instead.

I didn't mean to imply psionics wouldn't be useful. I was just point out that if your concern is characters appearing "too magical", then you probably wouldn't be happy with those characters getting psionic abilities instead.


Is it off-topic to say that 1/day abilities are bad for the single reason that you end up wondering if there is a better use of that ability in the future?

Yes. Daily use limits in general are bad. If I were redesigning the system from the ground up, everyone would start encounters with their abilities refreshed and resource management would be an in-combat activity.

[Quertus]

Okay. It's entirely possible i misremembered or misconstrued something you had previously said so getting everything stright here and now seems reasonable.

Cool.


I'll get more into this later, but you keep confusing player agency with character agency. Also, unless you have your "hard mode" character take NPC classes, the concept of "Here's a class that's notably weaker than <base class> that only exists so you can challenge yourself playing it" is baffling to me.

Ignore that it's me saying it for a moment.

Surely you've heard people on the Playground talk about enjoying the character creation minigame, or enjoying the act of optimizing a character? How they run into the problem of creating a character who was too powerful for their table? What was their solution? Quite often, it was to optimize a suboptimal chassis. They get to have the fun of optimizing, and the fun of being in balance with the party - win/win!

So, you can see how other people would appreciate these suboptimal chassis in order to "stretch their wings" during the character creation minigame, right? It's exactly the same thing for me, but for stretching my wings in other places, such as during the tactical combat minigame.

Now, what does this have to do with confusing player agency with character agency?


See, I did misremember some things. Getting all the data here, I think what intended to say about Quertus was "Intentionally sandbagged and playing support next to optimized martials" rather than "was still MVP". Most players I've seen hate being on either side of this arrangement; the wizards hate being shackled with the weaker martials and never get to cut loose and martials have that they are being patronized.

And if I were at Tippy's table, I'd cut loose (with someone other than Quertus). Instead, I play to the table balance point. And you really think people should have a problem with that?


It's later. Armus was fun for you because he was a tactician and had great plans in directing the party in handling the foes they faced. The thing is, he wasn't the one with the ideas on what to do, you were. You used your knowledge of the system on how the various monsters worked and used it to formulate plans. Now maybe if Armus wasn't an IC tactician, you wouldn't have gone through those thought processes to get the tactics, but here's the thing: you could have just as easily mage Legus, a master tactician and BFC wizard. There was nothing on Armus' character sheet that helped him figure these out save maybe the knowledge skills (which the Wizard gets as class skills anyway).

Contrariwise, if you made Armus as your first character, your "master tactician" character would have had no good ideas to earn the moniker. He'd walk into traps and use weapons that enemies are immune to because he wouldn't know better. Because you wouldn't have known better. The entire concept only worked because of the player. In the hands of someone less experienced, it all falls apart.

Oh, absolutely, Armus was all about player skills, and me stretching my wings. I never could have pulled Armus off as my first character, because I wouldn't have understood concepts like disputing spells, let alone have known or understood what his various instructors had taught him during his backstory. However, I never had Armus use information he didn't actually personally possess in making his decisions - he'd just lived more before first level than most idiot farm boys' back stories.

If I had given this tactical acumen to a skilled powerhouse, especially a high level Wizard, I would have completely overshadowed the party. What fun would that be?

Also, Armus started out at first level in an existing party of 7th level characters - he was in no position to be "directing the party", and, in fact, was openly mocked by them in their ignorance.

So, Armus was trained by no less than 4 mentors / groups on 4 different worlds / planes / realities. Each of these training periods ended rather... poorly.

The last didn't seem so bad. His mentor was trying to teach Armus self-sufficiently, and the value of patience or something, teaching him how to craft his own clothes, his own weapons, and his own gear. Boring stuff, really, but much better than his previous apprenticeships.

But then rumors started filtering in about how communication with a dwarven hold had been lost. His mentor (attempting to impress the value of Citizenship or something) suggested Armus go investigate the source of these rumours. Fine. Whatever.

When there were neither guards not signs of a fight out front, Armus grew concerned. Armus thought he was being clever, keeping to cover, scouting around until he found a secret entrance, carefully looking through the contents of rooms for clues as to what had happened to the dwarves. He had almost pieced together that some sort of subtle assassination force, rife with magic, must have removed the dwarves, when he stumbled across a Drow patrol, who subdued Armus effortlessly.

Armus was all too familiar with Drow, which let him realize that these were... different. They lacked the usual Drow paranoia - they weren't peering suspiciously at every shadow, weren't warily approaching intersections, weren't hardly observing their surroundings at all. In fact, they were so not on the ball, that they didn't take Armus' weapons, and didn't notice when he freed his hands from his bonds. They seemed nothing like the force that had removed the dwarves almost without a trace.

Before Armus could attempt to gather more intel, the party and the Drow patrol blundered into each other. Armus' "rescuers" deployed haphazardly, engaging enemies at random, leaving the far more dangerous Drow priestess unmolested. When she began casting, Armus used his bonds to garrote her.

... And that covers a little bit of his background, and the first round of his introductory combat.

Armus continued to think and investigate and strategize; the party just smashed down doors and put sharp objects into random fleshy bits to give the "dead" condition.

The (original) party consisted of a bunch of (then) first level characters who had been pulled off their various worlds by the gods to go handle this massive, high-level Drow invasion force.

After this adventure, the gods sent everyone home (somewhere Armus hadn't been in a long time)... Only for the whole party to be abducted from their homes once again at the start of the next adventure - this time by a wizard, summoning them to help with a little problem, IIRC. This would be the point where Armus collected soil samples from everyone's boots, and a gold coin from each of them, to (much later) use to hire a wizard to create an item capable of sending everyone home.

Lastly, as impossible as this is to believe, Armus is a better tactician than I am. I know, that's impossible, but still true. Playing Armus, I'd do things on instinct and impulse that I would otherwise never even consider; after the fact, I'd be stumped trying to figure out "why the **** did that work?".


This was me misremembering and I already apologized about it. Moving on.

Apologized? :smallredface: Totally unnecessary, people misremember things, but, um, thanks?

[zlefin]

cosi, do you know of other feat rework projects which do a decent job of making the mundane feats strong and worthwhile?
I could always make one myself of course, but work that's gotten others to use by being good is better.

the real problem is that any proper buff to martials requires a bunch of houserules, and there's so many different tables the houserule standards vary wildly. There's no good way to get people to agree on a standard fix. I know i've got plenty of my own that i'd use if tha'ts what the table wanted, but most haven't been tested enough.

[Andor13]

Second, the dearth of utility options available to martials, particularly outside combat. A Fighter needs something to do when the combat music is not playing. Not just because that makes his character more effective, but because extended sequences where a character is unable to act are unfun for the corresponding player, which means that for extended non-combat sequences to occur (allowing casters to use their non-combat abilities), martials need something to contribute to those sequences. The obvious solution would be to simply give martials casting, but there isn't an elegant way of doing that without also allowing them to use that casting in combat. Instead, I suggest some combination of custom Weapons of Legacy (with penalties removed), access to Infusions as an Artificer (which have few in-combat applications without access to Action Points), or a free Factotum Gestalt (which also provides some in-combat utility).

So in this setup, a martial would look something like Thor. A Barbarian/Warblade with a magical hammer that gave him lightning powers, super strength, and flight. That's the kind of character who can contribute effectively to a party comprised of a bunch of high level casters.

What, exactly, does Thor contribute outside of combat? I mean real* Thor had a chariot pulled by magical goats, so transport at least, but movie Thor?

Also how difficult is it to give out of combat magic without giving in combat magic? "Everyone can cast spells of [list] from a book, casting times are increased to 10 min per level." Done.

There are a lot of problems going into the Martial/Caster debate, most of which are there long before you ever look at the classes.

First is world building. D&D started out as a rock-soup pastiche of every fantasy book and legend that Gary Gygax was fond of, and has only gotten worse from there. Greyhawk is over crowded with Gods and the Forgotten Realms are so bad it's shocking that a daily scrum doesn't break out over which God gets to hold the Sun ala Pyramids.

The heroic fantasy that D&D was based on was filled with heros like Conan, and Fafhrd, and Arthur, and Aragorn. Now you'll note that while there were wizards in all of these books, they were not player characters, they were DMNPCs who would hand out quests, information and items and then shag off to a cave to sleep for years, or they were foes to be overcome with steely determination, steely sinews, and steely ... steel. Now fun note about DMNPCs, it doesn't matter what they can do, because they aren't going to screw up the plot, because the DM says so.

But Gary said "Screw that, I wanna be able to play these guys too." and came up with the brilliant plan of making them have to slog through several levels of being a powerless mayfly before they got to put on their god hat. Now you had PCs with all the poweres of the DMNPCs and screwing up the DMs plans is what PCs do.

So D&D wizards could do what wizards could do in every fantasy story anyone ever read (despite the fact that no single wizard in all those books could do all that), but they had some balancing narrative factors.

Then 3rd edition came along and said "Screw it, we're not building anything with narrativium anymore, let's just make a set of ground rules everybody follows and let the sim play out." And here we are.

With Wizards who can do everything because fantasy and sacred cows, and mundanes who can probably only do one thing well, because they approximate real world characters and we all know how specialization is rewarded in reality. In worlds that have had static tech levels for thousands of years, and social structures based on half-remembered tidbits from 9th grade history class, and Good and Evil as actual palpable forces (which are never, ever explained), and every God ever seen in a fever dream and nothing makes a godsdamned bit of sense but at least its not actively insulting you like 40k lore does.....

Seriously, the breadth of a single base Wizards (or Clerics) magic is ridiculous. Consider that in 3.0 it was two different skills for a Bard to know how to play both a lute and a mandolin, but a single skill to know about every spell ever. Even in 3.75 it's still two different skills to know both the general people and muckity mucks (Knowledge Local/Nobility) but Spellcraft has got you covered.

D&D wizards are based on fantasy literature wizards, but fantasy literature wizards are not characters, they are plot devices.

All of which is probably leading you to think I'm about to say "Mundanes are fine, nerf the Wizards." I'm not. You want to balance Casters and Mundanes? Stop making the Mundanes artificially retarded. Let them actually advance beyond a horrible pastiche of dark ages tech, and most of the caster advantages go away. But (I hear you say) I don't want to play steampunk/diesel punk/Shadowrun!

Fine, then actually sit down and think about your worlds. How are things structured, and do they make sense for the people inside those worlds? Consider this question which I have never, ever seen to be even touched on in any published 3e world book: What are magic item components, where do they come from, and how are they regulated?

Read "The Night of Madness" and then have a serious think about your Wizards guild, and what it does and why.

Ask why your baseline martial is the Fighter class, instead of a Warblade, or Aegis.

If someone wants to point out that RAW nothing can stop a Wizard (of high enough level) from making himself a demi-plane and then lurking there, wallowing in his sociopathic paranoia, and using divination spells to deal with every threat with perfect tactics, then great! Adrwic the Neck-Bearded did it 3,700 years ago and every now and then an apprentice wizard gets vaporized while receiving his diploma, because he had the right character traits to eventually try to pull the same stunt and become a threat to Ardwic.

The problems of D&D magic are many, but boil down to two issues, both of which make "Give everyone spells" the wrong answer (IMHO.) First, it's not that D&D Wizards can do anything that is the problem, it's that they can do everything. Fixed list casters like the Beguiler or Warmage are much better design. Or if you're going to give a single class all the options in one arena, take away from another. If spells took 1 round per level to cast, wizards would not rule the battle field. Second, magic tends to give binary solutions to problems. You can breath under water or you can't. You can plane shift, or you can't. You can fly, or you can't. Now there are often secondary ways to achieve things, that get ignored in favor of the optimal answers but who uses high level phantom steeds when they can cast fly? It would probably help to make these secondary solutions cheaper/easier to access for "mundane" characters.

A lot is conflated into this discussion, that could easily be split out (and is, there are several active threads right now, on some of this.) World building, class design, spell list design,adventure construction, and table rules and expectations.

[EldritchWeaver]

If spells took 1 round per level to cast, wizards would not rule the battle field.

In addition, wizards would suck in combat. Most combats are over in a few rounds, so either you start casting a 4th or 5th level spell in the hopes you get it off before the combat is over (and not get interrupted by someone else) and are so completely useless the entire combat or you cast 1st level spells, whose save DCs or damage or effects simply suck at high levels. I get that you want to mix things up, but this way just makes wizards or casters in general an out of combat source. Maybe they can get one spell of before the combat starts. If you do use this houserule then wizards are either cohorts or group NPCs. Actually, having every player a secondary character which is a caster would work. Assuming you get fighter players to use magic.

[ryu]

In addition, wizards would suck in combat. Most combats are over in a few rounds, so either you start casting a 4th or 5th level spell in the hopes you get it off before the combat is over (and not get interrupted by someone else) and are so completely useless the entire combat or you cast 1st level spells, whose save DCs or damage or effects simply suck at high levels. I get that you want to mix things up, but this way just makes wizards or casters in general an out of combat source. Maybe they can get one spell of before the combat starts. If you do use this houserule then wizards are either cohorts or group NPCs. Actually, having every player a secondary character which is a caster would work. Assuming you get fighter players to use magic.

Actually what happens is most all high level spells get spent summoning minions or buffing outside of combat, then straight up murdering the enemy. If SLAs and SUs are still normal this even still includes spells directly. You are not going to make casters less valuable than fighters. The gap is wider than the furthest edge of the observable universe to the opposite edge. Well... Not competent casters at least.

[digiman619]

I reject the comparison. First because I think the Sorcerer should get more spells known, and second because those classes have opposite incentives in terms of their (persistently) known abilities. When the Sorcerer picks up a new trick, that trick is at full power (for whatever spell level) regardless of investment. This means that the Sorcerer's optimal play pattern is to take a variety of abilities. When the Incanter picks up a new trick, that trick is a level one effect with scaled numbers until she puts in more points. This means that the Incanter's optimal play pattern is to take a small number of abilities and put points into pumping them up.
I'd argue that since a ritual book costs so little (10 x spell level squared), they are actually incentivized to have a lot of them like most wizards do. Also, since the entirety of what your definition for "level appropriate abilities" is "what spells are available to a Wizard at that level", literally everything else will fail to live up to them.


That's exactly what I'm saying you don't understand. I'm not "poo poo"ing it, I'm saying that it doesn't deserve unreserved praise. And I do offer solutions, I just get told those solutions are "turning martials into casters". Since I get told that pretty much regardless of what solution I offer, I suspect that most people on this forum believe that it is impossible for anything that is not a caster to compete with casters, not just in terms of RAW effectiveness, but as an abstract design principle."
Case in point.


People aren't claiming you want to bring people down to the power level of the Fighter, they're claiming you want classes to behave like the Fighter -- have a narrow field of competence in which they are encouraged to heavily invest. You could do that at pretty much any power level. Just as you could have characters be like the Wizard or like the Rogue but at lower or higher power levels.
No. I have no problems with Jack of all Trades (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/JackOfAllTrades) characters. They problem is that spells make Wizards Masters of All (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MasterOfAll). Remember PersonMan's Niche Ranking System (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?314701-Person_Man-s-Niche-Ranking-System)? And how they determined that Wizards are as good or better than everyone else at virtually every party role? 'Cause I do.


It seems obviously true that making the gap between characters smaller will reduce the stress on the game by whatever amount you shrink that gap. I continue to reject the notion that Wizard spells are unhealthy for the game (with the exception of spells that allow MM diving, and possibly spell emulation and action economy). teleport is good for the game, and if teleport ruins your adventures you are writing bad adventures.
No, teleport is bad for adventures because it takes encounters away. It kills any sidequests. It kills any time-critical adventures. It takes the adventure out of adventuring. Also, even if you've determined that long range teleportation is a needed thing in your game, that doesn't mean it has to be a standard action available to every 9th level wizard can do. How would it be functially if you had to do an incantation to get that effect? Other than the fact that it'll let non-Wizards get access to that power and you can't just nope encounters and screw off at will?


Ignore that it's me saying it for a moment.

Surely you've heard people on the Playground talk about enjoying the character creation minigame, or enjoying the act of optimizing a character? How they run into the problem of creating a character who was too powerful for their table? What was their solution? Quite often, it was to optimize a suboptimal chassis. They get to have the fun of optimizing, and the fun of being in balance with the party - win/win!

So, you can see how other people would appreciate these suboptimal chassis in order to "stretch their wings" during the character creation minigame, right? It's exactly the same thing for me, but for stretching my wings in other places, such as during the tactical combat minigame.

Now, what does this have to do with confusing player agency with character agency?
These classes already exist. They're the Warrior, Adept and Expert. And while there do exist some builds for them, they're all academical; no one actually play them. Why should we cater to things that will never see play?


And if I were at Tippy's table, I'd cut loose (with someone other than Quertus). Instead, I play to the table balance point. And you really think people should have a problem with that?
The part where you think it should be manadtory rather than being the choice of the player is the problem.


Oh, absolutely, Armus was all about player skills, and me stretching my wings. I never could have pulled Armus off as my first character, because I wouldn't have understood concepts like disputing spells, let alone have known or understood what his various instructors had taught him during his backstory. However, I never had Armus use information he didn't actually personally possess in making his decisions - he'd just lived more before first level than most idiot farm boys' back stories.

If I had given this tactical acumen to a skilled powerhouse, especially a high level Wizard, I would have completely overshadowed the party. What fun would that be?

Also, Armus started out at first level in an existing party of 7th level characters - he was in no position to be "directing the party", and, in fact, was openly mocked by them in their ignorance.

So, Armus was trained by no less than 4 mentors / groups on 4 different worlds / planes / realities. Each of these training periods ended rather... poorly.

The last didn't seem so bad. His mentor was trying to teach Armus self-sufficiently, and the value of patience or something, teaching him how to craft his own clothes, his own weapons, and his own gear. Boring stuff, really, but much better than his previous apprenticeships.

But then rumors started filtering in about how communication with a dwarven hold had been lost. His mentor (attempting to impress the value of Citizenship or something) suggested Armus go investigate the source of these rumours. Fine. Whatever.

When there were neither guards not signs of a fight out front, Armus grew concerned. Armus thought he was being clever, keeping to cover, scouting around until he found a secret entrance, carefully looking through the contents of rooms for clues as to what had happened to the dwarves. He had almost pieced together that some sort of subtle assassination force, rife with magic, must have removed the dwarves, when he stumbled across a Drow patrol, who subdued Armus effortlessly.

Armus was all too familiar with Drow, which let him realize that these were... different. They lacked the usual Drow paranoia - they weren't peering suspiciously at every shadow, weren't warily approaching intersections, weren't hardly observing their surroundings at all. In fact, they were so not on the ball, that they didn't take Armus' weapons, and didn't notice when he freed his hands from his bonds. They seemed nothing like the force that had removed the dwarves almost without a trace.

Before Armus could attempt to gather more intel, the party and the Drow patrol blundered into each other. Armus' "rescuers" deployed haphazardly, engaging enemies at random, leaving the far more dangerous Drow priestess unmolested. When she began casting, Armus used his bonds to garrote her.

... And that covers a little bit of his background, and the first round of his introductory combat.

Armus continued to think and investigate and strategize; the party just smashed down doors and put sharp objects into random fleshy bits to give the "dead" condition.

The (original) party consisted of a bunch of (then) first level characters who had been pulled off their various worlds by the gods to go handle this massive, high-level Drow invasion force.

After this adventure, the gods sent everyone home (somewhere Armus hadn't been in a long time)... Only for the whole party to be abducted from their homes once again at the start of the next adventure - this time by a wizard, summoning them to help with a little problem, IIRC. This would be the point where Armus collected soil samples from everyone's boots, and a gold coin from each of them, to (much later) use to hire a wizard to create an item capable of sending everyone home.

Lastly, as impossible as this is to believe, Armus is a better tactician than I am. I know, that's impossible, but still true. Playing Armus, I'd do things on instinct and impulse that I would otherwise never even consider; after the fact, I'd be stumped trying to figure out "why the **** did that work?".
Without being too dismissive, I'm glad that Armus being relatively weaker than the rest of the party worked out for you. Most players would find it incredibly frustrated with that little agency.

[Morphic tide]

Okay, as I've criticized Jormangandr for, you can't make a t1 Martial. It's just not possible, the themes don't work that way, you need too many handwaves. You can almost trivially get a t3 martial, and a t2 martial is also doable, but the sheer variety of absurd tricks that are needed to reach t1, the totality of solutions, isn't doable on a true Hypermundane. However, there's a bit of a workaround, rather scummy and bad for feeling. You offload it into things that default to being fitting for a martial, but can have theme stretching, or even theme breaking, to solve exactly the range of problems holding said Martials back from t1.

The first key is to beef up Alchemy and make it a core of the exotic mundane. This offers the item crafting, or "WBL-mancy", solution, but can also be used to just make swords that can whack incorporeal foes and hold an edge beyond any ordinary metal. Grounding it into a Martial through it being access to superb metallurgy and potent poisons of similar combat value means that the supernatural stuff is an option within the setup of no mechanical need for combat functions.

The second is to construct the classes so that they have an open-ended feature at some point between level 3 and 7 that unlocks volentary access to whatever magical effects they need that aren't included in the approved Extraordinary and Supernatural lists, like getting a free Cohort with restricted class options that includes a t4 or t3 spellcaster specifically constructed to fill in the blanks on what the Martial can't do via theme-fitting Extraordinary methods, largely "plot magic" like resurrection and interplanar travel. Or giving the Rogue-analogue spontaneous WBL-mancy with a feature that lets them decide what they bought as long after they spent the money as they feel like (provided they aren't subject to events that would take away any possible items, including plain and simple theft), with higher levels letting them broaden how general the preparation can be.

[Cosi]

What, exactly, does Thor contribute outside of combat? I mean real* Thor had a chariot pulled by magical goats, so transport at least, but movie Thor?

In fairness, the Marvel movies are action movies. Most people don't do stuff outside combat. That said, Thor does get interplanetary teleportation. He presumably could use his weather magic to do non-combat stuff, but there isn't real an opportunity to do that in the face of challenges like "kill Ultron with a hammer".


Conan, and Fafhrd, and Arthur, and Aragorn

You mean Arthur, who got a magic sword that made him invincible and entitled him to rule the entire country? Or Aragorn, who becomes a Ghost King and gains the ability to walk the paths of the dead?


So D&D wizards could do what wizards could do in every fantasy story anyone ever read (despite the fact that no single wizard in all those books could do all that), but they had some balancing narrative factors.

D&D campaigns also last way longer than most fantasy stories do. Compare a D&D Wizard to e.g. Harry Dresden, a wizard who has been the protagonist of a novel series running nearly twenty books, and I think you'll find the comparison move favorable.


D&D wizards are based on fantasy literature wizards, but fantasy literature wizards are not characters, they are plot devices.

I mean, aside from Harry Potter, Quick Ben, Harry Dresden, Merlin of Amber, Belgarion, Gaius Octavian, Anasûrimbor Kellhus (actually, that one I might give you), Drusas Achamian (fortunately, he's from the same series), Rand Al'Thor, and Doctor Strange all don't exist. There has never been a fantasy story that had a Wizard as the main character. That has literally never happened, and has certainly never resulted in the third highest grossing movie franchise in history (http://mentalfloss.com/article/70920/10-highest-grossing-movie-franchises-all-time).


D&D Wizards can do anything that is the problem, it's that they can do everything. Fixed list casters like the Beguiler or Warmage are much better design.

Wizards can't do everything. This is something people say when they confuse "Wizards can make Fighters useless" with "Wizards can make everyone useless". In a party of full casters, everyone contributes and you can't just replace people with more Wizards.

That said, Beguilers are superior, but not for power reasons. People like thematic characters. They want saying "I'm a Wizard" to convey information about what powers your character has in a way that it currently does not.


If spells took 1 round per level to cast, wizards would not rule the battle field.

This plan is garbage. Don't do this. Casting spells in combat to do things in combat is literally the least problematic thing it is possible for Wizards to do. If your plan is to cast a spell and use that to hurt people, your character is fine.


Second, magic tends to give binary solutions to problems. You can breath under water or you can't. You can plane shift, or you can't. You can fly, or you can't.

Yeah, but that's good. You have to have an "it just works" solution to hostile environments, because eventually you want those things to be scenery. A 20th level character should not be worried about drowning. "Under the sea" is not some big deal place to go. There are like four different species that live there and are just level 0 humanoids.


Also, since the entirety of what your definition for "level appropriate abilities" is "what spells are available to a Wizard at that level", literally everything else will fail to live up to them.

First: fix your tags.

I am entirely willing to accept some alternate progression for when people should get non-combat abilities. Do you have such a progression?


No. I have no problems with Jack of all Trades (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/JackOfAllTrades) characters. They problem is that spells make Wizards Masters of All (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MasterOfAll)Masters of All[/url]. Remember PersonMan's Niche Ranking System (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?314701-Person_Man-s-Niche-Ranking-System)? And how they determined that Wizards are as good or better than everyone else at virtually every party role? 'Cause I do.

In totally surprising news, covering a large range of power levels compresses many of those levels. If your system is mandated to reflect the difference between Wizards and Fighters, it will not show large differences between Wizards and Druids. This is because Wizards and Druids are balanced, which is a good thing.

Seriously, it's a four point scale that covers everything from Clerics to Commoners. Why are you acting like it not reflecting the difference between the Dread Necromancer's animate dead and the Wizard's means it doesn't exist?


No, teleport is bad for adventures because it takes encounters away.

It takes away encounters you don't care about. That is a good thing. If you (as a DM) find players skipping encounters with teleport, that is a failure on your part.


It takes the adventure out of adventuring.

No it doesn't. "Wander around looking for trouble" is exactly what teleport doesn't negate. Consider the following adventure:

Some interplanar explorers found a ruin on the Astral Plane. It's bigger on the outside than the inside, and expeditions inside have encountered horrible monsters and traps, but also treasures beyond mortal magic. The expedition has thus far failed to identify the construction, but it shows clear ties to genie architecture and some of the expeditions have encountered what look like genealogical archives.

How exactly is teleport skipping that? What are you teleporting to?


Also, even if you've determined that long range teleportation is a needed thing in your game, that doesn't mean it has to be a standard action available to every 9th level wizard can do. How would it be functially if you had to do an incantation to get that effect? Other than the fact that it'll let non-Wizards get access to that power and you can't just nope encounters and screw off at will?

What stops non-Wizards from getting teleport as a standard action. The answer is apparent that that would make them casters and therefore be bad, but isn't that circular?


Okay, as I've criticized Jormangandr for, you can't make a t1 Martial.

I mean sure, but that is not what you should try to do. The tiers are intended to describe an existing and flawed system. Trying to use them as a basis for new content is stupid and won't produce good results.

[Morphic tide]

I mean sure, but that is not what you should try to do. The tiers are intended to describe an existing and flawed system. Trying to use them as a basis for new content is stupid and won't produce good results.

The entire point of the thread is to discuss how to improve martials to the level of the casters. If you really hold fast to this assumption you're making, leave the thread, as it is not for the opinion you have (which amounts to stating that casters need to be nerfed). The tiers describe what we need to boost Martials to match, because this thread disallows nerfing casters.

This is not a thread for discussing a balancing of D&D as a whole to make it sane. It's to discuss how to make the side that's stuck on the lower end of the imbalance match the upper end of the imbalance. Render casters non-imbalanced by making Martials equally overpowered for narrative purposes. Of course, actually making them equal means building in trap options of very particular types to match the floors and cielings, something not easily done without understanding how the options work for spellcasters, but this thread is about matching the ceilings.

[Andor13]

In addition, wizards would suck in combat. Most combats are over in a few rounds, so either you start casting a 4th or 5th level spell in the hopes you get it off before the combat is over (and not get interrupted by someone else) and are so completely useless the entire combat or you cast 1st level spells, whose save DCs or damage or effects simply suck at high levels. I get that you want to mix things up, but this way just makes wizards or casters in general an out of combat source. Maybe they can get one spell of before the combat starts. If you do use this houserule then wizards are either cohorts or group NPCs. Actually, having every player a secondary character which is a caster would work. Assuming you get fighter players to use magic.

You have just described Ars Magica. A game dedicated to how cool Wizards are, and they still can't do everything D&D Wizards can, because if you don't have limits to explore, what's the point of the game?

[Andor13]

In fairness, the Marvel movies are action movies. Most people don't do stuff outside combat. That said, Thor does get interplanetary teleportation. He presumably could use his weather magic to do non-combat stuff, but there isn't real an opportunity to do that in the face of challenges like "kill Ultron with a hammer".

Fair enough, but that's Thor the God of Storms, not Warblade with a hammer of thunderbolts.


You mean Arthur, who got a magic sword that made him invincible and entitled him to rule the entire country? Or Aragorn, who becomes a Ghost King and gains the ability to walk the paths of the dead?

Ruling the country is not a magic power. I think you'll find several countries are ruled by non-wizards, last I checked. And you should read the books, Aragorn has no magic ghost king powers, what he had was a cave full of ghosts who were ghosts because they died while forsworn to their oaths of fealty to his family, walking the Paths of the Dead was nothing more than him going into that cave and saying "Hey, want to quit being a ghost and be decently dead? Do me a solid and I'll call it good on the oath thing."


D&D campaigns also last way longer than most fantasy stories do. Compare a D&D Wizard to e.g. Harry Dresden, a wizard who has been the protagonist of a novel series running nearly twenty books, and I think you'll find the comparison move favorable.

I mean, aside from Harry Potter, Quick Ben, Harry Dresden, Merlin of Amber, Belgarion, Gaius Octavian, Anasûrimbor Kellhus (actually, that one I might give you), Drusas Achamian (fortunately, he's from the same series), Rand Al'Thor, and Doctor Strange all don't exist. There has never been a fantasy story that had a Wizard as the main character. That has literally never happened, and has certainly never resulted in the third highest grossing movie franchise in history (http://mentalfloss.com/article/70920/10-highest-grossing-movie-franchises-all-time).

Go back and read what I said "The heroic fantasy that D&D was based on". Do a quick check and see how many of those characters existed before 1974. You're citing fiction that has been informed by D&D fantasy gaming tropes.


Wizards can't do everything. This is something people say when they confuse "Wizards can make Fighters useless" with "Wizards can make everyone useless". In a party of full casters, everyone contributes and you can't just replace people with more Wizards.

I'll admit I may not have been clear, I mean "Any T1 caster whose optimized power is enough to spawn threads like this."


That said, Beguilers are superior, but not for power reasons. People like thematic characters. They want saying "I'm a Wizard" to convey information about what powers your character has in a way that it currently does not.

I agree. D&D Wizards are like scientists in bad SF whose field of study is SCIENCE! In the real world people specialize to incredible degrees. More importantly, a cooperative game like D&D works better when each person has an area to shine, and others where they need support from the team.


This plan is garbage. Don't do this. Casting spells in combat to do things in combat is literally the least problematic thing it is possible for Wizards to do. If your plan is to cast a spell and use that to hurt people, your character is fine.

I didn't say "This is what I'm going to do at my table." But, you do know this is how things used to be right? Some 1st and 2nd edition spells had multi-round casting times, and there was no concentration check to save it if you got hit.


Yeah, but that's good. You have to have an "it just works" solution to hostile environments, because eventually you want those things to be scenery. A 20th level character should not be worried about drowning. "Under the sea" is not some big deal place to go. There are like four different species that live there and are just level 0 humanoids.

No it doesn't. "Wander around looking for trouble" is exactly what teleport doesn't negate. Consider the following adventure:

Binary solutions are good when they enable an adventure, like water breathing letting you explore a sunken city. Binary solutions are bad when they solve things entirely, like that time when Gandalf just teleported Frodo to Mount Doom and the LotR was only 3 paragraphs long.

[Karl Aegis]

Okay, as I've criticized Jormangandr for, you can't make a t1 Martial. It's just not possible, the themes don't work that way, you need too many handwaves. You can almost trivially get a t3 martial, and a t2 martial is also doable, but the sheer variety of absurd tricks that are needed to reach t1, the totality of solutions, isn't doable on a true Hypermundane. However, there's a bit of a workaround, rather scummy and bad for feeling. You offload it into things that default to being fitting for a martial, but can have theme stretching, or even theme breaking, to solve exactly the range of problems holding said Martials back from t1.

The first key is to beef up Alchemy and make it a core of the exotic mundane. This offers the item crafting, or "WBL-mancy", solution, but can also be used to just make swords that can whack incorporeal foes and hold an edge beyond any ordinary metal. Grounding it into a Martial through it being access to superb metallurgy and potent poisons of similar combat value means that the supernatural stuff is an option within the setup of no mechanical need for combat functions.

The second is to construct the classes so that they have an open-ended feature at some point between level 3 and 7 that unlocks volentary access to whatever magical effects they need that aren't included in the approved Extraordinary and Supernatural lists, like getting a free Cohort with restricted class options that includes a t4 or t3 spellcaster specifically constructed to fill in the blanks on what the Martial can't do via theme-fitting Extraordinary methods, largely "plot magic" like resurrection and interplanar travel. Or giving the Rogue-analogue spontaneous WBL-mancy with a feature that lets them decide what they bought as long after they spent the money as they feel like (provided they aren't subject to events that would take away any possible items, including plain and simple theft), with higher levels letting them broaden how general the preparation can be.

Nnnnnnnnnnnnnoooopppppeeeee.

Tier 3 chassis + Tier 2 ability = Tier 1 class. See: Druid.

[ryu]

That's because no one in LotR is higher than like level six. Low level adventure is low level.

[Andor13]

That's because no one in LotR is higher than like level six. Low level adventure is low level.

Hey, I remember that old Dragon article. It was garbage then, and it's garbage now. But if you want to take a whack at proving that, see if you can figure out how to model Aragorn and Eomer spending literal hours in melee combat at the Battle of Pellenor Fields without getting so much as a scratch on them at 6th level, without magic armour.

If you really want it explained why Gandalf wasn't 6th level, I can do that, but it's a chore to write.

The correct answer is, the book wasn't written to be a wankfest of magic superpowers. It was to show off the world JRR had written to support his habit of inventing languages, and to celebrate the notion that good, and even great deeds do not demand great power. (Yes Gandalf and Aragon have great power and do great deeds, but so do Frodo and Sam, a country squire and his loyal gardener.)

[ryu]

Simple. Plot armor. Even a level twenty character engaged in combat for literal hours constantly with no magic or healing of any sort is going to die to nat twenties eventually. Outside of that one thing that isn't happening even with level twenty melee combatants under those conditions literally nothing that happens actually requires a high level character.

[Cosi]

The entire point of the thread is to discuss how to improve martials to the level of the casters.

With the caveat -- which is literally in the OP -- that we're assuming that the stop the game infinite loops (which is what Tier One is defined in terms of) are banned, because otherwise any balance conversation is pointless.


(which amounts to stating that casters need to be nerfed)

Casters don't need to be nerfed. Specific abilities that give casters (non-exclusive) access to infinite loops need to be nerfed.


Fair enough, but that's Thor the God of Storms, not Warblade with a hammer of thunderbolts.

The comics have always been kind of inconsistent on how much power is Thor and how much is the hammer. Sometimes (as in e.g. Thor Ragnarok) the implication is that Thor has the power and the hammer is just the focus. Sometimes random people pick up the hammer and get the power of Thor. Sometimes Thor loses the hammer and also his powers. Other Asgardians are some amount of superhuman. Long story short, "weakly superhuman guy with a very magic hammer" is a reasonable interpretation of Thor. Mythological Thor is a different deal, but I'm not talking about mythological Thor. As far as Warblade goes, ToB is basically the only model the game has for doing action hero stunts.


Ruling the country is not a magic power. I think you'll find several countries are ruled by non-wizards, last I checked.

Ruling the country because you pulled a sword from a stone/were granted a sword by a woman in a lake is magic. Also, it's a magic invincibility sword.


And you should read the books, Aragorn has no magic ghost king powers, what he had was a cave full of ghosts who were ghosts because they died while forsworn to their oaths of fealty to his family, walking the Paths of the Dead was nothing more than him going into that cave and saying "Hey, want to quit being a ghost and be decently dead? Do me a solid and I'll call it good on the oath thing."

Yes, he had the hereditary magical power to command those ghosts. Like how a Sorcerer has the hereditary magical power to cast fireball. Also, "breaking an oath to the royal family" is not in reality a thing that turns you into a ghost.


Go back and read what I said "The heroic fantasy that D&D was based on". Do a quick check and see how many of those characters existed before 1974. You're citing fiction that has been informed by D&D fantasy gaming tropes.

The fantasy genre evolves. D&D evolves with it. If your opinion on what D&D should be was set entirely before the end of the Cold War, I don't care about your opinion on D&D.


I didn't say "This is what I'm going to do at my table." But, you do know this is how things used to be right? Some 1st and 2nd edition spells had multi-round casting times, and there was no concentration check to save it if you got hit.

Yes, and those games were worse than 3e. Removing those mechanics made the game better.


The correct answer is, the book wasn't written to be a wankfest of magic superpowers.

I was going to explain to you how you were wrong, but now I realize you've already decided that no one who disagrees with you is allowed to have an opinion. LotR is a low level story. You can tell because the characters in it don't use high level abilities. Using high level abilities isn't a "wankfest", it's a different story from LotR which is also a legitimate fantasy story to tell. See, for example, Malazan or Wheel of Time. Or, my personal favorite, The Second Apocalypse in which people actually do a (kind of) LotR with teleportation and high level magic.

[digiman619]

I mean, aside from Harry Potter, Quick Ben, Harry Dresden, Merlin of Amber, Belgarion, Gaius Octavian, Anasûrimbor Kellhus (actually, that one I might give you), Drusas Achamian (fortunately, he's from the same series), Rand Al'Thor, and Doctor Strange all don't exist. There has never been a fantasy story that had a Wizard as the main character. That has literally never happened, and has certainly never resulted in the third highest grossing movie franchise in history (http://mentalfloss.com/article/70920/10-highest-grossing-movie-franchises-all-time).
And you know for a fact the most powerful wizards in the Potter-verse barely scratch 6th level. Because when you give a character the type of power that say, a Druid 16 has, then they essentially become gods and you stop being able to tell meaningful stories about them.


Wizards can't do everything.
****ing prove it. Name three tasks that level 20 Wizard can't do, but another 20th level character can.


That said, Beguilers are superior, but not for power reasons. People like thematic characters. They want saying "I'm a Wizard" to convey information about what powers your character has in a way that it currently does not.
Then why are you so hard on SoP, which makes everyone a thematic caster?


First: fix your tags.

I am entirely willing to accept some alternate progression for when people should get non-combat abilities. Do you have such a progression?
By "fix your tags", I assume you meant my messed up link. I have already done so. Secondly, SoP does. They're called incantations. Anyone can make the skill checks involved to get out-of-combat "spell" utility


In totally surprising news, covering a large range of power levels compresses many of those levels. If your system is mandated to reflect the difference between Wizards and Fighters, it will not show large differences between Wizards and Druids. This is because Wizards and Druids are balanced, which is a good thing.
Once again, even if we ignore the Fighter, they have too much power. Do you really want me to dig out the line where you said that players' power level should be just short of Q's (Star Trek Q, not James Bond Q)?


Seriously, it's a four point scale that covers everything from Clerics to Commoners. Why are you acting like it not reflecting the difference between the Dread Necromancer's animate dead and the Wizard's means it doesn't exist?
Because a) 4 literally means that they cannot do this task at all (and I remind you, there were zero roles that the Wizard had a 4 in) and b)t here exists a point where controlling, say 72 HD of undead isn't notably better than 40 HD. Once you reached the ideal number of undead, everything else is overkill.


It takes away encounters you don't care about. That is a good thing. If you (as a DM) find players skipping encounters with teleport, that is a failure on your part.
Oh, and the person playing the Wizard should be final arbiter of what the party does? Since when? Who died and made you GM?


No it doesn't. "Wander around looking for trouble" is exactly what teleport doesn't negate. Consider the following adventure:

Some interplanar explorers found a ruin on the Astral Plane. It's bigger on the outside than the inside, and expeditions inside have encountered horrible monsters and traps, but also treasures beyond mortal magic. The expedition has thus far failed to identify the construction, but it shows clear ties to genie architecture and some of the expeditions have encountered what look like genealogical archives.

How exactly is teleport skipping that? What are you teleporting to?Once again, you're arguing in bad faith. How would teleport take you there in the first place? Oh, that's right, it can't and is therefore completely superfluous to this conversation.


What stops non-Wizards from getting teleport as a standard action. The answer is apparent that that would make them casters and therefore be bad, but isn't that circular?
No. I'm saying that no one needs a standard action teleport. Sure a teleportation effect might be appropriate to move you that fast, but there's no need for anyone to have that get-out-of-jail-free card, other than "Well, it's already a spell..." And given how you're always harping on how Vancian isn't a broken mess, just the spells that need to be replaced, "Well, it's already a spell..." isn't good enough justification.

[Drakevarg]

****ing prove it. Name three taska that level 20 Wizard can't do, but another 20th level character can.

Now to be fair, it's true wizards can't do everything. They can do anything, but not all things at all times. :smalltongue:

[Andor13]

Ruling the country because you pulled a sword from a stone/were granted a sword by a woman in a lake is magic. Also, it's a magic invincibility sword.

Except it isn't. The sword didn't give him Thrallherd power or force people to kneel, it was a divination effect that only released the sword to the Rightful King. He became King because people accepted the divination as legit. Likewise Excalibur didn't make him invincible. We know this because he dies. But IIRC the sword wasn't that powerful, the scabbard however was enchanted to prevent bloodloss, and Merlin deemed it a much better item than the sword.


Also, "breaking an oath to the royal family" is not in reality a thing that turns you into a ghost.

Well, the author thought it did, but you know better, apparently.


The fantasy genre evolves. D&D evolves with it. If your opinion on what D&D should be was set entirely before the end of the Cold War, I don't care about your opinion on D&D.

I was describing how D&D got to be the mess it is, do try to follow the topic. You're right however, the feedback loop of D&D informing literature informing D&D is a large part of how we got to discussions about how T1 casters are not playing the same game as everyone else.


Yes, and those games were worse than 3e. Removing those mechanics made the game better.

For wizards yes, you may recall you started this thread to explore ideas for leveling the field a bit, since martials have been left so far behind.


I was going to explain to you how you were wrong, but now I realize you've already decided that no one who disagrees with you is allowed to have an opinion. LotR is a low level story. You can tell because the characters in it don't use high level abilities. Using high level abilities isn't a "wankfest", it's a different story from LotR which is also a legitimate fantasy story to tell. See, for example, Malazan or Wheel of Time. Or, my personal favorite, The Second Apocalypse in which people actually do a (kind of) LotR with teleportation and high level magic.

LotR doesn't feature high-level fantasy powers? What level spell is "Flood a river in seconds"? What level potion gives fully grown adults growth spurts that make them the tallest members of their race ever recorded? What level items are palantiir? Or the throne of Rauros? Or that "Ghost King" power you're insisting is an example of how to do martials right? What level item is a horn that rouses an entire county? What level spell shatters a stone bridge?

LotR doesn't look like high level D&D for a variety of reason, but mostly because that wasn't the story the author wanted to tell. But to say it isn't high level, when you have people shattering a castle's defenses with bottled starlight (said star actually being Elrond's father) is... really weird.

The notion that a game needs T1 casters who can do anything and everything, and that that is the only desirable level of play is pretty much absurd. Even the characters in The Wheel of Time cannot do everything, individually, that D&D wizards can. The pool of available powers is divided up by gender because giving everything to a single character makes for less interesting stories.

Can you have interesting games where everyone is a T1 High Op caster? Sure you can, with the right players and GM (God knows I wouldn't want to GM it.) No one, least of all me, is saying otherwise. To say that is the only acceptable style of play however is to confuse personal preference for objective fact.

If High Op T1 is your preferred method of play, more power to you (no pun intended.) At that table, You would probably want to establish tier minimums (or better, capability minimums) that compel characters to be able to play at that level. Anything below T2 being gestalted, say. A Harbinger/Aegis will bring plenty of utility to that group, even without spells, and won't slow them down. You don't try to cram the actual fighter class into that mold, he won't fit.

[upho]

The problem is that if everyone has freedom of movement, then standard BFC basically doesn't exist. I like BFC; it's the “good” kind of complexity. If it's irresistible, it's too powerful, but if everyone is immune to it, it's pointless.freedom of movement (barring deranged readings) doesn't stop wall of stone or any of the other BFC effects that put up physical barriers. It also doesn't stop the BFC effects that put up zones that simply inflict an unpleasant condition (e.g. stinking cloud, wall of fire, cloudkill).I think the bit most important and relevant to the topic of this thread is the fact that martials lack enough effective alternative control tools not easily countered by freedom of movement, even with all the extras suggested in the OP. Meaning they need more options to gain effective control abilities comparable to the mentioned spells.

If that problem is addressed, I don't think freedom of movement will be seen as nearly as much of an issue. Yes, I agree it's a kinda lazy overly inclusive relic of a solution with boringly binary effects, but since it's not particularly disruptive in a caster-only game, it shouldn't be in a game with martials boosted to similar power level.

Or in other words, while there's nothing bad with turning freedom of movement into something more interesting also in game where all PCs are on a power level on par with the wizard's, the spell's problems will have significantly less impact and the best solution will be different. Which also means I don't think it deserves attention it at this stage. It's probably one of several good "test tools" to determine whether suggested boosts to martials are sufficient though.


That's exactly what I'm saying you don't understand. I'm not "poo poo"ing it, I'm saying that it doesn't deserve unreserved praise. And I do offer solutions, I just get told those solutions are "turning martials into casters". Since I get told that pretty much regardless of what solution I offer, I suspect that most people on this forum believe that it is impossible for anything that is not a caster to compete with casters, not just in terms of RAW effectiveness, but as an abstract design principle.Unfortunately I recognize the pattern of preconceived notions leading to your viewpoints being misinterpreted and your suggestions receiving largely undeserved critique. FWIW, judging by what I can remember you saying in other threads over the years as well as what you've said in this thread so far, I'd personally have a hard time substantiating a claim that your solutions are "turning martials into casters". And if people actually say "only casters can compete with casters" is some kind of abstract design principle, they're simply - knowingly or not - making a poor excuse for a lack of imagination, creativity and/or plain laziness IMO.

Also, while I personally prefer to run games designed for a lower power level than the wizard, I cannot find anything inherently wrong with such a game, and I would certainly enjoy playing in one. Not to mention I'm certain partaking in the attempt to design such a game using a minimum of new custom material will also help me improve my own lower powered game.


People aren't claiming you want to bring people down to the power level of the Fighter, they're claiming you want classes to behave like the Fighter -- have a narrow field of competence in which they are encouraged to heavily invest.This pretty much sums up also my concerns with this approach, even in a game aiming for a balance point at a considerably lower power level.


You could do that at pretty much any power level. Just as you could have characters be like the Wizard or like the Rogue but at lower or higher power levels.This. So very true.


If you end up in that situation, you also have some incidental abilities that might be useful when your primary shtick is disabled, which is desirable. Maybe you took Horde Breaker to get extra AoOs, but that doesn't give you any less fear aura.If using the existing Races of War feats, I'm afraid they'll instead mostly make feat choices much less meaningful, the ranged fighter ending up being just about as competent feat-wise in melee as his melee focused colleague, as it's a complete no-brainer for both to take one of these scaling feats rather than a standard one in order to gain a specific benefit. In addition, despite both these fighters likely having similar feat related benefits, other categories of options (stats, items, buffs etc) will still force them to specialize, so in practice they'll likely end up being highly effective with one type of weapon and highly ineffective with the other anyways.

And you don't gain anything from Horde Breaker aside from the extra AoOs while using a ranged weapon. Consequently, in practice the feat does indeed give you much less of a fear aura than someone focusing on melee, as it'll be active for a very small number of rounds by comparison.

But I absolutely agree "some incidental abilities that might be useful when your primary shtick is disabled" should come at basically no extra cost. Though I also don't think feats providing "some incidental abilities that might be useful" and the other bonus stuff you detailed in the OP is enough to address the underlying issue of increased martial combat specialization = decreased combat specialization applicability. So instead of feats promoting decreased PC differentiation while futilely headbutting themselves dizzy against the system's rock foundation promoting specialization, I'd suggest going much further and copy the wizard approach; make the mechanical applicability of each martial shtick scale with increased specialization. Meaning adding options/benefits which increase a) the variety of scenarios in which a general martial combat specialization remains effective, as well as b) the minimum effectiveness of the specialization.

Coincidentally, the three scaling control feats I threw together in my last post can also serve as examples of strong such applicability increasing options; Dirty Fighting through the on-the-fly adaptable effects and through not relying on a specific stat, Shield Champion through the seamless adaptable SAD switch-hitting using a single item and a single enhancement bonus type for defense, ranged offense and melee offense simultaneously; and Spell Sunder through focusing entirely on removing the far greatest and most frequently imposed external limitation on martial specialization applicability (spell effects).


Gated branching requires an enormous amount of content. You might be able to produce something reasonable if you have just one level of gating and cross-list benefits, but people very often underestimate how much work you have to do to get a reasonable level of choice when previous choices influence which future choices are available.This is certainly true in general. But I was thinking of a more modest set-up, with only one or two instances of optional benefits per feat, most such instances offering a choice between only two or three possible benefits, and such choices only rarely having any impact on future choices.

However, after having written those example control feats, I feel more confident optional benefits shouldn't actually be needed at all, as it's even more straight-forward than I first suspected to design these kinds of mechanically coherent benefits. And thankfully it should therefore also be a quick and easy job to replace face-palm stupidities such as Horde Breaker, which assumes an ability to kill enemies in an exceptionally frightening manner is the most natural consequence of further developing an ability to make exceptionally numerous/quick attacks of opportunity... :smallamused:


Of course the question is -- is that a bug or a feature? If people can get synergistic effects from disconnected abilities, people are less likely to hyperspecialize into a particular ability. If, for example, each of the Ubercharger feats came stapled to three other useful options for different combat styles, Uberchargers would have much less of a problem with being one trick ponies.It's most definitely a bug, and IMO a rather big, ugly and annoying one at that. The main goal of scaling feats is to make meaningful and character-relevant diversification possible, but certainly not to dictate which areas a PC should diversify into. In other words, any benefit which don't share the inherent mechanical connections of the majority of the other benefits is a bug, as it not only makes assumptions about what every character taking the feat is otherwise interested in, but also punishes characters who don't fit those assumptions. :smallyuk:

I have no problems with a few highly generic and flavor-neutral benefits (like say an attack bonus), and sometimes they might even be perfectly appropriate, but anything providing and/or being dependent on more specific mechanics or flavors different from those of the feat's other benefits is simply unacceptable.


Those obstacles and traps are encounters too, and are subject to the same pressures as combat encounters.'Course. Thing is, it's also not very good DM-ing to slap poofaport-proofing onto every encounter otherwise having a high risk of being rendered boringly easy, especially when the enemy otherwise doesn't really do things like poofaport-proofing. Or to put in another way, I definitely understand DMs finding it annoying every challenge which would've been great fun if not for teleport is forced into having some kind of poofaport-proofing, otherwise appropriate or not.


Scry and Die shenanigans are mostly a function of the same thing that makes Persistent Spell broken -- temporary buffs are very strong, but have short durations, so arranging to have your temporary buffs while the enemy doesn't have theirs is overpowering. That's what you have to fix. Otherwise people will just go to whatever the next best thing is.I agree this is the main problem.


Bypassing enemy speed advantages doesn't really make sense to me, and is not a complaint I've ever seen. Doesn't the enemy also have teleport?Far from always, and typically for a good reason. Especially during mid levels and/or in case the enemy has an exceptionally high speed and/or unusual form of movement. Although this is IME typically a good example of how poofaporting allows for creative uses I personally fully support.


I don't think those weapons should be counted against WBL, and I think they should probably be DM created to at least some degree. The ideal system is probably that the DM drops hints about which special magic loot you could get from which adventures and then you go on whichever adventure has the one you think is coolest.They definitely shouldn't be counted against WBL, as that would defeat a large part of the purpose IMO. And yeah, they should probably be largely DM created, especially in order to avoid having to make a design process easily used also by players.


Honestly I'm mostly using "Weapons of Legacy" as shorthand for "something mostly like Weapons of Legacy but with whatever changes are required to make it not suck". Note my repeated mention of removing the penalties existing weapons have on their progressions.Ah, OK. I didn't miss the penalty removal, and everything I've written on the subject assumes that wouldn't be a part of the deal, just as I've taken it for granted these weapons would have no impact on WBL in any way. But if this is actually intended to grant non-sucky scaling custom weapons allowing for more useful and unique effects, the whole idea is certainly a lot more attractive in my eyes. A bit more demanding for the DM of course, but probably well worth that minor trade-off IMO.


I didn't mean to imply psionics wouldn't be useful. I was just point out that if your concern is characters appearing "too magical", then you probably wouldn't be happy with those characters getting psionic abilities instead.Oh, you certainly expressed that eloquently enough. I was just very sloppily and opportunistically using your mention of psionics as a proverbial peg to hang my "don't forget about certain unique psionic powers truly awesome for martials"-comment on. So I'm the only person to blame for any confusion here. :smallredface: Sorry 'bout that...


Yes. Daily use limits in general are bad. If I were redesigning the system from the ground up, everyone would start encounters with their abilities refreshed and resource management would be an in-combat activity.And I'd do exactly the same.

[Cosi]

And you know for a fact the most powerful wizards in the Potter-verse barely scratch 6th level. Because when you give a character the type of power that say, a Druid 16 has, then they essentially become gods and you stop being able to tell meaningful stories about them.

I mean, aside from teleport, no-save finger of death, dominate person (possibly dominate monster, but I'm not sure if there's evidence it works on non-humans in the series), and all their abilities at will. Not to mention their magic items which range from at-will high speed flight to literal time travel. That's at the very least a ~15th level character, and they have at least two abilities (at-will dominate person and time travel) that fall into what I consider genuinely broken. Of course, even if we accept that Harry Potter is literally the strongest character on that list, that's still something between a quarter and a third of the game where the power level of the Wizard is at the appropriate power level for the fantasy genre but other classes are not.


****ing prove it. Name three tasks that level 20 Wizard can't do, but another 20th level character can.

true resurrection. Other characters (gishes, Druids, Clerics) are better at physical combat. The Druid's shambler has a massively higher duration (for guard duty) than other minions spells. It gets a lot easier if you start specifying builds. Of course, if your best point is about 20th level, I'm not convinced your argument is terribly good. What about 10th level? Because at 10th level it is incredibly easy to demonstrate niches.


Then why are you so hard on SoP, which makes everyone a thematic caster?

Because there's a difference between "thematic" and "mechanically narrow".


They're called incantations. Anyone can make the skill checks involved to get out-of-combat "spell" utility

You mean the thing that has raise dead at the same level as the Wizard and doesn't have teleport or plane shift at all (on the list of enumerated effects)? Oh, and the system literally cites out to existing spells to determine what level things should be ("When determining the level of an incantation, it is often useful to compare it to spells or rituals to determine an appropriate level."). Yes, that system is a totally different progression from "the levels Wizards get things are the appropriate levels to get them".


Do you really want me to dig out the line where you said that players' power level should be just short of Q's (Star Trek Q, not James Bond Q)?

It's a fantasy game. Obviously at the end of the progression, you should be as powerful as characters in the source material get. If you don't like that, there are 19 other levels you can play at.


(and I remind you, there were zero roles that the Wizard had a 4 in)

Do you think that would still be true if you did a ranking of character classes with power levels balanced with the Wizard (full casters, Tier One classes, whatever)? That's the point I'm making. If you redid the rankings to focus on the relative effectiveness of characters balanced with the Wizard, do you think the Wizard's average niche would go up, go down, or stay the same? What if you redid it for characters balanced with the Fighter or the Bard?


Oh, and the person playing the Wizard should be final arbiter of what the party does? Since when? Who died and made you GM?

Fun fact: teleport does not allow you to force other people to come along.


Once again, you're arguing in bad faith. How would teleport take you there in the first place? Oh, that's right, it can't and is therefore completely superfluous to this conversation.

Wat? You said "teleport skips adventures". I showed you an adventure teleport doesn't skip (explore the ruins while managing politics). So are you wrong, or does teleport skip it somehow?


Well, the author thought it did, but you know better, apparently.

Either you are very confused and thing that in reality people turn into ghosts when they abandon their oaths to royalty, or you are arguing in bad faith.


For wizards yes, you may recall you started this thread to explore ideas for leveling the field a bit, since martials have been left so far behind.

Yes, leveling the playing field by making martials better. Making it impossible to use any spell over 3rd level in a fight is not making martials better, it is making casters worse.


What level spell is "Flood a river in seconds"?

Mechanically, that's Turn Undead, a power Clerics get for existing. The effect of what Gandalf does is to chase off some undead warriors.


What level potion gives fully grown adults growth spurts that make them the tallest members of their race ever recorded?

I dunno, the mechanical effect is pretty nonexistent. It makes them slightly better at fighting.


What level items are palantiir?

Probably basically the same as those Eberron items that let you do point-to-point communication.


Or that "Ghost King" power you're insisting is an example of how to do martials right?

That's just Leadership.


What level item is a horn that rouses an entire county?

Zero probably? I don't think it does anything mechanically relevant, it's just a call to war.


What level spell shatters a stone bridge?

If you target the keystone, shatter works. Alternatively, stone shape into something structurally unstable. So maybe Gandalf is 7th level.


I think the bit most important and relevant to the topic of this thread is the fact that martials lack enough effective alternative control tools not easily countered by freedom of movement, even with all the extras suggested in the OP. Meaning they need more options to gain effective control abilities comparable to the mentioned spells.

freedom of movement doesn't negate the Tripstar at all. Its big, open-ended allowance is against magic. Its specifics negate grapple, but grapple is not BFC.


Also, while I personally prefer to run games designed for a lower power level than the wizard, I cannot find anything inherently wrong with such a game, and I would certainly enjoy playing in one. Not to mention I'm certain partaking in the attempt to design such a game using a minimum of new custom material will also help me improve my own lower powered game.

I don't disagree with people who want to play at a lower power level. That's totally fine, and it is easily accomplished by playing at a lower actual level. The problem is that people don't ever want the game to reach high power levels (like the guy saying that going above LotR is a "wankfest"), which is stupid.


If using the existing Races of War feats, I'm afraid they'll instead mostly make feat choices much less meaningful, the ranged fighter ending up being just about as competent feat-wise in melee as his melee focused colleague, as it's a complete no-brainer for both to take one of these scaling feats rather than a standard one in order to gain a specific benefit.

Well, yes, scaling feats negate non-scaling ones. That's sort of the point, because the feat progression (where you get a single digit number over the entire game) is not compatible with the level of impact most RAW feats. As I've said a couple of times, you could also increase the rate of feat acquisition and use (mostly) RAW feats. My preferred solution might be do to that, and give martials the option for a small-ish number of Races of War feats.


Meaning adding options/benefits which increase a) the variety of scenarios in which a general martial combat specialization remains effective, as well as b) the minimum effectiveness of the specialization.

Can you expound on what kind of mechanics you'd be in favor of here?


And thankfully it should therefore also be a quick and easy job to replace face-palm stupidities such as Horde Breaker, which assumes an ability to kill enemies in an exceptionally frightening manner is the most natural consequence of further developing an ability to make exceptionally numerous/quick attacks of opportunity... :smallamused:

Again, I think you're looking at the mechanics rather than the concept. The idea is that the feat makes you effective against groups of enemies, in a control-ish way. Both AoOs and the fear aura service that end.


'Course. Thing is, it's also not very good DM-ing to slap poofaport-proofing onto every encounter otherwise having a high risk of being rendered boringly easy, especially when the enemy otherwise doesn't really do things like poofaport-proofing. Or to put in another way, I definitely understand DMs finding it annoying every challenge which would've been great fun if not for teleport is forced into having some kind of poofaport-proofing, otherwise appropriate or not.

I think if the encounter would have been interesting if not for teleport, people won't use teleport to skip it. The problem, I think, is that many DMs don't consider that they might want to convince people to engage with encounters, instead assuming that just having the encounter makes people engage.

[Quertus]

No, teleport is bad for adventures because it takes encounters away. It kills any sidequests. It kills any time-critical adventures. It takes the adventure out of adventuring. Also, even if you've determined that long range teleportation is a needed thing in your game, that doesn't mean it has to be a standard action available to every 9th level wizard can do. How would it be functially if you had to do an incantation to get that effect? Other than the fact that it'll let non-Wizards get access to that power and you can't just nope encounters and screw off at will?

One, Teleport is a good run away option in a game where most monsters are faster than you.

Two, if the PCs wanted to explore the caves, they'd explore the caves, not just Teleport to the treasure. Cosi has, repeatedly, promoted the notion of making adventures that take teleport into account, where the goal is "explore the caves" (which you can teleport to, should you like to bypass the two months of random encounters, or from, should you need to escape), rather than "defeat the end boss".

Three, your statements only make sense in a more linear context. In a pure sandbox, there is no concept of "takes encounters away = bad".


These classes already exist. They're the Warrior, Adept and Expert. And while there do exist some builds for them, they're all academical; no one actually play them. Why should we cater to things that will never see play?

I guess you haven't been reading the same threads I've been reading? People don't talk about how much fun they had optimizing and playing a Warrior, IME. They talk about taking some suboptimal PC chassis, and making it into something balanced for their group.

So, yes, IMO, we should cater to that optimization itch, and, IMO, we should cater to things that will see play. Thus, the existence of suboptimal chassis is a feature, not a bug.

Now, mind you, given your tendency to import the entirely of my stance on gaming from all previous threads*, I hadn't felt the need to mention this, but I don't believe in trap options. I believe in making the Fighter the "equal"** of the Wizard - I just want clearly labeled "hard mode" classes which occupy a similar niche / conceptual space to also exist. So, for example, if we waved a magic wand and completely fixed balance in 3e, I'd still want people to have the option to play either Fighter, or "Classic Fighter", should they feel the optimization itch.

Do you somehow disagree with this stance?

* which, come to think of it, is actually a rather poor tactic, given that I am capable of learning and changing - I expect some of my positions throughout history to be quite incompatible, and attempting to combine them to lead to some rather hilarious results.
** in terms of narrative contribution


The part where you think it should be manadtory rather than being the choice of the player is the problem.

I can't even parse what you believe my opinion is, or what your opinion is on this topic.

Given Equal playing pieces, some players will overshadow others. Given equal - or even the same - magic decks, some players will overshadow others. Given a chess board, some players will overshadow others. This is just a basic fact of life.

You believe... that those with the skill should just crush the noobs beneath their heel? You believe... that I believe... that someone should hold a gun to the head of the skilled to force them to play nice?

I believe that it's good sportsmanship for the skilled to play a different deck, to spot pieces, or to play a suboptimal build (or, contrary-wise, to buff their opponent's deck / board, or give their party members stronger characters).


Without being too dismissive, I'm glad that Armus being relatively weaker than the rest of the party worked out for you. Most players would find it incredibly frustrated with that little agency.

Of course they would. Without being too immodest, most players aren't superman walking on eggshells in a world made out of tissue paper, trying not to break the world by breathing.

Now, I still had issue with some of the world-building and heavy-handedness in those games, but at least I could stretch my wings in the tactical combat minigame for once.


Such is the nature of caster-dom. Plenty of spells do absolutely nothing if the target makes their save. In this scenario, solid fog would still have a lesser effect even if the target can overcome it. Remember too that solid fog affects an area, so the caster has a lot of chances to get value out of the spell even if it doesn't flat-out remove an enemy from combat.

So, let's try two best-and-worst-case scenarios here. It's actually combat encounters, the Wizard actually has Solid Fog prepared. The 7th-level party is facing off against a pair of 7th-level Fighters. The Wizard uses his only 4th-level slot to cast Solid Fog to hold off one. Under your proposed system, what did the Wizard contribute via this Herculean effort? Also, compare the effectiveness of that Solid Fog to, say, the Random Action spell.

Next, let's say that a 10th level party had 4 level-appropriate (CR 8-12) combat challenges one day. The Wizard uses Solid Fog as his opener in 3 of them. What do you expect him to have contributed?


This is problematic, because it requires that the caster teammate have the right answer and that they take a turn off to use it. Dispelling is not guaranteed to work. Should the caster teammate spend an action and a spell attempting to dispel so that the fighter can attempt to attack, or attempting to attack the enemy directly? Or, for that matter, simply cast a spell (like solid fog) that is guaranteed to adversely affect the enemy? Sure, the friendly thing is to dispel the solid fog affecting the fighter, but the fighter's ability to contribute shouldn't depend on teammates choosing a friendly option over more effective options.

I mean, if you used Solid Fog to try to shut down the Fighter in the party of Quertus, my signature academia mage for whom this account is named, off the top of my head, I can think of 8 spells - only 1 custom - that would technically solve the problem. And probably only one would damage the Fighter in the process. Dispel effects would probably be my last choice. Of course, Quertus is tactically inept, so take that with a grain of salt.

Point is, the Playground is always talking about über-prepared Schroeder Wizards, and the value of scrolls, so I find it difficult to imagine that a Playgrounder would argue that a well-played Wizard would be less well prepared than my tactically-inept academia mage.

So that just leaves the relative value of helping the Fighter, or the Wizard just being a ****.

If we boost the Fighter to being a valuable member of the team, instead of the Playground estimate of "dead weight", this is less of an issue. Of course, I'm amazed that the Playground hasn't said anything about "if the Fighter hasn't purchased some form of tactical teleport, he's unplayably suboptimal" or some such yet.

And, if the Wizard's just a ****? Well, don't play with ****s.


Some people say that fighters shouldn't depend on casters at all; they should be entirely self-sufficient. I wouldn't go so far, myself. I feel that a mixed party should be most effective. But I think that every character should have answers to mitigate standard, easily accessible offensive tactics other than waiting for a spellcaster to bail them out. The problem with solid fog and other BFC spells is that nonmagical characters have no mitigation at all — no save, no way to resist or overcome the effect. Every character should have a chance.

See the previous comment about tactical teleport. Magic Item Mart and WBL are required for balance for a reason.


If this works for you, that's fine, but it can't work for me. One of the best parts of 3.5, in my opinion, is that the rules are more or less symmetrical. Anything that the players can do, NPCs or monsters can do. This makes the system flexible, but it also makes the world fair in some sense: everyone is playing by the same rules. I find this to be more immersive as well as more fun. Again, this is not meant to be prescriptive.

Um, it doesn't work for me - I'm with you on this one. I actually try to make the rules more symmetrical.

I'm just being true to form, and blaming the GM. If the GM can't handle making fun encounters with NPCs, and the GM isn't smart enough to self-ban, then the GM should be forcibly banned from making bad encounters.

Party vs Monsters (largely) accomplishes this.

[digiman619]

I mean, aside from teleport, no-save finger of death, dominate person (possibly dominate monster, but I'm not sure if there's evidence it works on non-humans in the series), and all their abilities at will. Not to mention their magic items which range from at-will high speed flight to literal time travel. That's at the very least a ~15th level character, and they have at least two abilities (at-will dominate person and time travel) that fall into what I consider genuinely broken. Of course, even if we accept that Harry Potter is literally the strongest character on that list, that's still something between a quarter and a third of the game where the power level of the Wizard is at the appropriate power level for the fantasy genre but other classes are not.
No; while they have teleportation effects, they don't have teleport. The only long distance teleporting in the series is either a) specific location-to-location based via artifice (meaning, in at least in theory, that anyone would be able to do it) or to semi-randomly known locations (the one time Hermione teleported them away to London from the attack at the wedding). Avada Kadabra clearly isn't "no-save" as Harry keeps dodging it. And Potterverse control spells are clearly less powerful than dominate person as it doesn't last nearly as long (They usually haveto be reapplied daily as opposed to weeks at a time like dominate person) and the casters have no mental control of them.

true resurrection. Other characters (gishes, Druids, Clerics) are better at physical combat. The Druid's shambler has a massively higher duration (for guard duty) than other minions spells. It gets a lot easier if you start specifying builds. Of course, if your best point is about 20th level, I'm not convinced your argument is terribly good. What about 10th level? Because at 10th level it is incredibly easy to demonstrate niches.
a) gate a Solar or Planatar in; they're level 17+ clerics. b) Really? You're gonna say their poor BAB (something that only applies to attacks that they were almost certainly never gonna use anyway) is proof that Wizard 20's aren't overpowered compared to any other non-fullcaster classes? Fine; shapechange into a terrasque or something. Next point? c) greater planar binding an earth elemental or whatnot can do the job just as well.

But most importantly, that was not the question. The question was to "Name 3 tasks a Wizard 20 cannot do, but another 20th level character can". Not "Name 3 things another 20th level character can do somewhat better than a Wizard 20" And you couldn't accomplish even that. And the reason I chose 20th over 10th is that you said "Wizards can't do everything" and I wanted to prove that at the height of their power, yes they can. Maybe they have to do it indirectly, but it's still totally within their power.


Because there's a difference between "thematic" and "mechanically narrow".
Explain the differences between them and why SoP is the latter rather than the prior, please


You mean the thing that has raise dead at the same level as the Wizard and doesn't have teleport or plane shift at all (on the list of enumerated effects)? Oh, and the system literally cites out to existing spells to determine what level things should be ("When determining the level of an incantation, it is often useful to compare it to spells or rituals to determine an appropriate level."). Yes, that system is a totally different progression from "the levels Wizards get things are the appropriate levels to get them".
With respect, I never said spell levels were a bad idea. There are effects that really should be gated to specific levels and spells do that wonderfully. The problem is that they lend to win buttons and win buttons generally don't stop being win buttons; the wind wall that just no-sold all the archer's attacks at 5th level still screws him over at 8th, but that wizard now has 3 slots for it, making the opportunity cost much, much lower.


It's a fantasy game. Obviously at the end of the progression, you should be as powerful as characters in the source material get. If you don't like that, there are 19 other levels you can play at.
Yeah. That upper limit is Merlin, who was still powerless to stop the war that got Arthur killed. Because "Ultra powerful character" does not mean "Can do pretty much anything, to at least a moderate degree".


Do you think that would still be true if you did a ranking of character classes with power levels balanced with the Wizard (full casters, Tier One classes, whatever)? That's the point I'm making. If you redid the rankings to focus on the relative effectiveness of characters balanced with the Wizard, do you think the Wizard's average niche would go up, go down, or stay the same? What if you redid it for characters balanced with the Fighter or the Bard?
I get where you're coming from, and yes, if we shift focus to just T1's, you could have 4 characters of 4 different classes be mechanically different form each other and still be that powerful. The problem is a) you can use pretty much any combination of those T1's and have very few mechanical differences between each set, and b) you refuse to acknowledge any game that's not highly optimized T1s.


Fun fact: teleport does not allow you to force other people to come along.
Great, you can instead hold the entire party hostage into doing whatever you want by threatening to teleport out and cripple the party if you don't get your way. That's so much better.


Wat? You said "teleport skips adventures". I showed you an adventure teleport doesn't skip (explore the ruins while managing politics). So are you wrong, or does teleport skip it somehow?
I'm sorry, that house was 400 miles away, but you decided to teleport to the Rajah's palace 1,200 miles away. You don't know it exists because you skipped it.


One, Teleport is a good run away option in a game where most monsters are faster than you.

Two, if the PCs wanted to explore the caves, they'd explore the caves, not just Teleport to the treasure. Cosi has, repeatedly, promoted the notion of making adventures that take teleport into account, where the goal is "explore the caves" (which you can teleport to, should you like to bypass the two months of random encounters, or from, should you need to escape), rather than "defeat the end boss".

Three, your statements only make sense in a more linear context. In a pure sandbox, there is no concept of "takes encounters away = bad".
You can totally get "escape button" without being "At a moment's notice, you can be anywhere within 1,000 miles away".


I guess you haven't been reading the same threads I've been reading? People don't talk about how much fun they had optimizing and playing a Warrior, IME. They talk about taking some suboptimal PC chassis, and making it into something balanced for their group.

So, yes, IMO, we should cater to that optimization itch, and, IMO, we should cater to things that will see play. Thus, the existence of suboptimal chassis is a feature, not a bug.

Now, mind you, given your tendency to import the entirely of my stance on gaming from all previous threads*, I hadn't felt the need to mention this, but I don't believe in trap options. I believe in making the Fighter the "equal"** of the Wizard - I just want clearly labeled "hard mode" classes which occupy a similar niche / conceptual space to also exist. So, for example, if we waved a magic wand and completely fixed balance in 3e, I'd still want people to have the option to play either Fighter, or "Classic Fighter", should they feel the optimization itch.

Do you somehow disagree with this stance?

* which, come to think of it, is actually a rather poor tactic, given that I am capable of learning and changing - I expect some of my positions throughout history to be quite incompatible, and attempting to combine them to lead to some rather hilarious results.
** in terms of narrative contribution
Okay, I suppose that I understand that, for optimization puzzles, "fulfills the same role as X, but is notably weaker than X" is a worthwile idea, and "I made <weak class> a worthwhile memeber of the party due to my system mastery" is a thing too. I just think that the "wants a challenge"/"wants it for optimization puzzles" subniche is too small to cater to.


I can't even parse what you believe my opinion is, or what your opinion is on this topic.

Given Equal playing pieces, some players will overshadow others. Given equal - or even the same - magic decks, some players will overshadow others. Given a chess board, some players will overshadow others. This is just a basic fact of life.

You believe... that those with the skill should just crush the noobs beneath their heel? You believe... that I believe... that someone should hold a gun to the head of the skilled to force them to play nice?

I believe that it's good sportsmanship for the skilled to play a different deck, to spot pieces, or to play a suboptimal build (or, contrary-wise, to buff their opponent's deck / board, or give their party members stronger characters).
Yeah, I don't think that came across well. I meant that you seemed to think that going from total newbie to "master of the system who needs the thrill of optimizing the unoptimizable to push their skills" was a straight line that everyone naturally went through. There are plenty of players that manage to have a great time and be useful to their party without trying to roll a Truenamer or whatnot simply for the challenge of it.


Of course they would. Without being too immodest, most players aren't superman walking on eggshells in a world made out of tissue paper, trying not to break the world by breathing.

Now, I still had issue with some of the world-building and heavy-handedness in those games, but at least I could stretch my wings in the tactical combat minigame for once.
Again, player agency is not character agency and not every enjoys that kind of challenge gaming.

[Andor13]

Well there is a fair amount I'd like to address but there doesn't seem to be a point.


Either you are very confused and thing that in reality people turn into ghosts when they abandon their oaths to royalty, or you are arguing in bad faith.

In reality there are no ghosts. Period. How that is germane to this discussion, I haven't the faintest idea. The topic, which you raised, was Aragorn's actions in the Paths of the Dead. Either we are discussing Lord of the Rings, in which case ghosts are made however J.R.R. Tolkien says they are, or we are discussing D&D in which case ghosts are made however the rules and GM say they are made. But I'm arguing in bad faith? You wanna walk that back, or are we done here?

[Cosi]

to semi-randomly known locations (the one time Hermione teleported them away to London from the attack at the wedding).

Yes, the attack at the wedding by ... Death Eaters apparating to the wedding. Apparation is precise enough that people consistently teleport inside a single house when they need to. Or teleport to the specific location of someone saying Voldemort's name. Do I need to go pull up some text showing precision teleportation?


Avada Kadabra clearly isn't "no-save" as Harry keeps dodging it.

It's a no-save touch attack. It's a ray spell with the effect "you die, no save". People survive by dodging, by putting up barriers (though that might just be in the movies), or in one case by plot device magic deflecting it. No one survives by being really tough, and there is no implication you could do that.


And Potterverse control spells are clearly less powerful than dominate person as it doesn't last nearly as long (They usually haveto be reapplied daily as opposed to weeks at a time like dominate person) and the casters have no mental control of them.

The duration doesn't matter much if it's at will. I also thought I recalled people having mental control, but I might be confused.


a) gate a Solar or Planatar in; they're level 17+ clerics.

Yes, dumpster diving the Monster Manual is broken. Didn't I say that already?


b) Really? You're gonna say their poor BAB (something that only applies to attacks that they were almost certainly never gonna use anyway) is proof that Wizard 20's aren't overpowered compared to any other non-fullcaster classes? Fine; shapechange into a terrasque or something. Next point?

No, I'm saying that someone built for melee combat is in fact better than someone not built for it when classes are comparable. And again, MM diving is in broken, but it's not uniquely broken for the Wizard.


c) greater planar binding an earth elemental or whatnot can do the job just as well.

So since all your examples involve pulling things from the MM, I can assume that if we ban that (like I already said we should), Wizards would be fine, right? It seems like your argument is that because you can name three broken spells, the entire edifice of the Wizard is broken. That argument is really really bad. There are thousands of spells. If ten of them are broken, that's an error rate under 1%.


The question was to "Name 3 tasks a Wizard 20 cannot do, but another 20th level character can".

What if I don't think having things your character can never do is a good balance point? It seems like you're basically saying "Wizards aren't at the balance point I want, therefore they are bad". And we both agree that Wizards aren't at the balance point you want -- I have never intended to claim that Wizards are balanced with Spheres of Power. My position has always been that no one should have no ability to do a thing, and different people should instead have different levels of ability to do that thing. If the challenge is "this guy is dead", there has to be a way for the party to solve that problem even if that party is a Warmage, a Psion, a Wizard, and a Beguiler. That means that everyone should have some ability to do everything (or almost everything), and most people should have some level of competency in most things. To put it in terms of the Niche Ranking system, people shouldn't have 4s in many categories (probably ~1 per class). Instead, people should have 1s in maybe a quarter of the tasks, and 2s and 3s roughly evenly distributed over the rest. And those abilities should be varied enough that sometimes you pick one face power over another even if the one you normally use is nominally "better".


Explain the differences between them and why SoP is the latter rather than the prior, please

Educate yourself (http://www.tgdmb.com/viewtopic.php?t=56733).

I agree that making people more like the Fighter (possessed of a narrow niche of mechanical prowess and worthless outside it) is bad, but that's not how thematic casters have to work. Consider, for example, the Necromancer. Sure, you could just give her negative energy blasts and some undead. But you could also add some divinations (speak with dead is obvious, but Necromancy was originally "divination via spirits), blasting effects to support Lord of the Uttercold shenanigans, plague themed debuffs, stinking cloud and friends for undead-friendly battlefield control, raise dead effects, teleport or plane shift effects mediated via the spirit world, or fear magic. All of that is on-theme for a Necromancer, but it's also a wide enough variety of things that you could plausibly trim one or two options and still have a character who has something to do in any situation, and there are other options you could add depending on exactly what kind of Necromancer you went with (shadow magic for someone focused on incorporeal undead, or melee options for a vampire type, or an entire line of magic jar shenanigans, or entropy magic, or disease magic, or any number of other things).


With respect, I never said spell levels were a bad idea. There are effects that really should be gated to specific levels and spells do that wonderfully.

So you agree that "match the Wizard's progression" is a reasonable standard for when people should get to do particular non-combat things (with the caveat that you think that there are some things no one should get to do at all)?


The problem is that they lend to win buttons and win buttons generally don't stop being win buttons; the wind wall that just no-sold all the archer's attacks at 5th level still screws him over at 8th,

I don't care. "Archer" is not a character. If your concept is defined by the weapon you use, it is a bad concept and I am completely okay with it being negated when people shell out resources. Your concept should be something like Ranger, which would afford you other abilities you could use when hitting people with a bow doesn't work. Could you rebalance wind wall? Sure, I guess, but ultimately the characters it is a problem for are bad characters and need to be fixed anyway.


I get where you're coming from, and yes, if we shift focus to just T1's, you could have 4 characters of 4 different classes be mechanically different form each other and still be that powerful. The problem is a) you can use pretty much any combination of those T1's and have very few mechanical differences between each set, and b) you refuse to acknowledge any game that's not highly optimized T1s.

You are the one who wants to exclude party of the power progression. You are the one who wants certain abilities to never exist. I am 100% okay with the game saying that you don't get some magic effect until 11th level or 17th level. I can just play at that level. If you want to have campaigns where "my entire character is that I hit things with arrows" is a fully viable character, that is fine. Do it at 3rd level.


Great, you can instead hold the entire party hostage into doing whatever you want by threatening to teleport out and cripple the party if you don't get your way. That's so much better.

How is that different from threatening to not go on the adventure? It seems like your problem is that you assume anyone who plays any class you don't think is good is a toxic jackass, not anything to do with those classes. Does something in Spheres of Power stop me from blasting my allies if they don't give me all their gold? Or from trying to gank the king in the middle of an audience?


I'm sorry, that house was 400 miles away, but you decided to teleport to the Rajah's palace 1,200 miles away. You don't know it exists because you skipped it.

It's a plot hook. The way it works is that you are somewhere, and someone tells you about it, and then you get to go do it if you want. So. The players have been hired/decided to go/blackmailed into exploring. How does teleport skip that adventure? Where do they teleport (if you feel it's insufficiently specified, feel free to explain what kind of thing they'd teleport to instead)? What problems would they have to solve if they didn't have teleport? Why are those problems that the game should always require them to engage with?


You can totally get "escape button" without being "At a moment's notice, you can be anywhere within 1,000 miles away".

Is there anything wrong with escaping a really long distance other than "Spheres of Power doesn't do it that way"?


In reality there are no ghosts. Period. How that is germane to this discussion, I haven't the faintest idea. The topic, which you raised, was Aragorn's actions in the Paths of the Dead. Either we are discussing Lord of the Rings, in which case ghosts are made however J.R.R. Tolkien says they are, or we are discussing D&D in which case ghosts are made however the rules and GM say they are made. But I'm arguing in bad faith? You wanna walk that back, or are we done here?

So did I misread you when you said that Aragon's power of commanding ghosts was not magic? Because it looks to me like you were asserting it wasn't, which would imply that those ghosts -- who, again, exist because they broke their oaths -- were not created magically.

[Ignimortis]

Is there anything wrong with escaping a really long distance other than "Spheres of Power doesn't do it that way"?

Only the fact that it's something only spellcasters do (UMD notwithstanding) and they can do it as a standard action. I'm pretty sure that if all long-range teleportation was limited to, say, Morrowind-like system, where you had basically "anchors" to which you could teleport (Divine Intervention brought you to the closes Almsivi temple, Mages' Guild had teleportation circles between which you could travel, and Mark/Recall required you to visit the place first), or even if Teleport took like an hour to cast, it would solve some problems with it, if not all.

[EldritchWeaver]

Educate yourself (http://www.tgdmb.com/viewtopic.php?t=56733).

No one ever mentioned "thematic" in that thread. So I still don't see it.

[PairO'Dice Lost]

To get back to the actual topic of the thread rather than yet another discussion on problem spells and fictional wizards.... :smallamused:

The point was raised a few pages back that martial types are very inflexible because they have very few feat slots and have to spend them all on one thing to get good at that thing, and combining feats into bigger, more character-defining feats (like the RoW ones) was suggested as a way of giving them more options. I'd like to suggest the opposite approach: leave feats as they are, but give martial types a ton of them. Wizards get 41+Int spells of 1st level and higher at 20th level, before bonus spells from feats and PrCs or independently scribed spells, and those spells can all be chosen individually for variety instead of the wizard e.g. having to choose several large packages of similar spells, so why not let the fighter do the same thing?

I'm currently running a campaign where PCs can gain feats through downtime training, and characters have enough time between adventures that after spending some time on other downtime options they have about a feat per level on average. The fighter fix I wrote for the campaign has two class features that lets it take better advantage of this, howveer: First, it has multiple selectable combat styles it can switch between (so e.g. instead of having 5 fighter bonus feats at 10th level, the fighter has 3 combat styles with 5 fighter bonus feats each and can spend 5 feats on archery, 5 on charging, and 5 on sword-and-board), and every time it takes the "gain a feat" downtime action for a fighter bonus feat it actually gets one feat normally plus one to add to each combat style, so it ends up with a lot more feats than other classes.

Second, it can ignore certain numbers and kinds of prerequisites per feat as it levels (e.g. a 7th-level fighter can ignore two feat prerequisites and count as having full IL for Martial Study, and an 11th-level one can ignore BAB prerequisites and take [Epic] fighter bonus feats), so it can "jump around" to take unrelated feats to an extent like a wizard can pick spells and a warblade can pick maneuvers, rather than being forced into feat trees all the time, and it can actually start picking up pretty strong feats at mid levels where they matter. Neither of those class features is particularly novel as far as fighter fixes go, they just happen to work much better when many more feat slots are available.

The end result of this is that the party fighter currently has more fighter bonus feats than the party wizard has spells known, and he has a bunch of noncombat-relevant feats as well (Research, Favored in House, multiple Skill Focus, multiple Open Minded, etc.). He's as good at archery, charging, grappling, sword-and-board, TWF, bigger-creature slaying, and...I want to say mounted combat? (I know he has another chunk of feats he hasn't used in a while) as a core fighter who specialized in that style, so he has lots of options in combat and is far from being a one-trick pony, and he can be a secondary knowledge monkey, face, and sneaky guy thanks to his other feats to let him contribute meaningfully out of combat.

Now, this of course isn't a perfect or complete solution. The party is currently at mid levels, so they haven't hit the "have mind blank, freedom of movement, and death ward or GTFO" levels yet, but even then being able to spend a bunch of feats on boosting saves without cutting into your main schtick is helpful so he at least won't be too buff-dependent, and he won't ever get teleport or water breathing to adventure in exotic locales but neither could a beguiler or warmage without judicious dips or other resource investment to get them. But it does provide at least some evidence that martial types can be given a pretty significant boost without making them too magical or caster-y, and that they can at least hold their own in a party with well-optimized-but-not-ridiculous casters under those conditions--and, unlike introducing Spheres of Might or Tome of Battle or the like, "give martial classes a bunch more feats and feat-like abilities" builds on existing mechanics and so can appeal to players who don't like those other subsystems for whatever reason.

[Arbane]

PairO'Dice Lost: It's a start. But if you want some fun and/or a headache, try to come up with a Fighter-usable feat (besides Leadership) that's as good as a 5th-level spell.

[Andor13]

So did I misread you when you said that Aragon's power of commanding ghosts was not magic? Because it looks to me like you were asserting it wasn't, which would imply that those ghosts -- who, again, exist because they broke their oaths -- were not created magically.

Correct on both counts. The answer to "Why were the Paths of the Dead full of Ghosts?" is not "Wizard did it." Ghosts are supernatural creatures, because the soul is supernatural, and ghosts are (generally) disembodied souls. However souls do not come into the world because a Wizard was involved in the conception (except maybe in the regular way.) Usually no magic is involved when they leave either.

Both in fiction and in games most ghosts exist due to unfinished earthly business, it's a staple of the genre that probably predates the written word. "A wizard did it" is sometimes the answer, but hardly the most common cause. The monster manuals for all editions of the game are chock full of undead that can arise due to the circumstances of the life or death of a character, like Ghosts or Revenants

Let's check the SRD to see what D&D thinks of Ghosts.


Ghosts are the spectral remnants of intelligent beings who, for one reason or another, cannot rest easily in their graves.

A ghost greatly resembles its corporeal form in life, but in some cases the spiritual form is somewhat altered.

Rejuvenation (Su)
In most cases, it’s difficult to destroy a ghost through simple combat: The "destroyed" spirit will often restore itself in 2d4 days. Even the most powerful spells are usually only temporary solutions. A ghost that would otherwise be destroyed returns to its old haunts with a successful level check (1d20 + ghost’s HD) against DC 16. As a rule, the only way to get rid of a ghost for sure is to determine the reason for its existence and set right whatever prevents it from resting in peace. The exact means varies with each spirit and may require a good deal of research.

These seem like the relevant bits.

Ghosts exist because they cannot rest, in this specific case it was a curse, laid on them by a King for oath breaking, that bound them to earth and prevented them from resting. They were able to set right their broken oath by fulfilling their pledge to Isildur's Heir, which was Aragorn.

None of which involved any spell casting whatsoever.

Was it magic? Maybe? Oaths are things of power in Middle-Earth, the terrible Oath of Feanor set in motion most of the troubles that followed. Kings, have some powers as well, see Aragorn's use of Aethelas in the house of healing. They swore the Oath upon the Stone of Erech, and while no particular powers are attributed to the stone, the Numenoreans thought enough of it to bring it over the sea for some reason. Isildur did lay a curse upon the Hillmen for their betrayal of their oath of fealty. Was it magic in the regular D&D class abilities sense? Certainly not.

Don't get me wrong, Aragorn had magic powers, cast spells, and was an all around bad-ass, but he had no specific magical powers over those, or any ghosts. What he had was the key to unlocking their curse, which he had because he was a direct descendant of the King whom they had first betrayed, and thus held their oaths in descent in the same way anything is passed down the family line in the feudal system.

If you have a counter argument, I'd be pleased to discuss any passage from the books you think relevant.

[Cosi]

Only the fact that it's something only spellcasters do (UMD notwithstanding) and they can do it as a standard action. I'm pretty sure that if all long-range teleportation was limited to, say, Morrowind-like system, where you had basically "anchors" to which you could teleport (Divine Intervention brought you to the closes Almsivi temple, Mages' Guild had teleportation circles between which you could travel, and Mark/Recall required you to visit the place first), or even if Teleport took like an hour to cast, it would solve some problems with it, if not all.

The things those fix are not problems. Freely directed teleport is a good thing. It encourages campaigns where players are engaged with the world. But "is teleport broken" and "can you go all the way without nerfing casters substantially" are rather off topic for buffing martials. If you want to go start a thread to argue about whether people having fun playing a game is good or bad, you can do that and I would post in that thread, but I would prefer something marginally closer to the topic for this thread.


No one ever mentioned "thematic" in that thread. So I still don't see it.

Did you read the subsequent quote? That thread is expounding on the problems of Spheres of Power vis a vis mechanical overspecialization.


I'd like to suggest the opposite approach: leave feats as they are, but give martial types a ton of them.

I agree, and I've posted that idea several times. I didn't get much discussion, because (unlike RoW) there isn't a big list of things you can point at and talk about. Though it is true that my suggestion was to buff feats in general, largely because I think that resting a class' power (let alone "all martials'" power) on something that is supposed to be class-independent doesn't seem like a good idea to me. The game is better if most of the power of the Warblade comes from abilities that belong to the Warblade class.


Second, it can ignore certain numbers and kinds of prerequisites per feat as it levels

I think that prerequisites are just a bad idea in general, particularly feat chains. Most feats don't need them, and they produce content that is vanishingly unlikely to be used. If a feat requires you to take five other feats, the overwhelming majority of characters will be unable to even consider taking it.


*snip*

Yes, he had the magical power of command over those ghosts as part of his title. You know, exactly like I said. It was a magical debt -- you can tell, because non-magical debts don't produce ghosts -- so the power to dismiss it is, perforce, magic. Yes, Tolkien magic is not exactly D&D magic, but something doesn't have to be a spell to be magic. Receiving a magical debt is just like receiving a magical item.

Also, if your best point is "no, this one thing this one dude did in this one story wasn't magic" I don't really think you're adding much to the conversation. Frankly, none of your posts have inspired any great confidence in me, whether that's "going above LotR would be a wankfest" or "fantasy ended in 1974".

[death390]

Simple. Plot armor. Even a level twenty character engaged in combat for literal hours constantly with no magic or healing of any sort is going to die to nat twenties eventually. Outside of that one thing that isn't happening even with level twenty melee combatants under those conditions literally nothing that happens actually requires a high level character.

you guys all forget that LotR has its own RPG since they COULDN'T MAKE IT WORK IN DND!

they HEAVILY use the equivalent to DR to mitigate damage. the MINIMUM HP is 25 points, because they have 5 WOUND levels of Vitality stat + Strength modifer meaning even wizards with "average" (6) strength and vitality have 30 hp at level 1!
the stats are based of of 2d6 (roll 9 keep best 6) with modifiers staring at 8 (+1) increasing by 1 per 2 pts.

average longsword damage in that game is 2d6+5 + Strength - armor DR (2 for padded 5 for chainmail, and goes up from there.

in order to nerf casting only 2 non sorcery (evil) spells have straight damage, the rest are BFC/ utility/ buffs/ useless (change hue really? it's a spell tax since magicians get 5 per major resource dump and many spells cost 2-3 points of that 5). IN ADDITION TO THAT spellcasting is basically a 2d6 + Fort save based on the spell from 5-12 average is 9. then increased by 3 for every spell cast within 1 minute CUMULATIVELY . so even when casting a DC 5 spell if you cast 3 of them it is now DC 14. it does NOT HAVE increasing saves you ONLY get Str OR Vit modifier whichever is higher + feat equivalent.


honestly in DND terms Gandalf is a Expert with 1-2 levels of Wizard. Aragorn is a Ranger with extra damage from sneak attack or something, Gimli is a warblade ubercharger, and Legolas is not even possible due to ranged damage not working in DND (seriously he would need greater psionic shot, greater many shot, scouts skirmish damage, and more) AND being competent in melee

[Andor13]

Also, if your best point is "no, this one thing this one dude did in this one story wasn't magic" I don't really think you're adding much to the conversation. Frankly, none of your posts have inspired any great confidence in me, whether that's "going above LotR would be a wankfest" or "fantasy ended in 1974".

I said neither of those things, but if you can't maintain context, no you're probably not going to get much out of anything I say. *shrug* It's your thread, I'll bow out.

[EldritchWeaver]

Did you read the subsequent quote? That thread is expounding on the problems of Spheres of Power vis a vis mechanical overspecialization.

What I can gleam is that they complain that a Mind specialist can't do anything against oozes. But how is that different against an enchantment sorcerer with only enchantment school spells?

[Arbane]

I think this guy (https://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?825106-Pathfinder-Second-Edition&p=21913216#post21913216) has a pretty good take on the problem:



The concept tends to be given a more reductive treatment compared to the spellcasters. I would like a nickel for every time I've seen someone who described a spellcaster as "someone who can change the fundamental rules of the universe on a whim" but didn't describe a fighter as "a master of conflict in every form." I'm a genuine aficionado of 4e fighters, but I'd love to see a more mythic take. I've seen rogues that wind up able to steal breath and secrets and names and memories by the time they're truly epic, and it'd be neat to see a fighter that can fight just about anything, up to and eventually including abstract concepts. You manage to resurrect your companion by putting Death in a headlock.

That's going a ways too far for many groups, which is understandable, but if that's the case for martial-types, I don't want to hear that any magical effect you can imagine should eventually be achievable by mortal hands. If a rogue can't steal the crown jewels of the Underworld, maybe a mage shouldn't be forging a demiplane. I'd love to see more incarnations or relatives of D&D that legitimately tried to put all classes on the same level of mythic or not-so-mythic, and were utterly transparent about it.

[ryu]

I can very much agree with make everyone T1, but every time I suggest any relatively easy method of doing it people complain it's too castery. Thus was my solution to simply not bother with the lower tier classes to begin with.

[Quertus]

I just think that the "wants a challenge"/"wants it for optimization puzzles" subniche is too small to cater to.

Hmmm, how to put this... I think most of the long term members of my various groups have that itch, to some degree.


Yeah, I don't think that came across well. I meant that you seemed to think that going from total newbie to "master of the system who needs the thrill of optimizing the unoptimizable to push their skills" was a straight line that everyone naturally went through. There are plenty of players that manage to have a great time and be useful to their party without trying to roll a Truenamer or whatnot simply for the challenge of it.

Given that I intentionally don't get better at Sudoku, and that I recognize the existence of the "casual gamer", I'm fairly confident I never intended such sentiment.


Again, player agency is not character agency and not every enjoys that kind of challenge gaming.

You know, you keep using those words. Care to educate me on the difference?


I can very much agree with make everyone T1, but every time I suggest any relatively easy method of doing it people complain it's too castery. Thus was my solution to simply not bother with the lower tier classes to begin with.

I really don't remember what reception my "give the fighter at-will CPR as a feat"-style of buffs from a previous thread got.

[Snowbluff]

Fighters have plenty of mechanical depth. They just suck ass. "Pick one of a thousand different feats ten times" is not mechanically shallow, it just never adds up to anything you care about.
This is not mechanical depth. In fact, it's a good example of a 2D object existing in a 3D space.

Everyone gets feats. Fighters get no unique ones.
Even then, in practice it always result is "hit enemy, get treat.''

I can very much agree with make everyone T1, but every time I suggest any relatively easy method of doing it people complain it's too castery. Thus was my solution to simply not bother with the lower tier classes to begin with.

Okay, I don't know where to hunt this idea down, but this is awful.

1) T1 is gamebreaking. Since martials take virtually no skill or practice to play (ie, they don't even pick spells. TO be game breaking a wizard has to pick the best spells), making them T1 would mean the game is immediately broke. The fighter will be picking up mountains will be breaking the game with no work, but the wizard who only picked T3 spells is sitting there twiddling his thumbs.

2) On that first point, martials should never be T1 unless they're castery. It shouldn't be an option that is extant in their kit.

[Quertus]

TO be game breaking a wizard has to pick the best spells), making them T1 would mean the game is immediately broke. The fighter will be picking up mountains will be breaking the game with no work, but the wizard who only picked T3 spells is sitting there twiddling his thumbs.

2) On that first point, martials should never be T1 unless they're castery. It shouldn't be an option that is extant in their kit.

For 1), that sounds like the point of my "balancing casters by buffing casters" thread.

For 2), why do you believe this? Why do you believe that muggles should never have the depth and breadth of abilities necessary to make them compete with well-built casters? Or have I misunderstood you?

[upho]

freedom of movement doesn't negate the Tripstar at all. Its big, open-ended allowance is against magic. Its specifics negate grapple, but grapple is not BFC.I see what I wrote in my previous post was a bit ambiguous. To clarify, the primary problem is that martials lack enough control abilities, the secondary problem is that those they already have are too easily negated by freedom of movement. And even though the spell certainly doesn't prevent you from being knocked prone, it's arguably at the very least as open-ended against non-magic as it is against magic, depending on your interpretation of "move and attack normally for the duration of the spell, even under the influence of magic that usually impedes movement" (my emphasis).

I'd most definitely call grappling control. And in PF, as well as in 3.5 IIRC, grappling can also be made into BFC, and very powerful BFC at that, in pretty much the same way a Tripstar combo turns trip into BFC. (Here's Eddie (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=21860394&postcount=240), an example of a BFC/Defender grappler I made a while back. See the "Combined Mechanics" spoiler to see what he does in combat and why that is very much BFC.)


I don't disagree with people who want to play at a lower power level. That's totally fine, and it is easily accomplished by playing at a lower actual level. The problem is that people don't ever want the game to reach high power levels (like the guy saying that going above LotR is a "wankfest"), which is stupid.NOOO! You're supposed to say games below high level wizard power are BAD-WRONG-FUN!

Speaking of LotR, the movies (but not the books) actually do include a few examples of what a high level martial should be able to do in combat...http://res.cloudinary.com/upho/image/upload/c_crop,g_south,h_270,w_639/v1527719027/8lFK_ucausc.gif


Well, yes, scaling feats negate non-scaling ones. That's sort of the point, because the feat progression (where you get a single digit number over the entire game) is not compatible with the level of impact most RAW feats.Yes?
The main goal of scaling feats is to make meaningful and character-relevant diversification possible, but certainly not to dictate which areas a PC should diversify into.IOW: scaling feats and increased versatility =/= decreased mechanical differentiation between PCs. Not with at least a decent number of at scaling feats of least decent design.


As I've said a couple of times, you could also increase the rate of feat acquisition and use (mostly) RAW feats. My preferred solution might be do to that, and give martials the option for a small-ish number of Races of War feats.Seems like a good idea. Although I still think you should re-write some of the offered Races of War feats and probably make a few new ones yourself. I strongly suspect they're going to be better than the ones available.


Can you expound on what kind of mechanics you'd be in favor of here?You mean aside from
Coincidentally, the three scaling control feats I threw together in my last post can also serve as examples of strong such applicability increasing options; Dirty Fighting through the on-the-fly adaptable effects and through not relying on a specific stat, Shield Champion through the seamless adaptable SAD switch-hitting using a single item and a single enhancement bonus type for defense, ranged offense and melee offense simultaneously; and Spell Sunder through focusing entirely on removing the far greatest and most frequently imposed external limitation on martial specialization applicability (spell effects).I think the easiest way to understand this is by simply taking a martial mechanical concept, like say a Tripstar, and ask yourself why its not applicable in certain scenarios, and what would make it more applicable in those scenarios. Then it's simply a matter of ensuring it has easy access to the mechanics it lacks, naturally limiting some of them in order to avoid making the primary trip shtick universally and equally good in all scenarios. Basically, it's about widening the scope of the shtick, thereby increasing the value of the investments made into it.

On top of that, you should of course also offer alternative means to handle stuff, especially in cases where the shtick really does seem like an unusually useless solution.

So the end result should be closer to the specialist wizard and his spells all being dependent on Int and CL, some of the more widely applicable ones (like summoning) being made a shtick through supporting options like metamagic feats, school specialization and items, while others are great for those corner case scenarios when the shtick spells won't be applicable by themselves.

I think scaling feats could be excellent for this.


Again, I think you're looking at the mechanics rather than the concept. The idea is that the feat makes you effective against groups of enemies, in a control-ish way. Both AoOs and the fear aura service that end.Yes, and having a more loosely defined concept decide the actual mechanics is precisely the problem. The theme dictating the mechanics for a scaling feat should NOT be something like "breaking up hordes of mooks through whatever methods seem plausible", regardless of what you decide to call the feat.

Instead, the mechanics of the included benefits must be much more closely mechanically related to avoid forcing PCs into themes they're only partially interested in for flavor reasons or only partially able to mechanically make good use of. So if you make a feat offering eg Combat Reflexes as a benefit, you better make certain the other benefits are of interest to ALL PCs who might want Combat Reflexes, not only those using melee or only those specializing in fighting several weaker opponents simultaneously, as those things aren't necessarily at all related mechanically (or in terms of flavor). Compare the Races of War feats with those three example control feats I made and the differences between the approaches as well as why one is better than the other should become evident.

Moreover, considering how specialized many existing feats already are, it should often be as easy as simply compiling them into suitable scaling feats with a few minor tweaks, thereby avoiding this whole issue. I mean, for example there are IIRC a lot more than five strictly trip related feat benefits in 3.5, and plenty of them could surely fit in a scaling trip feat.


I think if the encounter would have been interesting if not for teleport, people won't use teleport to skip it. The problem, I think, is that many DMs don't consider that they might want to convince people to engage with encounters, instead assuming that just having the encounter makes people engage.Again, while this may certainly sometimes or maybe even often be the case, it's definitely not always the case. Meaning there are cases when the reason why teleport is problematic and why the PCs use it has nothing to do with skipping or bypassing encounters, but with rendering encounters boring cake-walks. From the PCs' POV, doing otherwise may very well be deliberately nerfing themselves and thereby increasing the risks of failure or worse for no apparent reason.

[ryu]

This is not mechanical depth. In fact, it's a good example of a 2D object existing in a 3D space.

Everyone gets feats. Fighters get no unique ones.
Even then, in practice it always result is "hit enemy, get treat.''


Okay, I don't know where to hunt this idea down, but this is awful.

1) T1 is gamebreaking. Since martials take virtually no skill or practice to play (ie, they don't even pick spells. TO be game breaking a wizard has to pick the best spells), making them T1 would mean the game is immediately broke. The fighter will be picking up mountains will be breaking the game with no work, but the wizard who only picked T3 spells is sitting there twiddling his thumbs.

2) On that first point, martials should never be T1 unless they're castery. It shouldn't be an option that is extant in their kit.

So give them options. The simple fact of the matter is that fighters as they stand have no place in the kinds of game I prefer to play. There are two approaches you can take with this problem. You can simply forget fighters exist, or you can buff them until they stop sucking. That second one is this thread. All that remains to talk about is where the buff point is, how much effort should be put into being that good, and how to fluff the result. That's just haggling. My ideal buff point is T1 because it's the game experience I can't easily replicate in this system. I play D&D to do things that can't really be done outside of pen and paper. Not to rehash LotR or play prototype final fantasy.

[death390]

ok we have all seemed to have gotten off track and are just arguing. so to get us back on track i would like to ask the question.

What abilities should martials be able to do at higher levels? explain what they "need" and try to make an example ability that isn't "castery" (most common problem people seem to have).



a few abilities that i could think of without being castery are:

Knockback: actually in dnd as the feat knockback uses a bull rush check to determine how far back. (IE like sauron is doing in the previous GIF, though he IS a caster)
Flight: only thing i can think of is Superman style jump checks (since he "technically" doesn't have the ability to fly just pushes off the air is some renditions)
Extreme willpower 1: ability to shake off mind control effects. maybe give a extra check roll with iron will as a pre-req?
Extreme willpower 2: ability to withstand death by force of will. give a fighter a will save DC damage that would reduce them below 1HP. Pre-reqs: iron will & Diehard?
BFC (rough Terrain): use a blunt melee weapon to smash the ground so hard it becomes rough terrain. Attack Roll VS DC 15? +1 square per 3 over DC made by? Pre-req: power attack.
CC (Shaking Earth): Use a blunt melee weapon to smash the ground knocking enemies prone, reflex save vs DC BaB + Str? Pre-reqs: Power Attack.

[Ignimortis]

ok we have all seemed to have gotten off track and are just arguing. so to get us back on track i would like to ask the question.

What abilities should martials be able to do at higher levels? explain what they "need" and try to make an example ability that isn't "castery" (most common problem people seem to have).



a few abilities that i could think of without being castery are:

Knockback: actually in dnd as the feat knockback uses a bull rush check to determine how far back. (IE like sauron is doing in the previous GIF, though he IS a caster)
Flight: only thing i can think of is Superman style jump checks (since he "technically" doesn't have the ability to fly just pushes off the air is some renditions)
Extreme willpower 1: ability to shake off mind control effects. maybe give a extra check roll with iron will as a pre-req?
Extreme willpower 2: ability to withstand death by force of will. give a fighter a will save DC damage that would reduce them below 1HP. Pre-reqs: iron will & Diehard?
BFC (rough Terrain): use a blunt melee weapon to smash the ground so hard it becomes rough terrain. Attack Roll VS DC 15? +1 square per 3 over DC made by? Pre-req: power attack.
CC (Shaking Earth): Use a blunt melee weapon to smash the ground knocking enemies prone, reflex save vs DC BaB + Str? Pre-reqs: Power Attack.

Running on walls as an Acrobatics/Climb check, without all the "you fall if you end your turn on the wall". Not sure why you have to use a blunt weapon - an inhumanly good swordsman can just cut rocks so well that they crack under your opponents' feet, and an axe can be swung hard enough that it creates a fissure not unlike an earthquake, etc. The usual "swing your weapon so fast that air cuts the opponent", too.

[Quertus]

What abilities should martials be able to do at higher levels? explain what they "need" and try to make an example ability that isn't "castery" (most common problem people seem to have).

Now, "need" is a much more interesting question; you seem to be asking, "what can we come up with", though. Let's start there.

I'll try and remember or find my ideas from a previous thread; the only one that stuck with me was a CPR-style "feat" that let the user make a Heal check to bring someone back from the dead; the DC being based on their negative HP / cause of death / time since they died. So, say, died by HP loss, DC=-HP, with a -5 penalty per round that has passed, additional -10 penalty if under the effects of Wounding. Died of Death effect, DC is save DC of the Death effect +10, still -5 penalty per round that has passed. Etc.

My theory at the time was to give everyone access to these abilities, but to give far more of them to those who are lower on the balance scale. So a Wizard might only get one or two by level 20, whereas a Fighter may get as many as a dozen.


a few abilities that i could think of without being castery are:

Extreme willpower 1: ability to shake off mind control effects. maybe give a extra check roll with iron will as a pre-req?
Extreme willpower 2: ability to withstand death by force of will. give a fighter a will save DC damage that would reduce them below 1HP. Pre-reqs: iron will & Diehard?

Why not just give Fighters really good saving throws to begin with, like they had back in 2e?

[ryu]

The benefit of rerolls is that at various thresholds it takes a LOT of bonus to be worth as much as one. Combine the two and you get some grand consistency. This is assuming you want it to still be theoretically possible to fail will saves while being dramatically unlikely. No the nat one thing isn't even what I'm talking about.

[Arbane]

ok we have all seemed to have gotten off track and are just arguing. so to get us back on track i would like to ask the question.

What abilities should martials be able to do at higher levels? explain what they "need" and try to make an example ability that isn't "castery" (most common problem people seem to have).


Kill an entire army of small-fry.
Dodge attacks. Dodge ALL attacks from one enemy they can see.
Outrun a pack of wolves.
Block things with their shield. Axes, swords, arrows, dragon-breath, death-rays....
Swim for days while wearing chainmail. Hold your breath for a day.
Wrestle giants and win.
Be invincible, except for one spot.
Split a mountain in half.
Walk into the Underworld. Walk back OUT.
Be fearless.
Talk to birds.
Fight for a day straight.
Shoot so many arrows at once that the enemy is fighting in the shade.

Sigh.... all these abilities that will make the Realism Cops squirt blood from their eye sockets, and the cool kids in the wizard's club are STILL laughing at the Fighters and using Bigby's Wedgieing Hand on them.

Okay, let's get a little crazier.
Leap to the top of a nearby mountain, rip the top off and leap back with it.
Shoot eight of the nine suns out of the sky.
Turn one arrow into a mini-nuke.
Drink so much of the ocean that the sea-level lowers.
Lasso a tornado and ride it.

Hm. Nope. STILL not as reality-rending as the stuff a high-level wizard can do. We may need to dip into Exalted charmsets for this one...

Parry anything. ANYTHING.
Kill someone by punching them in the soul.
Shred a ghost with your bare hands.
Force an incorporeal spirit to turn solid, so you can kick their ass.
Break enemy weapons with your skin.
Ignore poisons and diseases.
Break a spell by literally breaking it. WITH YOUR FISTS.
Never be surprised. EVER.

.... a good start, but then there's the problem that as long as the Fighters' ONLY schtick is 'Fighting', they're still going to be second-fiddle to the Wizards, whose schtick is 'DO ANYTHING'.

[Ignimortis]

Kill an entire army of small-fry.
Dodge attacks. Dodge ALL attacks from one enemy they can see.
Outrun a pack of wolves.
Block things with their shield. Axes, swords, arrows, dragon-breath, death-rays....
Swim for days while wearing chainmail. Hold your breath for a day.
Wrestle giants and win.
Be invincible, except for one spot.
Split a mountain in half.
Walk into the Underworld. Walk back OUT.
Be fearless.
Talk to birds.
Fight for a day straight.
Shoot so many arrows at once that the enemy is fighting in the shade.

Sigh.... all these abilities that will make the Realism Cops squirt blood from their eye sockets, and the cool kids in the wizard's club are STILL laughing at the Fighters and using Bigby's Wedgieing Hand on them.

Okay, let's get a little crazier.
Leap to the top of a nearby mountain, rip the top off and leap back with it.
Shoot eight of the nine suns out of the sky.
Turn one arrow into a mini-nuke.
Drink so much of the ocean that the sea-level lowers.
Lasso a tornado and ride it.

Hm. Nope. STILL not as reality-rending as the stuff a high-level wizard can do. We may need to dip into Exalted charmsets for this one...

Parry anything. ANYTHING.
Kill someone by punching them in the soul.
Shred a ghost with your bare hands.
Force an incorporeal spirit to turn solid, so you can kick their ass.
Break enemy weapons with your skin.
Ignore poisons and diseases.
Break a spell by literally breaking it. WITH YOUR FISTS.
Never be surprised. EVER.

.... a good start, but then there's the problem that as long as the Fighters' ONLY schtick is 'Fighting', they're still going to be second-fiddle to the Wizards, whose schtick is 'DO ANYTHING'.

To be fair, these things at least could solve the problem of Fighters being worse at fighting than Wizards. And curiously, most of the first list is doable with initiating classes.

As I've mentioned before, the problem is mostly in specific spells, and Wizards are broken by the dint of having the best spell access (list+gaining new spells) in the game, which allows them to use those spells. Dominate Monster is fine, Wish isn't, even though they're both 9th level spells. And non-magical Dominate Monster can be achieved with Diplomancy, for instance, while non-magical Wish doesn't exist.

[Lans]

This is not mechanical depth. In fact, it's a good example of a 2D object existing in a 3D space.

Everyone gets feats. Fighters get no unique ones.
Even then, in practice it always result is "hit enemy, get treat.''
.

The fighter getting no unique feats is not why they lack depth, its that the feats they get rarely do enough. If each feat was like the ones in the Path of War you would need 2 and a half other characters to be as versatile on it.


Now, "need" is a much more interesting question; you seem to be asking, "what can we come up with", though. Let's start there.

I'll try and remember or find my ideas from a previous thread; the only one that stuck with me was a CPR-style "feat" that let the user make a Heal check to bring someone back from the dead; the DC being based on their negative HP / cause of death / time since they died. So, say, died by HP loss, DC=-HP, with a -5 penalty per round that has passed, additional -10 penalty if under the effects of Wounding. Died of Death effect, DC is save DC of the Death effect +10, still -5 penalty per round that has passed. Etc.

My theory at the time was to give everyone access to these abilities, but to give far more of them to those who are lower on the balance scale. So a Wizard might only get one or two by level 20, whereas a Fighter may get as many as a dozen.



Why not just give Fighters really good saving throws to begin with, like they had back in 2e?

I love what you did with the heal skill, the fighter really didn't have that good of saves in 2e for most of the game. They had the best saves at the last stage of the game, but they also started with the worse.


PairO'Dice Lost: It's a start. But if you want some fun and/or a headache, try to come up with a Fighter-usable feat (besides Leadership) that's as good as a 5th-level spell.

The spell comparison is a little skewy with feats tending to give a permanent or at will effect compared to an instant effect or one with a limited duration.


The things those fix are not problems. Freely directed teleport is a good thing. It encourages campaigns where players are engaged with the world. But "is teleport broken" and "can you go all the way without nerfing casters substantially" are rather off topic for buffing martials. If you want to go start a thread to argue about whether people having fun playing a game is good or bad, you can do that and I would post in that thread, but I would prefer something marginally closer to the topic for this thread.
.

I disagree with you on this, discussion on nerfing other aspects of the game is important as it informs how much of a buff martials need to get in order to be balanced. With out any nerfs on the magic side a martial has to deal with a wizard that has an arbritarilly large numbered of called/created minions, wealth, and all that crazyness.

Though maybe actual full on discussions might go a little far. Maybe just a disclaimer to inform on the balance point that they are aiming for.

Like if a person says that Martials just need to be as good as a warblade, and they state that they ban any caster better than a shugenja, then at that point any discussions for there changes should be informed on that.

[ryu]

I mean... Isn't a warblade literally just a fighter taken to tier 3? I was assuming the buff intention was to make something that doesn't already exist.

[Mordaedil]

Only the fact that it's something only spellcasters do (UMD notwithstanding) and they can do it as a standard action. I'm pretty sure that if all long-range teleportation was limited to, say, Morrowind-like system, where you had basically "anchors" to which you could teleport (Divine Intervention brought you to the closes Almsivi temple, Mages' Guild had teleportation circles between which you could travel, and Mark/Recall required you to visit the place first), or even if Teleport took like an hour to cast, it would solve some problems with it, if not all.

It kinda already is though? You must have seen the location you are teleporting to for it to work, even if remote viewing by magic, and the less familiar you are with it, the larger the chance is for it to go wrong. Also, non-spellcasters have access to teleportation in form of the Jaunter class. If you like the idea of battle-shifting, it's a class I highly recommend picking to speef up your fighters.

[death390]

Now, "need" is a much more interesting question; you seem to be asking, "what can we come up with", though. Let's start there.

I'll try and remember or find my ideas from a previous thread; the only one that stuck with me was a CPR-style "feat" that let the user make a Heal check to bring someone back from the dead; the DC being based on their negative HP / cause of death / time since they died. So, say, died by HP loss, DC=-HP, with a -5 penalty per round that has passed, additional -10 penalty if under the effects of Wounding. Died of Death effect, DC is save DC of the Death effect +10, still -5 penalty per round that has passed. Etc.

My theory at the time was to give everyone access to these abilities, but to give far more of them to those who are lower on the balance scale. So a Wizard might only get one or two by level 20, whereas a Fighter may get as many as a dozen.



Why not just give Fighters really good saving throws to begin with, like they had back in 2e?

ah, i was attempting to keep within the realism section of the debate that is why i used blunt weapons. the idea of slicing a blade into the ground creating a rift has been done in anime and just using a fist in Wuxia. but everytime someone brought something like that up in another thread it has been shot down as to "magic".

as for why not just give fighters great saves, then everyone would need great saves. you forget that this is for more than just fighters, these abilities should be for everyone to access just that fighters get better access (at least all mundanes). if everyone had access to massive saves then nothing would ever work, it is better to have it possible but roll the chance multiple times than to never fail. what makes for the better story. a character failing that 5% roll one time and becoming mind dominated or failing his first 40% check and succeeding the second time? at least with this way it gives the GM the idea that the effect almost had them in the first place whereas a single roll just is straight pass fail.


honestly Binary systems are generally bad Role playing. this is why save or dies are horrible to throw at your PCs since they stop playing when the fail it. give them a save or suck and a way to still be helpful and they will be much happier. the trick is to have them lose the fight when they all suck. look at straight paralysis, it is a save or die that basically shows up as early as lvl 1 due to ghouls. with the exception of elves any party facing those has the possibility of just straight losing in 1 hit each. why don't they have a scaling poison or something? (1st hit x, 2nd hit x, 3rd hit paralysis, ec ect)

[Ignimortis]

It kinda already is though? You must have seen the location you are teleporting to for it to work, even if remote viewing by magic, and the less familiar you are with it, the larger the chance is for it to go wrong. Also, non-spellcasters have access to teleportation in form of the Jaunter class. If you like the idea of battle-shifting, it's a class I highly recommend picking to speef up your fighters.

That's the thing, you have to visit the place bodily. This would preclude anything of the "scry and fry" sort of tactics, for instance.

For in-combat purposes, Jaunters are strictly inferior to Harbingers (DimDoor up to 120 feet per day, as a standard action? No thanks, I've got at-will teleports as a move, swift, full-round with damage, and so on), which I can attribute to power creep between 3.5 and PF. For out-of-combat purposes, it's a pretty nifty way of getting some transportation spells.

[Quertus]

I love what you did with the heal skill,

Thanks. I'll try and find / remember the rest / come up with more.


the fighter really didn't have that good of saves in 2e for most of the game. They had the best saves at the last stage of the game, but they also started with the worse.

Really? ... C68, R69, F79, W65. Huh. So they did. :smallredface: Their saving throws just advance so much faster than everyone else, I never really noticed that they start off worse.


I disagree with you on this, discussion on nerfing other aspects of the game is important as it informs how much of a buff martials need to get in order to be balanced. With out any nerfs on the magic side a martial has to deal with a wizard that has an arbritarilly large numbered of called/created minions, wealth, and all that crazyness.

Though maybe actual full on discussions might go a little far. Maybe just a disclaimer to inform on the balance point that they are aiming for.

Like if a person says that Martials just need to be as good as a warblade, and they state that they ban any caster better than a shugenja, then at that point any discussions for there changes should be informed on that.

I think no infinite was already a listed assumption. Sadly, "no broken' covers a huge range of assumptions about what that means - Cosi apparently includes "no MM-diving" in his definition.


what makes for the better story. a character failing that 5% roll one time and becoming mind dominated or failing his first 40% check and succeeding the second time?

Neither. Both make for horrible stories. Much more compelling would be the mind control minigame, to parallel the strategic convincing minigame.

[Cosi]

What I can gleam is that they complain that a Mind specialist can't do anything against oozes. But how is that different against an enchantment sorcerer with only enchantment school spells?

Because the Sorcerer's incentives aren't to take only Enchantment spells. The need to invest large numbers of resources into getting a level appropriate effect pulls against versatility because partial investment is weak and because it takes a long time to get up to full investment.


You mean aside fromI think the easiest way to understand this is by simply taking a martial mechanical concept, like say a Tripstar, and ask yourself why its not applicable in certain scenarios, and what would make it more applicable in those scenarios. Then it's simply a matter of ensuring it has easy access to the mechanics it lacks, naturally limiting some of them in order to avoid making the primary trip shtick universally and equally good in all scenarios. Basically, it's about widening the scope of the shtick, thereby increasing the value of the investments made into it.

I agree that this would work, but I think starting from mechanics in this way produces undesirable characters. A good character doesn't have a single tool that's been swiss army knived to work everywhere, it has a variety of tools. A martial shouldn't be a Tripstar that works when Tripstaring normally doesn't, they should have other tactics that work when Tripstarring doesn't. Even a BFC caster has a variety of BFC options.


Again, while this may certainly sometimes or maybe even often be the case, it's definitely not always the case. Meaning there are cases when the reason why teleport is problematic and why the PCs use it has nothing to do with skipping or bypassing encounters, but with rendering encounters boring cake-walks. From the PCs' POV, doing otherwise may very well be deliberately nerfing themselves and thereby increasing the risks of failure or worse for no apparent reason.

Maybe there's a disconnect between my experiences and others. Can you give some more concrete example of what you're talking about?


What abilities should martials be able to do at higher levels? explain what they "need" and try to make an example ability that isn't "castery" (most common problem people seem to have).

In general, I don't think you can make martials viable at high levels without hitting complaints about being "castery". Maybe you can do it in combat, but out of combat is probably impossible. It's certainly impossible working with mostly existing material. Overhauling the system, I would probably just institute something like Paragon Paths and mandate that Fighters got their high level powers from being Thunder Lords or Verdant Princes.


Outrun a pack of wolves.

Again, this sounds cool, but it's not really mechanically impressive. Wolves have a 50ft speed. You could do this just by having expeditious retreat up all day or being a 9th level Monk. Most of the rest are reasonable-ish.


.... a good start, but then there's the problem that as long as the Fighters' ONLY schtick is 'Fighting', they're still going to be second-fiddle to the Wizards, whose schtick is 'DO ANYTHING'.

The problem with the Fighter is fundamental to the class. It's called Fighter. Anything you give it that is not fighting is necessarily off concept. The Fighter doesn't just need a mechanical fix, it needs a conceptual fix. Many of the martial classes need that to one degree or another, but it's by far the most pronounced for the Fighter.


I disagree with you on this, discussion on nerfing other aspects of the game is important as it informs how much of a buff martials need to get in order to be balanced. With out any nerfs on the magic side a martial has to deal with a wizard that has an arbritarilly large numbered of called/created minions, wealth, and all that crazyness.

I think "how" and "how much" are sufficiently different for meaningful discussion about the first to not require the second.

[EldritchWeaver]

Because the Sorcerer's incentives aren't to take only Enchantment spells. The need to invest large numbers of resources into getting a level appropriate effect pulls against versatility because partial investment is weak and because it takes a long time to get up to full investment.

Ok, but let's assume that we have a sorcerer who has half of his spells from the enchantment school and the rest is fireball, teleport, dispel magic, ... That sorcerer may be more versatile, but is he still thematically an enchanter?

[Talakeal]

I can very much agree with make everyone T1, but every time I suggest any relatively easy method of doing it people complain it's too castery. Thus was my solution to simply not bother with the lower tier classes to begin with.

The definition of T1 is able to break the game in multiple ways, given that premise I dont think it is possible to make that work well.

One could make such a game, but I dont think the d20 system is the best rules fit, and I don't thunk any of the published D&D campaign settings are the best fit for fluff.

One could design a game built around such powersets, a sort of "Demiplanes and demiurges" with rules for multi dimensional movement, battles across time, comparitve infinities, and the natures of omnipotence, but it would take a very skilled designer.

The biggest problem I can see with an all T1 game is that everyone is a jack of all trades caster and it is kind of hard to distinguish their mechanics or trappings, leaving characters pretty thematically homogenous.

[death390]

i would say that he is, because those are general spells that all mages should know. look at mages others have stated; Harry Dresden: primary discipline Thaumaturgy, secondaries: potion brewing, evocation; Harry potter: primary discipline DaDA, secondaries: charms and transfiguration; Gandalf: primary discipline echantment (mental) secondaries: evocation/ conjuration (primarily due to more "subtle" magic system); Gaius Octavian: primary discipline conjuration/evocation (via spirits) secondaries: summoning (technically) and enhancement.

others like Rand al'Thor and Richard Cypher are mostly wild magic wizards (though there is a bit of control later in their stories). Lightbringer series is entirely conjuration system with some metaphysical effects (colors affect emotions and minor mind stuff through orange luxin).

gennarally magicians who don't have backups die when their primary style doesn't work.

[ryu]

The definition of T1 is able to break the game in multiple ways, given that premise I dont think it is possible to make that work well.

One could make such a game, but I dont think the d20 system is the best rules fit, and I don't thunk any of the published D&D campaign settings are the best fit for fluff.

One could design a game built around such powersets, a sort of "Demiplanes and demiurges" with rules for multi dimensional movement, battles across time, comparitve infinities, and the natures of omnipotence, but it would take a very skilled designer.

The biggest problem I can see with an all T1 game is that everyone is a jack of all trades caster and it is kind of hard to distinguish their mechanics or trappings, leaving characters pretty thematically homogenous.

Not really. Throughout their careers differing T1s perform various tasks easier or with less spent resources than each other if they've even reach a level where they've access to the other's tricks at all. In a game where everyone has some level of access to all tricks with effort it becomes less about what you ultimately can do, and more about what you can do easily. A game of opportunity cost as opposed to absolute cost. This is most important at the low levels and gradually slackens as increasing level affords more freedom. At high levels things that make you unique are less spell list access and more prestige class benefits unless you've a list no one else in the party bothered to expand into. Could be because they wanted more prestige class benefits.

[zlefin]

In terms of specific buffs, while it doesn't address larger issues that well:
increase the value of BAB.
alot of the stuff in how the numbers were setup by the designers seemed to overvalue BAB. i.e. it turns out in practice it's not as useful as the designers thought it would be. so increasing the utility of BAB by giving more BAB scaling bonuses helps.
iteratives can be nice, but may be hard to reliably setup; and whether you can set them up ends up having a large effect on your late game combat ability. which makes for a lot of char balance swinginess.

I never got around to developing it in detail since I don' tplay enough to get good testing results in, but here's some stuff I wanted to try [this only applies to BAB gained through class level, not from racial HD like monsters have], it'd take some work to get to a balanced point, it's just a place to start:
You get your BAB as a dodge bonus to AC. It never made sense to me that two high level fighters without armor got to hit each other so reliably. You'd think two equally skilled fighters would have similar hit chances at all levels. This really throws the balance of the AC system off.

You get your BAB as an untyped bonus to the following skills:
Balance, maybe ?Climb?, Jump, Listen, Spot. there might also be some other skills which could be added to that list.


I'd also consider increasing the low level BAB differentiation - much like how the saves for good/bad start off at 2 and 0. So High BAB would be 2+ class levels, thus starting at 3 BAB for level 1. Medium BAB would be 1+ 3/4 class levels; and low BAB the usual 1/2 class levels. I'm not sure this is helpful for low level balance, it just seems odd at times that the low level BAB differenc eis so small between classes that should have markedly different skill in combat; it also fits more similarly to the way saves are setup.


maybe also some sort of BAB-based bonus to damage. not sure what it'd be; maybe using the same scaling as str modifiers (i.e. 1.5x for 2 handers, 1x for regular, and 0.5x for offhand). haven't though about this one as much, let alone its interaction with the other possible changes.

[digiman619]

I've been busy the last day or so, so I haven't gotten a chance to respond to Cosi, but rather than going back and trying to point-by-point refute/argue with him, I will simply bow out of the conversation. I honestly disagree with the premise of the thread; it's painfully obvious that T1 casters tower above the fighter and other T5's and we all agree that, all other things being equal, the player classes should be more-or-less equal. The fundamental problem is that I truly believe that, irrespective of their power relative to other classes, the power a T1 has is too much. There's nothing fundamentally wrong with a character with the concept of "given enough time, they can do practically anything". The problem is that 'enough time' should not be 'until I take a nap'. Moreover, I don't believe that bringing everyone else up that high a) is possible without making everyone feel samey, and b) will make the game better in any way, shape or form.

Have fun debating, though.

[Quertus]

The definition of T1 is able to break the game in multiple ways, given that premise I dont think it is possible to make that work well.

One could make such a game, but I dont think the d20 system is the best rules fit, and I don't thunk any of the published D&D campaign settings are the best fit for fluff.

One could design a game built around such powersets, a sort of "Demiplanes and demiurges" with rules for multi dimensional movement, battles across time, comparitve infinities, and the natures of omnipotence, but it would take a very skilled designer.

The biggest problem I can see with an all T1 game is that everyone is a jack of all trades caster and it is kind of hard to distinguish their mechanics or trappings, leaving characters pretty thematically homogenous.

The tier system is broken, has holes, and seems to be pushing an agenda.

Someone who can reasonably adventure beside a non-broken tier 1 / tier 1 minus the broken bits is, I believe what people mean. It's certainly what I mean.

As to that other bit... If...

Quertus can chant, wiggle his fingers, draw upon arcane energies, and open a partial to another plane, if he has the correct tuning fork;

Thor can travel to one of 7 locations in the multiverse to get transported, via rainbow bridge, to one of the exactly 6 other locations that the bridge connects;

Armus can pull out a small glass object, and instantly transport anyone (and everyone) within 10' or so of him to any location, if it's on one of 10 specific worlds;

The Doctor can clown car an arbitrarily sized group into a strange blue box, spin some dials, push some buttons, and transport everyone anywhere throughout space and time - maybe even to somewhere remotely resembling where he intended;

Woody can give you some "magic mushrooms", and, for several hours, you'll believe that you're on another world;

Do you really feel that these options lack fluff, and feel homogenous?

[MeimuHakurei]

The tier system is broken, has holes, and seems to be pushing an agenda.

Someone who can reasonably adventure beside a non-broken tier 1 / tier 1 minus the broken bits is, I believe what people mean. It's certainly what I mean.

As to that other bit... If...

Quertus can chant, wiggle his fingers, draw upon arcane energies, and open a partial to another plane, if he has the correct tuning fork;

Thor can travel to one of 7 locations in the multiverse to get transported, via rainbow bridge, to one of the exactly 6 other locations that the bridge connects;

Armus can pull out a small glass object, and instantly transport anyone (and everyone) within 10' or so of him to any location, if it's on one of 10 specific worlds;

The Doctor can clown car an arbitrarily sized group into a strange blue box, spin some dials, push some buttons, and transport everyone anywhere throughout space and time - maybe even to somewhere remotely resembling where he intended;

Woody can give you some "magic mushrooms", and, for several hours, you'll believe that you're on another world;

Do you really feel that these options lack fluff, and feel homogenous?

A Tier 1 without the broken stuff is a Tier 3. This is where a wizard ends up with less horizontal (Beguiler, Dread Necromancer) or vertical (Bard) power ends up. Similarly, a Wild Shape Ranger is a good approximation of a Tier 3 Druid (the cleric doesn't have such an equivalent).

And I agree with Talakeal in so far that, while a T1-adjusted game does not necessarily homogenize the classes too much, this is very much a challenge your game design needs to be able to overcome. For instance, in your dimensional travel example, you should be able to examine the effects and limitations of each method of travel so that when those five adventure together, there's different situations that call for the Teleport spell, the Bifröst, the glass object, the TARDIS or the magic mushrooms and nobody is obsolete or the absolute best. Of course, there's other balancing factors that could come in play as well (such as the Doctor being somewhat limited as a combatant and Thor being very unfamiliar with earthly cultures).

[ryu]

Even if the worse parts of a T1s list, worse in the sense that other T1s have it better or have it earlier, are never used in a given party it's still good that they're there. ANY party of T1s can, in one form or another, access just about any magical effect you need. It's more efficient if you've a balanced group with easy native access to most or all the good lists, but no party is ever stuck for want of a nail so to speak. This is a good thing. This means that if no one wants to play a cleric or druid you can still have your healing, rezzing, and so on. The same level of metaphorical waterproofing simply isn't true in lower tiers.

[Cosi]

Ok, but let's assume that we have a sorcerer who has half of his spells from the enchantment school and the rest is fireball, teleport, dispel magic, ... That sorcerer may be more versatile, but is he still thematically an enchanter?

It's possible that Enchanter is too narrow a concept to rest a character on. Certainly there are concepts that don't support entire characters. But if you look at the Beguiler (enchantments, illusions, debuffs like slow and haste, minions via charm and dominate), you've got something that I think is basically in the conceptual space of "Enchantment Specialist", while still having a variety of magic -- even planar travel. And you could (and probably should if you were cutting down on things like Prestige Domains) expand that list further with e.g. shadow spells of various kinds.


The biggest problem I can see with an all T1 game is that everyone is a jack of all trades caster and it is kind of hard to distinguish their mechanics or trappings, leaving characters pretty thematically homogenous.

This is ... not really true. Like, yeah, it's true if you want "distinguish between mechanics" to be "only the Rogue does Rogue challenges", but that's stupid and bad for the game for lots of obvious reasons. The difference between e.g. the Wizard's list and the Cleric's list is really obvious, and the various PrCs that exist only amplify that. Having Beguiler casting makes you want very different options than having Sorcerer casting does (most notably: Rainbow Servant is only good for fixed list casters).

Again, it may be true that the game falls apart at some point even with the changes I would make to casters. But it is inarguable that there is a power range where casters function (in whatever sense you want to define that) but are undeniably more powerful than martials. That range is something like 9th to 15th level (with a couple levels error on either end). That range includes a lot of very interesting characters from very interesting stories in fiction.


A game of opportunity cost as opposed to absolute cost.

This is true, and I have trouble seeing how anyone doesn't think it is desirable. Why is it better if there are challenges where you have to say "well, we lose"? Because that is exactly what happens if you demand that characters have no capability outside their specialty.


alot of the stuff in how the numbers were setup by the designers seemed to overvalue BAB. i.e. it turns out in practice it's not as useful as the designers thought it would be. so increasing the utility of BAB by giving more BAB scaling bonuses helps.

Kind of? Yes, designers overvalued BAB, but the real thing they overvalued was the gradations between levels of BAB. Medium BAB is only a point worse than Good BAB until 4th level. If you make having BAB give bonuses big enough to make the Fighter good, you probably make the Cleric and the Druid insane (not to mention divine power). In general, I would be wary of applying blanket bonuses to something that shows up for every class in an effort to fix particular classes.


The tier system is broken, has holes, and seems to be pushing an agenda.

It's less that it's pushing an agenda, and more that people don't want to (for whatever reason) acknowledge that it has a specific function and is not useful outside that function. The stated purpose of the Tier System is to identify which classes are likely to break the game by being too powerful. That's it. Its entire purpose was to look at the game, and give DMs a heads up about which classes might break their adventures. Except now people want it to be about how classes should be balanced. But it doesn't do that.


Do you really feel that these options lack fluff, and feel homogenous?

The problem, I think, is that what Talakeal wants in terms of differentiation is for some things to be adventures. When you ask people how the Fighter should get to another plane, the answer is almost always either "get a Wizard to do it" or "find a portal". But the problem is that those things aren't different ways of overcoming the challenge, they are lower level ways of overcoming the challenge. There was nothing stopping the Wizard (actually, the Cleric -- hey look, a way casting classes are different) from finding planar portal, it's just not as good as using plane shift. It's like the Frank Trollman quote from earlier says. What the people who dislike the idea of Fighters being buffed want is for their characters to be low level. When you ask people how they would like Fighters to solve problems, their answer is "with low level solutions".


A Tier 1 without the broken stuff is a Tier 3. This is where a wizard ends up with less horizontal (Beguiler, Dread Necromancer) or vertical (Bard) power ends up. Similarly, a Wild Shape Ranger is a good approximation of a Tier 3 Druid (the cleric doesn't have such an equivalent).

First: it is flatly absurd to put the Beguiler and Dread Necromancer in Tier Three. The Beguiler is a Bard, except better at everything Bards do. The only reason the Dread Necromancer is in Tier Three at all is because JaronK forgot that wands exist. It get planar binding.

That said, it seems clear that even casters without cheese aren't Tier Three, or at least have abilities that no Tier Three character has (making "Tier Three" a bad descriptor for the desired balance point). Of the character classes listed in the Tier System, the only ones that have teleport or plane shift are Tier Two or higher. Now, yes, maybe that's because there's some other variable those things correlated with in the sample data. In fact, that is probably true. But that variable is what the Tier System was measuring! I don't want Tier One characters, or Tier Three characters. Those descriptors are not helpful. I want characters that play broadly like Wizards -- variety of in combat abilities, powerful non-combat abilities -- with the exception of a short list of broken abilities (which are apparently the only things people who think Wizards are overpowered base that judgment on, so really it looks like e.g. digiman actually agrees with me).

[skunk3]

I really don't understand why this is such a huge debate. Different 'tiers' of classes negatively impacting the game only happens if players and DMs allow it to happen. It's not like D&D is a sport in which people compete against each other, requiring major balancing and regulation to ensure that the playing field is fair. It simply is what it is. I've never played a Star Wars D20 game (although I'd love to) but I can only imagine that playing a Wizard in D&D would be like playing a Jedi or Sith master. You're going to dominate lesser classes, like a Smuggler or Imperial Commando. It's just gonna happen. In the game that I'm starting next week I am going to be by far the least powerful PC at the table... I'm going to be playing with a Wizard, a Cleric that will be going into Radiant Servant and possibly other stuff, and a Druid / Beast Master build of some sort... while I will be, for brevity's sake, an Assassin. Do I care that I will be outshined in almost every single way? Nope. I am well aware that casters are simply better than non-casters, with some casters even being better than others, and some caster PrCs being super crazy, like Dweomerkeeper, Incantrix, etc. I'm just going to play my role as well as I can and have fun with it. I think that if people refuse to play classes other than T3 and up due to a fear of not being 'powerful' that reflects poorly on them. With the enormous amount of base classes and PrCs available we have the tools to make a huge variety of characters that can fit into almost any archetype and any optimization / power level necessary for whatever campaign we're in.

[HamaYumi]

Martials should have monk like developments for every martial, just not at a progression as fast as monks. If and when martials do fail their saves, within reason, allow them to act for one round normally or a situational extraordinary ability activates, while under the effects of the suck. Also allow martials to act, NOT ALWAYS, in surprise rounds but again, when situations or clauses are satisfied. Quality of life discussions to help mend different approaches to what, how, etc., martials can accomplish would be great.

[ryu]

The common wisdom is that whatever balance point is desired, people should stay at or within one tier of it. A fighter in a group of T1s is going to be a paperweight and if paying a bit of attention will be incapable of not realizing it. Commonly people are not okay with this and complain. People generally don't enjoy large amounts of complaining in their hobby. Like, if you're an exception who will go into the situation of being far outclassed eyes wide open without complaining good for you. You're in the minority but good for you.

Similarly this reaction will occur if a T1 is in a party low tiers, but as he is in minority his T1ness is considered rude.

This thread is about a desired balance point of T1 and buffing Martials such that there will be no complaining. The things to haggle over are how far to buff, how much player effort should be involved in using the buffed classes, how to fluff it, and what specific set of rules to use to reach these goals.

[Arbane]

I really don't understand why this is such a huge debate.


I guess it's time to post


https://i.imgur.com/jNT6Ce6.png

[Karl Aegis]

The common wisdom is that whatever balance point is desired, people should stay at or within one tier of it. A fighter in a group of T1s is going to be a paperweight and if paying a bit of attention will be incapable of not realizing it. Commonly people are not okay with this and complain. People generally don't enjoy large amounts of complaining in their hobby. Like, if you're an exception who will go into the situation of being far outclassed eyes wide open without complaining good for you. You're in the minority but good for you.

Similarly this reaction will occur if a T1 is in a party low tiers, but as he is in minority his T1ness is considered rude.

This thread is about a desired balance point of T1 and buffing Martials such that there will be no complaining. The things to haggle over are how far to buff, how much player effort should be involved in using the buffed classes, how to fluff it, and what specific set of rules to use to reach these goals.

I guess the balance point has to be, "Is hard to challenge without DM Fiat and can usually solve problems with a single mechanical ability." Something so ridiculously powerful enemies have to have an "Anti-Fighting Field" ability just so random people not in the know can point to it and claim it's balanced because there exists a relatively useless ability that, in theory, shuts down a class.

[ryu]

I guess the balance point has to be, "Is hard to challenge without DM Fiat and can usually solve problems with a single mechanical ability." Something so ridiculously powerful enemies have to have an "Anti-Fighting Field" ability just so random people not in the know can point to it and claim it's balanced because there exists a relatively useless ability that, in theory, shuts down a class.

Balanced enemies for a T1 party are simple. More T1 casters or other such creatures with powerful spellcasting or equivalent. Psionics for example aren't generally considered spells, and a creature with a nasty selection of spell like or supernatural abilities can quite reliably challenge a party of casters.

[Karl Aegis]

Balanced enemies for a T1 party are simple. More T1 casters or other such creatures with powerful spellcasting or equivalent. Psionics for example aren't generally considered spells, and a creature with a nasty selection of spell like or supernatural abilities can quite reliably challenge a party of casters.

You must have really weak casters.

[ryu]

You must have really weak casters.

I have to have weak casters for casters to challenge casters? Have we reached a point where someone believes A doesn't equal A? Are the basic mathematical proofs no longer valid?!

[Karl Aegis]

I have to have weak casters for casters to challenge casters? Have we reached a point where someone believes A doesn't equal A? Are the basic mathematical proofs no longer valid?!

That's the point of a Tier 1. They cannot be challenged if you are playing the game normally. If you are being challenged there is a good chance you're either not spending your wealth correctly or you've made bad enough decisions to drop a few tiers.

[ryu]

That's the point of a Tier 1. They cannot be challenged if you are playing the game normally. If you are being challenged there is a good chance you're either not spending your wealth correctly or you've made bad enough decisions to drop a few tiers.

ANYONE can be challenged by someone on the same level of power as them. This idea you hold is applying definitions based on encountering bog standard uncustomized monsters to situations where that isn't the case. A party of tier ones doesn't spend its time curb-stomping weaklings. They fight actually threatening things.

[Karl Aegis]

ANYONE can be challenged by someone on the same level of power as them. This idea you hold is applying definitions based on encountering bog standard uncustomized monsters to situations where that isn't the case. A party of tier ones doesn't spend its time curb-stomping weaklings. They fight actually threatening things.

"Actually threatening things" can be counted on one hand. More than half of them are malicious DMs.

[ryu]

"Actually threatening things" can be counted on one hand. More than half of them are malicious DMs.

You're talking in circles boy. Ignoring you for the thread because this is going nowhere.

[Cosi]

The debate between Ryu and Karl demonstrates exactly why the Tier System is unhelpful for discussions of this type. Karl is loudly and repeatedly insisting that it is impossible to challenge true Tier Ones. Ryu is loudly and repeatedly insisting that you can challenge characters with appropriate opposition. Careful examination shows that these positions are not in conflict. Tier One can be defined as "unchallengable" (making Karl right) while there still exist campaigns that rely on the particular features of classes in Tier One that challenge those classes (making Ryu right). The entire debate is a result of assuming different semantics for "Tier One", and is therefore stupid. Talking about this in terms of the Tiers obscures the important (and, in my view, obviously true) point that there are exciting and worthwhile campaigns that are unique to full casters with the much less important observation that cheese exists.

One is tempted to speculate that this conflation is intentional, but that speculation is pointlessly conspiratorial, and should instead be replaced by an attempt to produce alternative language that refers precisely to "characters with non-broken abilities non-casters can't duplicate". Then we can stop trying to pretend that Chain Binding is a reason that evard's black tentacles needs to be worse.


I really don't understand why this is such a huge debate. Different 'tiers' of classes negatively impacting the game only happens if players and DMs allow it to happen.

Yes. This thread is examining a particular set of tools DMs might use to prevent the imbalance that exists in RAW from impacting the game. Namely, providing options to non-casting characters at a power level compatible, if perhaps not comparable, with casters.


I think that if people refuse to play classes other than T3 and up due to a fear of not being 'powerful' that reflects poorly on them.

I think it reflects poorly on you that you would intentionally play a character that doesn't carry its weight. D&D is a cooperative game, and you are defecting. That makes you a bad person.

[Lans]

A Tier 1 without the broken stuff is a Tier 3. This is where a wizard ends up with less horizontal (Beguiler, Dread Necromancer) or vertical (Bard) power ends up. Similarly, a Wild Shape Ranger is a good approximation of a Tier 3 Druid (the cleric doesn't have such an equivalent).
.

It depends on what you mean by broken, Tier 1/2 classes have plenty of abilities that I don't think are broken, but are still unbalanced, like the wing spells for sorcerers or narratively powerful like teleport.




That said, it seems clear that even casters without cheese aren't Tier Three, or at least have abilities that no Tier Three character has (making "Tier Three" a bad descriptor for the desired balance point). Of the character classes listed in the Tier System, the only ones that have teleport or plane shift are Tier Two or higher. Now, yes, maybe that's because there's some other variable those things correlated with in the sample data. In fact, that is probably true. But that variable is what the Tier System was measuring!

That depends on what tier list you use, Shugenjas get teleport and domain adepts can get the travel domain. Warmages ecletic ACF can let it grab teleport or planeshift with its advanced learning and then there is the nonclass options like arcane domain and fiendish heritage feats or just using magic items. Now obviously it is much narrower and/or coming at a higher cost for them than that of a tier 1/2.

[ryu]

I'm pretty sure he was talking about native access. If you're willing to put enough work into it literally every class has access to every spell. It's about what's natively accessible, and sometimes things that can be acquired at minimal cost.

[death390]

I really don't understand why this is such a huge debate. Different 'tiers' of classes negatively impacting the game only happens if players and DMs allow it to happen. It's not like D&D is a sport in which people compete against each other, requiring major balancing and regulation to ensure that the playing field is fair. It simply is what it is. I've never played a Star Wars D20 game (although I'd love to) but I can only imagine that playing a Wizard in D&D would be like playing a Jedi or Sith master. You're going to dominate lesser classes, like a Smuggler or Imperial Commando. It's just gonna happen. In the game that I'm starting next week I am going to be by far the least powerful PC at the table... I'm going to be playing with a Wizard, a Cleric that will be going into Radiant Servant and possibly other stuff, and a Druid / Beast Master build of some sort... while I will be, for brevity's sake, an Assassin. Do I care that I will be outshined in almost every single way? Nope. I am well aware that casters are simply better than non-casters, with some casters even being better than others, and some caster PrCs being super crazy, like Dweomerkeeper, Incantrix, etc. I'm just going to play my role as well as I can and have fun with it. I think that if people refuse to play classes other than T3 and up due to a fear of not being 'powerful' that reflects poorly on them. With the enormous amount of base classes and PrCs available we have the tools to make a huge variety of characters that can fit into almost any archetype and any optimization / power level necessary for whatever campaign we're in.

honestly i would recommend the D6 system it is more balanced than D20. a Jedi with a couple of small things is basically unkillable in D20 system.


The common wisdom is that whatever balance point is desired, people should stay at or within one tier of it. A fighter in a group of T1s is going to be a paperweight and if paying a bit of attention will be incapable of not realizing it. Commonly people are not okay with this and complain. People generally don't enjoy large amounts of complaining in their hobby. Like, if you're an exception who will go into the situation of being far outclassed eyes wide open without complaining good for you. You're in the minority but good for you.

Similarly this reaction will occur if a T1 is in a party low tiers, but as he is in minority his T1ness is considered rude.

This thread is about a desired balance point of T1 and buffing Martials such that there will be no complaining. The things to haggle over are how far to buff, how much player effort should be involved in using the buffed classes, how to fluff it, and what specific set of rules to use to reach these goals.

well crap due to poor building choices that means i need to be stuck in t6 with my group. i wonder if i can use the truenamer in some fashion .....

[GreatWyrmGold]

I really, really like Cosi's original post in the thread. They clearly display an understanding of game design and how that applies to TRPGs, which few people bother doing. I started reading the rest of the thread, and was disappointed to see it immediately spit out the same stuff you get whenever balancing 3.5 comes up. I'd like to change that. To do that I'm going over the two parts to Cosi's description of the problem—mundane characters needing versatility in-combat, and being almost useless outside of combat.

The first isn't just a matter of power—while a well-built caster can outperform a well-built fighter or rogue, that isn't what Cosi was getting at. What Cosi was getting at is both the reason why casters tend to outperform mundanes and a way in which martials are poorly-designed.
In combat, martials have limited options. They can attack; maybe they can power attack or charge or something; maybe they can move and attack or spring attack or something. Barbarians can rage, but the only interesting decision there beyond normal attacks is "Is this fight important enough for a rage?" Rogues and their ilk have it a little better, with a few special abilities they might break out, but that's it.
Contrast this with casters. In a 5e campaign, I'm playing a Light Cleric, which means that my domain spells are fire and radiant blasty stuff. Even without other prepared spells, I have options ranging from battlefield control with wall of fire to AoE destruction with fireball to single-target strikes like guiding bolt or scorching ray (which can also be spread among multiple targets). It's not that these options are inherently more powerful than hitting people with a piece of metal (though some really are), it's that they have multiple options for different situations.
Obviously, versatility is a source of power like any other; the bigger your box of tools, the more problems you can solve, even if the tools themselves aren't incredible on their own. But there's more than that; choosing between spells to use is far more interesting than choosing between attacking or...attacking someone else?
As with many things, I'd suggest looking to see how video games solve this issue. Their solutions won't be perfect, but they can inspire abilities which would fit thematically into a "Fighter" or "Barbarian" model. But speaking of which...

There is a problem with giving noncombat abilities to the iconic martial class of D&D: Said class is only characterized as a "fighter". Much the same is true of the silver-medal martial class, the barbarian. These two classes really can't have any thematic non-combat abilities aside from "break stuff" and "threaten to break stuff," since their core concepts are basically "guy who fights" and "guy who fights while mad". To get reasonable noncombat abilities, we could add a new type of common noncombat challenge that only high Strength scores can solve (comparable to traps, which only rogues can solve), but I don't like traps, so...no.
Without that option, we would need to redefine what these classes are.
Which gets us into another problem with mundane classes in general. Why are they mundane? Why, in a world where everything and the kitchen sink can give you magic powers, would there be anyone who didn't use any magic? Yes, it makes sense that magical specialists would be rare, just like only a few people in our world specialize in driving cars or using computers or whatever, but that doesn't mean everyone else just doesn't do those things. They don't do them as often, or as well, or as deeply, but they do do them.
The reason for this, as with many of D&D's quirks, is that D&D is trying to be everything. It's trying to allow (to pick some arbitrary examples) Bilbo Baggins, Conan, Dr. Strange, and Princess Zelda to go on an adventure together. As with many things, this works best at low levels; a 1st-level barbarian and a 1st-level wizard feel like they could be part of the same universe, but a 20th-level barbarian is like Conan and a 20th-level wizard is like Dr. Strange. Never mind the power discrepancy, those two don't really belong in the same universe. Either the barbarian needs to be more like Thor or the Hulk, or the wizard needs to be more like Thoth Amon or Kalanthes.
I don't think there's an easy fix to this problem. D&D is trying to be as generic and open-ended as possible (to make sure the barrier to entry is as low as possible), but it isn't willing or able to go the GURPS route of having multiple mutually-exclusive sets of optional rules that cover completely different types of campaigns. So it just has to shove Conan and Dr. Strange into the same world and hope for the best. (Mind, I can't think of a way to solve this problem while sticking to D&D's apparent design goals.)
If I were designing a solution to this problem, I'd smash (or at least blur) the line between mundane and magical. Clerics and wizards and whatnot are still by far the best at magic, with a wide variety of powerful magical abilities, but barbarians and rogues and whatnot can all use magic, too—they just use it to support their mundane talents. A fighter who channels the power of storms, a barbarian who uses magic to enhance his physique as he charges into battle, a rogue who weaves a cloak of literal shadows...etc. Sure, that makes it definitively high-fantasy, but I don't think any story where the protagonists get the ability to raise the dead, control the seas, and create life should be classified any other way.

[Quertus]

A Tier 1 without the broken stuff is a Tier 3. This is where a wizard ends up with less horizontal (Beguiler, Dread Necromancer) or vertical (Bard) power ends up. Similarly, a Wild Shape Ranger is a good approximation of a Tier 3 Druid (the cleric doesn't have such an equivalent).

So, if you declare a tier 3 game, I can bring a Wizard, so long as I don't take any broken options? Cool. We may have different definitions of "broken", though.


And I agree with Talakeal in so far that, while a T1-adjusted game does not necessarily homogenize the classes too much, this is very much a challenge your game design needs to be able to overcome. For instance, in your dimensional travel example, you should be able to examine the effects and limitations of each method of travel so that when those five adventure together, there's different situations that call for the Teleport spell, the Bifröst, the glass object, the TARDIS or the magic mushrooms and nobody is obsolete or the absolute best. Of course, there's other balancing factors that could come in play as well (such as the Doctor being somewhat limited as a combatant and Thor being very unfamiliar with earthly cultures).

I think you're looking at backwards from Cosi and the thread's intent. There are stories that are appropriate for Wizards, in which the Fighter, as written, just sits and spins. The question, if I understand correctly, is, what would it take to buff the Fighter to the point where he actually contribute?

Also, the small glass object is a not-so-cubic Cubic Gate.


Even if the worse parts of a T1s list, worse in the sense that other T1s have it better or have it earlier, are never used in a given party it's still good that they're there. ANY party of T1s can, in one form or another, access just about any magical effect you need. It's more efficient if you've a balanced group with easy native access to most or all the good lists, but no party is ever stuck for want of a nail so to speak. This is a good thing. This means that if no one wants to play a cleric or druid you can still have your healing, rezzing, and so on. The same level of metaphorical waterproofing simply isn't true in lower tiers.

I tend to strongly agree here. It's nice when the game is usually about progressing, rather than about dead ends and TPKs.


It's less that it's pushing an agenda, and more that people don't want to (for whatever reason) acknowledge that it has a specific function and is not useful outside that function. The stated purpose of the Tier System is to identify which classes are likely to break the game by being too powerful. That's it. Its entire purpose was to look at the game, and give DMs a heads up about which classes might break their adventures. Except now people want it to be about how classes should be balanced. But it doesn't do that.

So, it's worse than I thought? It's not a description of balance, with an agenda of vilifying those who can break campaigns, it's actually explicit core function is to discuss breaking things?


The problem, I think, is that what Talakeal wants in terms of differentiation is for some things to be adventures. When you ask people how the Fighter should get to another plane, the answer is almost always either "get a Wizard to do it" or "find a portal". But the problem is that those things aren't different ways of overcoming the challenge, they are lower level ways of overcoming the challenge. There was nothing stopping the Wizard (actually, the Cleric -- hey look, a way casting classes are different) from finding planar portal, it's just not as good as using plane shift. It's like the Frank Trollman quote from earlier says. What the people who dislike the idea of Fighters being buffed want is for their characters to be low level. When you ask people how they would like Fighters to solve problems, their answer is "with low level solutions".

Actually, using the portal is better than casting Plane Shift in a number of ways - the most obvious of which is conservation of resources. Subtlety, not giving away your capabilities... there's lots of reasons using the existing portal could be a better plan.


The common wisdom is that whatever balance point is desired, people should stay at or within one tier of it. A fighter in a group of T1s is going to be a paperweight and if paying a bit of attention will be incapable of not realizing it. Commonly people are not okay with this and complain. People generally don't enjoy large amounts of complaining in their hobby. Like, if you're an exception who will go into the situation of being far outclassed eyes wide open without complaining good for you. You're in the minority but good for you.

Similarly this reaction will occur if a T1 is in a party low tiers, but as he is in minority his T1ness is considered rude.

This thread is about a desired balance point of T1 and buffing Martials such that there will be no complaining. The things to haggle over are how far to buff, how much player effort should be involved in using the buffed classes, how to fluff it, and what specific set of rules to use to reach these goals.

You're had several very clear explanations in this thread - kudos on that!

About the effort bit - if the Fighter winds up with the same ceiling as a Wizard, but also has the same (or lower) floor, have we succeeded?

[ryu]

Can we have the common decency to at least give hints about useless options or nudges towards the good stuff? Total optimization isn't strictly necessary, but few things are worse for a game than realizing you can't do anything because you bungled your build. Possibly also remove options so bad that no sane person would ever take them, or at least put a joke label on them. Looking at YOU hold portal.

[Snowbluff]

Can we have the common decency to at least give hints about useless options or nudges towards the good stuff? Total optimization isn't strictly necessary, but few things are worse for a game than realizing you can't do anything because you bungled your build. Possibly also remove options so bad that no sane person would ever take them, or at least put a joke label on them. Looking at YOU hold portal.

This is something I would love. Perhaps each article in a book would have a power level rating or something similar, maybe with an excerpt about the challenges in poses in a game for a player and a DM. This could also serve a peer review for articles, so we don't get feats like the PF one that says "you can shoot a crossbow while prone."

However, this could lead to more reading for the player, and poorly rated articles due to obliviousness or outright mistakes by the author and editor, which has been common in 3e and PF.

EDIT:
As for your earlier reply, I would argue that if Fighters have no place in the games you like to play, that's a good thing.


I really don't understand why this is such a huge debate. Different 'tiers' of classes negatively impacting the game only happens if players and DMs allow it to happen. It's not like D&D is a sport in which people compete against each other, requiring major balancing and regulation to ensure that the playing field is fair. It simply is what it is. I've never played a Star Wars D20 game (although I'd love to) but I can only imagine that playing a Wizard in D&D would be like playing a Jedi or Sith master. You're going to dominate lesser classes, like a Smuggler or Imperial Commando. It's just gonna happen. In the game that I'm starting next week I am going to be by far the least powerful PC at the table... I'm going to be playing with a Wizard, a Cleric that will be going into Radiant Servant and possibly other stuff, and a Druid / Beast Master build of some sort... while I will be, for brevity's sake, an Assassin. Do I care that I will be outshined in almost every single way? Nope. I am well aware that casters are simply better than non-casters, with some casters even being better than others, and some caster PrCs being super crazy, like Dweomerkeeper, Incantrix, etc. I'm just going to play my role as well as I can and have fun with it. I think that if people refuse to play classes other than T3 and up due to a fear of not being 'powerful' that reflects poorly on them.

Well first off, there is the Oberoni Fallacy. We can't call 3e or PF "balanced" because a GM can fix it.

I will say that people might not want to be outshone is a definite thing. It kind of breaks verisimilitude when there's a guy in the party who does nothing. Of course, DND is a cooperative and also a roleplaying game, meaning that you are greater than the sum of your sheet. On the other hand, some DMs are just incompetent, or the players are simply not on the same page.

Furthermore, people don't understand Tiers. Tiers past T1-2 is a measure of game brokeness. If there is that stuff going on, your game is busted unless your DM is prepared and doing equally busted stuff. T4 is barely competent, and T5-6 are incompetent, but if you have a low power samurai game going on, it could totally work.


With the enormous amount of base classes and PrCs available we have the tools to make a huge variety of characters that can fit into almost any archetype and any optimization / power level necessary for whatever campaign we're in. Snowbluff Axiom

[ryu]

How would we massively miscalculate an option? We're not spitballing for most of this. We're system vets. Also it could be as simple as a little number per option and listing of what numbers mean.

Alternatively low work method is just to add a tag of Joke/Bad to previously mentioned worthless stuff. You're still expected to work for your full gittin gud, but the landmines have been defused.

[Snowbluff]

How would we massively miscalculate an option? We're not spitballing for most of this. We're system vets. Also it could be as simple as a little number per option and listing of what numbers mean.

Alternatively low work method is just to add a tag of Joke/Bad to previously mentioned worthless stuff. You're still expected to work for your full gittin gud, but the landmines have been defused.
I'd liked to point out that those mistakes I mentioned were done by people who literally wrote the book on the subject. Also, people will disagree what power would mean in a game.

For example, I might do something cheesy to do something benign more easily, but someone might do cheesy to do something crazy powerful. I would say what I did is fine and the latter was not, but another people might say that cheese is cheese and he is lactose intolerant.

[ryu]

Writing the book means nothing when your actual method of testing involves half the people using none of their features, and the other half not actually trying all the options when you're literally forced to take an option. Do I really need to make a case that the average forumite understands DRUIDS better than the designers did at the time of release? Really? Like for really really for real for real?

[death390]

This is something I would love. Perhaps each article in a book would have a power level rating or something similar, maybe with an excerpt about the challenges in poses in a game for a player and a DM. This could also serve a peer review for articles, so we don't get feats like the PF one that says "you can shoot a crossbow while prone."

However, this could lead to more reading for the player, and poorly rated articles due to obliviousness or outright mistakes by the author and editor, which has been common in 3e and PF.

EDIT:
As for your earlier reply, I would argue that if Fighters have no place in the games you like to play, that's a good thing.



Well first off, there is the Oberoni Fallacy. We can't call 3e or PF "balanced" because a GM can fix it.

I will say that people might not want to be outshone is a definite thing. It kind of breaks verisimilitude when there's a guy in the party who does nothing. Of course, DND is a cooperative and also a roleplaying game, meaning that you are greater than the sum of your sheet. On the other hand, some DMs are just incompetent, or the players are simply not on the same page.

Furthermore, people don't understand Tiers. Tiers past T1-2 is a measure of game brokeness. If there is that stuff going on, your game is busted unless your DM is prepared and doing equally busted stuff. T4 is barely competent, and T5-6 are incompetent, but if you have a low power samurai game going on, it could totally work.

Snowbluff Axiom

the idea of a power level rating has been used in at least 1 other RPG but not to any major extent; Champions hero system runs off of a build your own abilities system. it has 2 indicators for DM keep an eye on this and STOP (hammer time :P) because no player should have this ability for some reason.

" The powers have all been assigned point costs to balance them against each other. however there are some circumstances where a power is more efficient than it may initially appear. powers that may be extreemly efficient depending on circumstances are marked with a: [magnifying glass]. for example a character with a variable power pool (kinda like a spontaneous caster) or absorption (convert HP damage into a boost like bonus STR [2 types of health stun/HP]) may in certain circumstances have capabilities that outstrip their point totals.
a second group of powers have the ability to substantially alter a gms storyline [ these are the ones with STOP markers]."

a partial listing of STOP marked abilities include clairestience (basically the entire list of dnd's scry abilities), extra dimensional movement (planar travel anyone), Summoning (SNA, SM, SU, Plannar ally, gate), and transform (polymorph other series).

their system is only used to show effects that can derail a game. the idea of listing low power options could work but then as others have said everyones idea of power is different. to me trait level abilities include misc modifier skill boosters, small movement speed boosters (+10 from a UA trait vs +5 from a feat really?), +1-2 point bonuses (flat not scaling), and such. but to that +2 weapon damage from weapon specialization is worth a feat. what would basically happen is a listing of all the extremely high (versatile spellcaster, power attack, shock trooper, ect) and low power feats (no one disputes run, weapon focus, and dodge are meh) and a marker for abilities which can combo with others to become broken if not on their own (precocious apprentice, heighten spell, ect)

[upho]

ok we have all seemed to have gotten off track and are just arguing.Hey! Some (two?) of us have actually been discussing solutions for quite a while now.


Knockback: actually in dnd as the feat knockback uses a bull rush check to determine how far back. (IE like sauron is doing in the previous GIF, though he IS a caster)I can't think Knockback/BR would be a fitting game mechanic to describe what is shown in that gif, it's more like some kind of super-boosted Awesome Blow + Cleave/Whirlwind combo. Which might be a decent development of Knockback in a high power game, come to think of it.

(Dunno what Sauron is, as the terms in used in the descriptions of him in the books are intentionally changing dependent on the context/speaker and also kinda vaguely defined. But a sorta semi-corporeal ghost-ish(?) "fallen angel" older than time itself would be a "caster" in some sense, I guess? Anyhow, in the movies, his previous more corporeal form shown in the gif is definitely not fighting like anything resembling a caster IMO. And he's not using any kind of apparent magic while doing so, aside from his obviously supernaturally high innate strength, great durability and awesome martial prowess, enhanced by a magic item. Pretty much exactly like your typical high level fighter does in 3.5, really, except with results far less impressive than those of Sauron for some weird reason...)


Flight: only thing i can think of is Superman style jump checks (since he "technically" doesn't have the ability to fly just pushes off the air is some renditions)I'd simply add a number of (Su) flight minutes/day to any martial stance of say 3rd level or higher. Magic, in the "supernatural" sense, is required for "super-jump-flight" anyways, and in order to get martials up to scratch in other regards for that matter.


BFC (rough Terrain): use a blunt melee weapon to smash the ground so hard it becomes rough terrain. Attack Roll VS DC 15? +1 square per 3 over DC made by? Pre-req: power attack.
CC (Shaking Earth): Use a blunt melee weapon to smash the ground knocking enemies prone, reflex save vs DC BaB + Str? Pre-reqs: Power Attack.Considering difficult terrain is typically irrelevant by no later than 10th level, I don't really see how these abilities are supposed to be powerful. Maybe if they had a similar slowing effect on all movement types and also worked as an AoE dimensional anchor within a sphere radius? (Fluffed as the blow disrupting all matter in the sphere to such an extent it becomes impossible to enter from/exit into another dimension, or something along those lines?)


Be invincible, except for one spot.
Split a mountain in half.
Leap to the top of a nearby mountain, rip the top off and leap back with it.
Shoot eight of the nine suns out of the sky.
Drink so much of the ocean that the sea-level lowers.
Lasso a tornado and ride it.

.... a good start, but then there's the problem that as long as the Fighters' ONLY schtick is 'Fighting', they're still going to be second-fiddle to the Wizards, whose schtick is 'DO ANYTHING'.Thankfully, aside from the ones I left, these things can already be done, at least with a bit support from PoW options. And while kinda cool stunts to impress love interests with, I also question the practical value of mountain-splitting/ripping, sun-murdering, ocean-drinking and tornado-riding... :smalltongue:


The fighter getting no unique feats is not why they lack depth, its that the feats they get rarely do enough.Yep. Although such a mechanical depth wouldn't exactly be fighter exclusive unless most feats which would "do enough" were. Which would kinda needlessly screw over the other martial classes.


If each feat was like the ones in the Path of War you would need 2 and a half other characters to be as versatile on it.While the average power of PoW feats is certainly greater than that of 1PP combat feats (in PF as well as 3.5), in practice this claim smells of quite a bit of hyperbole IME. Mainly because the average power of 1PP combat feats is dragged down by tons of trap options which most people rarely take twice, while the PoW feats have a distinct lack of both such traps and options more powerful than the top 5-10% of 1PP feats which typically also see the most use IME.


For in-combat purposes, Jaunters are strictly inferior to Harbingers (DimDoor up to 120 feet per day, as a standard action? No thanks, I've got at-will teleports as a move, swift, full-round with damage, and so on), which I can attribute to power creep between 3.5 and PF. For out-of-combat purposes, it's a pretty nifty way of getting some transportation spells.Yeah, in combat the jaunter is pretty darn weaksauce in comparison to the harbinger. And the generally higher floor and ceiling of the PoW classes might actually be exploited here, as it shouldn't be too much work to backport them into 3.5. Which comes with the added boon of having several additional initiator class options.

And speaking of, I think importing at least some of the PoW disciplines and/or certain individual maneuvers would be good for this purpose as well. Especially those more powerful and/or having themes/mechanics not really covered in ToB, such as Riven Hourglass, Fool's Errand, Eternal Guardian, Primal Fury, Cursed Razor, Tempest Gale, Broken Blade and Stance of the Thunderbrand.


I agree that this would work, but I think starting from mechanics in this way produces undesirable characters. A good character doesn't have a single tool that's been swiss army knived to work everywhere, it has a variety of tools. A martial shouldn't be a Tripstar that works when Tripstaring normally doesn't, they should have other tactics that work when Tripstarring doesn't. Even a BFC caster has a variety of BFC options.Sure. But the swiss army shtick isn't really the goal I was trying to describe. It's about adding stuff which: a) makes an entire specific shtick combo like Tripstarring applicable in a greater number of scenarios - but far from every scenario - and b) can use of many of the shtick's required individual investments (feats, items, stat priorities etc) in other combos applicable in other scenarios.

So for example a Spiked Chain Tripstar needs ways to overcome trip size caps to widen the applicability of the specific shtick, and viable Str-based ranged attack options using the Tripstar combo's Spiked Chain to gain a ranged combo taking advantage of much of the Tripstar investments, applicable in other scenarios.

While some of the mechanics needed for increased forms specialization applicability may exist for certain specializations, adding them through existing build options typically require a lot of splat diving and optimization, and they won't be enough to provide anything comparable to that of a wizard's combat effectiveness. Note also that a comparable combat effectiveness of course likely will - and should - be different for martial classes than for casters. Here's a PF RAW example of how such an effectiveness may actually work in practice, though due to the nature of current options it's of course very complex (taken from Nelly Nephilim (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=21556361&postcount=89), an example build I made for Castilonium's (excellent) PoW zealot guide (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?505647-Unity-and-Determination-Castilonium%92s-guide-to-the-Path-of-War-Zealot/page3), please ignore the numbers if you think they'd be OP - the combat method is the relevant bit):

This section details Nelly's (practically) always active melee attack hit effects and the rather complex chains of actions these effects may grant, plus her typical pre-combat preparations and her typical tactics during combat.

Basic Melee Combos
A large portion of Nelly's build options are geared towards improving her melee attacks, regardless of the action taken which included the melee attack (strike, combat maneuver, AoO, charge, etc) or when she took it (during her own turn or outside of it), and - as far as possible - also regardless of the target's passive melee defenses (AC and CMD values, size, immunities etc). These options make up combinations which primarily provide free action demoralization and combat maneuvers which may stack increasingly severe penalties on the target, and grant Nelly additional control options and additional attacks against the target in the form of AoOs, potentially forming very long chains of actions with devastating total effects.


In the hopes of making this a bit easier to grasp, I've divided the main components of mentioned chains into three distinct combos.


Thunderbull Gauntlet Bashing Combo
This combo forms the basis of Nelly's action chains and requires plenty of build resources. Although virtually all components are likely to provide benefits (not necessarily listed below) during all levels, the combo isn't fully online until Nelly reaches 11th level when her zealot IL and Awakened Blade levels allow her to pick Stance of the Thunderbrand:



Level
Class
Key Components
Key Mechanics
Resulting Combo


1
Monk 1
Gauntlet strike, shielding fist (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/classes/core-classes/monk/archetypes/dreamscarred-press---monk-archetypes/monk-of-the-silver-fist-monk-archetype), Improved Shield Bash
Gauntlet strike and shielding fist makes (any) gauntlets count as bucklers in addition to their other effects/properties. Improved Shield Bash is a prerequisite for Shield Slam.
Nelly's (spiked) gauntlets are also treated as bucklers and she can make shield bashes without losing the shield bonus (but she must still use a light or heavy shield to bash).


3
Warder 1
Combat Reflexes (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/path-of-war/classes/warder) based on Wis (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/path-of-war/classes/warder/warder-archetypes/ordained-defender-warder-archetype), fiend’s grip (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/path-of-war/classes/warder/warder-archetypes/fiendbound-marauder-warder-archetype)
Additional AoOs equal to Wis mod each round, and the ability to manifest fiend's grips which are treated as spiked gauntlets and natural attacks.
Nelly can make additional AoOs and the radius of the area she threatens with her fiend’s grips/gauntlets increases with a distance equal to her natural reach.


4
Warlord 1
Two-Weapon Fighting
The second feat in the classic shield fighting chain and also prerequisite for Shield Slam.
-


11
Awakened Blade 3
Buckler Bash (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/path-of-war/feats#TOC-Buckler-Bash-Combat-), Shield Slam (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/feats/combat-feats/shield-slam-combat---final), Stance of the Thunderbrand (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/path-of-war/disciplines-and-maneuvers/piercing-thunder-maneuvers#TOC-Stance-of-the-Thunderbrand)
Buckler Bash allows making shield bashes with a buckler, Shield Slam grants a free action bull rush on a shield bash hit, and the stance means any movement in threatened area provokes an AoO.
Nelly can make a bull rush attempt as a free action on any hit with her fiend’s grip, and the movement caused by her bull rush provokes an AoO from her.



At 20th level, Nelly can effectively make up to 7 bull rushes, provoking and triggered by 6 AoOs (or 17 bull rushes and 16 AoOs with Oath of Eternity), all against a target she hits once with any kind of melee attack. Provided she keeps hitting and successfully bull rushing the target, of course.


Soulless Seraph of Sarenrae Combo
In order to demoralize a large majority of her opponents as far into uselessness as possible, Nelly uses a fairly standard combination of demoralization related feats, their mechanics enabled by a somewhat non-standard trait for an aasimar who "falls" from a Good alignment. This standard combo is in Nelly's case also enhanced with an item and some options from the Privateer class template:



Level
Class
Key Components
Key Mechanics
Resulting Combo


3
Warder 1
Black Seraph's Glare, fiend's grip
The Black Seraph stance is a prerequisite for the Black Seraph Style feat and gives a free demoralize attempt vs hit enemy, and a fiend's grip is a slashing weapon.
Nelly can demoralize enemies she hits as a free action, and uses a slashing weapon (condition for gaining the benefits of the Blade of Mercy trait, see below).


4
Warlord 1
Daring gambit, dazzling gambit (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/path-of-war/classes/martial-class-templates/privateer-template)
Grants a warlord gambit (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/path-of-war/classes/warlord#TOC-Warlord-s-Gambit-Ex-), and a free demoralize attempt vs enemies within 30' when successfully performing a warlord gambit.
Nelly can demoralize all enemies within 30' as a free action when she successfully performs her warlord gambit.


8
Zealot 4
Enforcer
Grants free demoralize attempt vs enemy damaged by nonlethal damage.
Nelly can demoralize enemies she damages with nonlethal damage as a free action, without having to be in the Black Seraph's Glare stance.


9
Awakened Blade 1
Additional Traits (Blade of Mercy), Black Seraph Style
Blade of Mercy allows dealing nonlethal damage with slashing weapons w/o penalties. Black Seraph Style grants a scaling bonus to saves and AC vs creatures suffering from fear conditions.
Nelly can use Enforcer with her fiend's grips w/o penalties for dealing nonlethal damage, and gains a scaling profane bonus to defenses against attacks/abilities of scared opponents.


10
Awakened Blade 2
Intimidating Prowess
Adds Str mod in addition to Cha mod to Intimidate skill checks.
Nelly gains a bonus to Intimidate equal to her Str mod, ensuring her demoralization attempts always succeeds against non-immune creatures.


13
Awakened Blade 5
Fiendskin
At least two damnation feats are required to gain the key benefit of Soulless Gaze (see below).
-


15
Awakened Blade 7
Black Seraph's Malevolence, Black Seraph Annihilation
Creatures within 30' lose immunity to fear effects (even if immune to mind-affecting).
Nelly's demoralization attempts ignores the immunities of targets within 30' of her.


19
Zealot 5
Soulless Gaze, Menacing Mask*
When demoralizing a target already demoralized, its fear condition may become more severe rather than have its duration extended. The Menacing Mask grants a +10 competence bonus to Intimidate.
Whenever Nelly demoralizes an opponent she has already demoralized, the fear condition increases (up to panicked/cowering from 3 successful attempts), and her Intimidate checks always succeeds.


*Approximate level when the item is gained.

In short, Nelly is one seriously scary cameraph (= camel-seraph, meaning an angel-blooded aasimar of gamla descent). Again, please note that Soulless Gaze was deliberately delayed until the next to final level, being an extremely powerful feat which would be much more likely to feel/be OP if gained earlier, especially by a competent melee combatant having plenty of highly synergizing mechanics (like Nelly).


Dirty Opportunism Combo
To really ramp up the power of her AoOs and her ability to chain multiple AoOs from a single trigger, Nelly's final distinctive melee combo consists of a warlord's gambit, dirty trick feats, Seize the Opportunity and a few boosting items (the most significant listed below). This dirty trick combo gives Nelly a good chance to debuff her enemies with sure-fire, long-lasting and serious penalties from 4th level and onward, and its Dirty Trick Master "capstone" (deliberately delayed until the final level), grants Nelly the ability to nauseate or daze an enemy, completely removing it from combat using no more than two AoOs (naturally chained through her Thunderbull Gauntlet Bashing combo detailed above).



Level
Class
Key Components
Key Mechanics
Resulting Combo


4
Warlord 1
Dastardly gambit (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/path-of-war/classes/warlord#TOC-Warlord-s-Gambit-Ex-), salt in the wound (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/path-of-war/classes/martial-class-templates/privateer-template) (Improved and Greater Dirty Trick)
Dastardly gambit grants Cha mod luck bonus to dirty trick attempt, and the two feats grants the usual combat maneuver feat benefits, extends the duration and changes the required action to remove a condition imposed by dirty trick from move to standard.
Nelly can make a dirty trick gambit, has a +4 to dirty trick CMB and can make dirty tricks without provoking. A condition applied by her dirty trick typically lasts longer than normal and the target must spend a standard action to remove it.


5
Zealot 1
Seize the Opportunity (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/path-of-war/pow-e-feats)
Allows making an attack action or standard action combat maneuver in place of the normal attack as an AoO.
Nelly can make a dirty trick attempt instead of a normal melee attack when making an AoO.


12*
Awakened Blade 4
Dueling (PSFG (http://archivesofnethys.com/MagicWeaponsDisplay.aspx?ItemName=Dueling%20(PSFG) )/psionic (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/psionics-unleashed/equipment/psionic-items/psionic-weapons#TOC-Dueling)) Amulet of Mighty Fists
Provides a luck bonus equal to twice the enhancement bonus to dirty trick performed with the weapon (in addition to the enhancement bonus).
Nelly gains up to a +14 luck bonus to her dirty trick attempts made with her fiend's grips (meaning virtually all her dirty trick attempts).


20
Zealot 6
Dirty Trick Master (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/feats/combat-feats/dirty-trick-master-combat)
When successfully making a dirty trick against a target already suffering from a condition from previous dirty trick, the existing condition can be worsened in place of adding a different normal condition.
When Nelly succeeds on a dirty trick attempt against an enemy dazzled or sickened from a previous dirty trick, she can make the enemy dazed or nauseated so the enemy can not remove the condition.


*Approximate level when the item is gained.

In short, since two dirty trick AoOs can nauseate or daze an enemy for several rounds, Nelly can remove up to at least 3 enemies from combat each round with her 6 AoOs (or up to at least 8 enemies during a round when she uses Oath of Eternity). Besides the silly power of Dirty Trick Master, I personally think the most noteworthy aspect of this combo is how darn cheap it comes, primarily because of the amazing prereq bypassing freebies granted by the Privateer warlord dip. Apparently Nelly's a salty dame, and the soundtrack of her combat style (https://youtu.be/whQQpwwvSh4), as well as her fall from grace (https://youtu.be/gEPmA3USJdI?t=90), was obviously written by her old pirate crew of ancient rocker grognards from "down under"... :smalltongue:


Other Components
The "Big 3" combos above are also supported and complemented by several additional components, most notably:

Gargantuan Size and 55' Reach granted by her gamla heritage (gained at birth), (minor) metamorphosis (gained at 12th and 17th level), fiend's grip (at 4th), protection mission (at 8th), Stance of the Thunderbrand (at 11th) and wand of long arm (plus Use Magic Device ranks, at approx. 14th). These components multiply the value of all her other options which improve her melee attacks and vastly increase her capabilities as a defender, and grant large bonuses to CMB and allow her to ignore nearly all size difference caps on combat maneuvers.
Grab ability of the fiend's grip (gained at 4th), providing Nelly with a free grapple attempt on each melee hit.
Constrict ability of the Anaconda's Coils Belt (gained at approx. 13th), enabling Nelly to deal constrict damage - and therefore also to make additional free demoralize attempts - with each successful grapple attempt.
Fiend's Grips treated as both spiked gauntlets and natural attacks, allowing Nelly to simultaneously gain any magic abilities of her gauntlets as well as other items or spells (such as an Amulet of Mighty Fists or a strong jaw spell), granting her increased versatility and a considerable boost to wealth in especially higher levels.
Furious (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/magic-items/magic-weapons/magic-weapon-special-abilities/furious), Leveraging (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/magic-items/magic-weapons/magic-weapon-special-abilities/leveraging) and Psychic (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/psionics-unleashed/equipment/psionic-items/psionic-weapons#TOC-Psychic) Weapon and various minor items (the first gained at approx. 12th), providing very substantial bonuses (up to +42(!) to reposition and trip) for a relatively low cost to several of Nelly's CMB checks.
A bunch of maneuvers boosting combat maneuvers and/or granting multiple attacks.


Combined Result
When all the above is in place at 20th, a single successful melee attack, granted by any action at any time, can provide for example the following chain of actions (average damage, indentation means the listed action is dependent on the last previous action(s) with less indentation being successful):

1 Free - grapple attempt granted by grab (usually only made during Nelly's own turn in order to not prevent her from releasing the grapple and making further AoOs): target moved to adjacent to Nelly and both are grappled

2 None - constrict granted by grapple and Anaconda’s Coils Belt: 44 damage
3 Free - demoralize attempt granted by Enforcer and constrict damage: target is shaken and Nelly gains +5 profane to AC and saves vs the target's attacks/abilities
4 Free - Nelly ends grapple: target and Nelly are no longer grappled
5 Free - demoralize attempt granted by Enforcer and damage of initial attack (if any): target is sickened for 1 round (Cruel Weapon) and frightened
6 Free - bull rush attempt granted by Buckler Bash and Shield Slam: moving target at least 5' after:

7 AoO granted by Stance of the Thunderbrand - dirty trick granted by Seize the Opportunity: target dazzled

8 Free - grapple attempt as 1 above

9 None - constrict as 2 above
10 Free - demoralize attempt granted by Enforcer and constrict damage: target is panicked, dropping anything it holds
11 Free - Nelly ends grapple as 4 above
12 Free - lock attempt granted by Lesson VI: Supremacy (https://docs.google.com/document/d/1jWw7bVMARxrXfRuOW20NlRqXEnS_XGLPT6LHTbz2qME/edit#heading=h.xx2gm1b9axxq): target is locked (must make Reflex save vs DC 38 to move)
13 Free - bull rush as 6 above

14 AoO granted by Stance of the Thunderbrand - dirty trick granted by Seize the Opportunity: target dazed

15 Free - grapple attempt as 1 above

16 None - constrict as 2 above
17 Free - demoralize attempt granted by Enforcer and constrict damage: target is panicked for additional rounds
18 Free - Nelly ends grapple as 4 above
19 Free - bull rush as 6 above

(And so on, up to a total of 4 additional AoOs, each dealing 65 damage or imposing additional dirty trick conditions, and triggering subsequent grabs, bull rushes and demoralization attempts, increasing the number of rounds the target is panicked)
20 Automatic - target is pushed back the total distance (typically more than 15') caused by successful bull rushes (6, 13 and 19 above)

So in total, the target takes at least 132 damage and is locked, sickened for 1 round, dazed for typically more than 2 rounds, panicked (or cowering) for typically at the very least 6 rounds, and bull rushed at least 15' back and potentially knocked prone. This is in addition to any damage dealt and any other effects caused by the initial hit triggering the combo.


Basic Tactics

Before Combat
Nelly adopts Lesson VI: Supremacy (https://docs.google.com/document/d/1jWw7bVMARxrXfRuOW20NlRqXEnS_XGLPT6LHTbz2qME/edit#heading=h.xx2gm1b9axxq) with Stance of Thunderbrand and manifests banshee’s hearing (https://docs.google.com/document/d/1_DKnAARY4I9Q16jCacwm2X-KVmnKObs6J_FBIgZrOc8/edit) and heartbinding (https://docs.google.com/document/d/1_DKnAARY4I9Q16jCacwm2X-KVmnKObs6J_FBIgZrOc8/edit) at the start of each day (both powers having a 12 hours duration), preferably targeting another Str based frontline combatant in her collective with heartbinding so Nelly and the target can share morale bonuses throughout the day. Yes, that means an ally of Nelly gains all the bonuses of her rage without any of the penalties; +6 to Str and Con, and +2 to Will saves.

When Nelly suspects she's likely to run into enemies within minutes, she starts cycling Time Skitter, manifests metamorphosis (11 min. duration, effects detailed in build summary) using her cognizance crystals before using her own PP reserve, and uses her wands of contingent action (5 min.), fly (6 min.), long arm (5 min.), and strong jaw (7 min.). At this high level, Nelly typically sets the contingent action to enter the Black Seraph Style stance, to be triggered when she rolls initiative, but if she believes she won't face any enemies immune to fear or mind-affecting, she may instead use the granted action to make an additional strike in the first round. These effects are included in the build summary. In addition, if Nelly believes the upcoming battle will be very challenging, she can also manifest metamorphosis on one or more of her allies through the Shared Power feat, and activate her Boots of the Battle Herald, sharing also those morale bonuses via heartbinding (these effects are not included in the build summary).

During Combat
Coming soonTM!



Credit to exelsisxax for general hole-poking!

In order to show Nelly's 20th level combat mechanics against truly dangerous opponents and hopefully provide at least a glimpse of her actual in-game combat effectiveness, without me having to write the equivalent of a PhD thesis on the subject, I'm going to describe an opening round in a somewhat simplified fight against Pazuzu (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/bestiary/monster-listings/outsiders/demon/demon-lords/demon-lord-pazuzu) (the CR 30 demon lord). Since Nelly is rather heavily optimized to be effective in a primary defender/controller (secondary leader) combat role, she should be capable of beating the opposition on her own while also protecting and supporting a few useless squishy allies, even if Pazuzu has brought along say three balor lords (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/bestiary/monster-listings/outsiders/demon/balor/balor-lord) (CR 25 each, let's call them "Leftbal", "Midbal" and "Rightbal"). For simplicity's sake, I've assumed that Nelly and her useless allies encounter these monsters in some dark featureless place with plenty of room to move, starting about 60' from the enemies (when a combatant is first able to see and target an opponent):


http://res.cloudinary.com/upho/image/upload/q_100/v1484447431/Nelly_vs_Pazuzu_y0ptnj.png
LB = Leftbal, MB = Midbal, RB = Rightbal
P = Pazuzu (flying 20' above ground)
N = Nelly (flying 20' above ground)
A = Nelly's PC allies

I've also assumed that no combatant is surprised and all have some rudimentary knowledge of the opposition's strength gleaned from scouting, Knowledge skill checks, potential previous run-ins etc. (For Nelly, this would include say approximate minimum CR and maybe the most obvious creature/class type, meaning something along the lines of "one unique(ly) badass demon lord of a CR above 28, and three martially oriented balor-ish demons, each of a CR above 24".)

The following describes the combatants' likely actions and their effects, including average damage (adjusted for hit chance but not including crit damage, rounded to closest integer) and average/typical chances and results of other effects. As before, indentation means the listed action is dependent on the last previous action(s) with less indentation being successful. Note also that outside of the rules specifically for AoOs, there are AFAIK no general rules detailing the order in which to resolve multiple free and potentially interrupting actions triggered by one single event and/or its immediate effects, so in the cases when the rules are silent I've assumed the creature performing the actions in question decides the order. Naturally, I've tried to adhere strictly to RAW.

1 Initiative roll
Nelly has the highest initiative bonus so she is likely to act first.

2 Automatic by Nelly
Nelly's contingent action is triggered, and she enters Black Seraph Style stance.

3 Standard by Nelly
Nelly initiates Lord of the Pridelands: Nelly and her allies gain +10 morale to hit, damage, AC, and saves for 1 round (assuming her allies are 3 PCs and at least one of them has a familiar/AC/eidolon or similar).

4 Free by Nelly
Nelly uses Precognitive Defenses by expending her psionic focus to initiate Oath of Eternity: for 1 round, Nelly's AoOs deals +3d6 damage and curses target for 1 round, and she can make a total of 16 AoOs.

5 Move by Nelly
Nelly flies off to pick a fight, moving 55' straight north to within 10' of Pazuzu and 30' of the balor lords (of course taking the opportunity to call the demon lord "A chicken little chicken!" and cackle mockingly for emphasis). Nelly would have automatically succeeded on the save vs Pazuzu's Aura of Locusts (Fortitude +44 vs DC 43), but she does not need make the throw as Pazuzu is pushed back at least 20', after he takes 179 damage (mostly nonlethal) and becomes blinded for at least 2 rounds, cowering for 3 rounds, cursed and sickened for 1 round and dazed for 10 rounds:

5.1 Free - Precognitive Defenses by Nelly expending her Deep Focus, triggered by Nelly being exposed to Pazuzu's Aura of Locusts, allowing her to initiate Break the Hourglass
5.2 Move granted by Break the Hourglass - in this situation, Nelly unfortunately can't use this move for anything more constructive than going "Nye, nye, nye, nye, nye!" at Pazuzu and sticking out her tongue at him
5.3 Standard granted by Break the Hourglass - Hammer of the Immortal vs Pazuzu: 95% hit chance (+57 vs AC 48) for 98 damage, -4 AC and CMD, and Nelly and her allies gain +2 morale to attack for 2 rounds

5.4 Free - demoralize attempt granted by Enforcer: Pazuzu shaken for 3 rounds (Intimidate +59 vs DC 57) and Nelly gains +5 profane to AC and saves vs his attacks
5.5 Swift - Dastardly Gambit: Nelly gains +6 luck to dirty trick (doesn't stack with the +14 luck already granted by Nelly's Dueling (PFSG) Amulet of Mighty Fists)
5.6 Free - dirty trick attempt granted by Hammer of the Immortal: 90% chance of Pazuzu being blinded for at least 2 rounds (dirty trick CMB +85 vs CMD 88); Nelly recovers Hammer of the Immortal, allies recover 1 maneuver (and all gain +6 morale to damage which doesn't stack with the +10 already granted by Lord of the Pridelands)

5.7 Free - Hypercognitive Focus granted by Nelly recovering a maneuver: Nelly regains her Deep Focus
5.8 Free - Intimidate attempt vs enemies within 30' granted by Dazzling Gambit: Pazuzu frightened for 3 rounds (Intimidate +59 vs DC 57), and the balor lords are shaken for 6 rounds (Intimidate +59 vs DC 43), and Nelly gains +5 profane to AC and saves vs their attacks as well
5.9 Free - grapple attempt granted by grab: 0% success chance since Pazuzu is protected by constant freedom of movement (Though not listed, Nelly might make additional free grapple attempts on her following hits (5.11, 5.14 and 5.16 below) without realizing the futility of it.)
5.10 Free - bull rush attempt granted by Buckler Bash and Shield Slam: 99% success chance (bull rush CMB +74 best of two rolls vs CMD 77), moving Pazuzu at least 5' after:

5.11 AoO granted by Stance of the Thunderbrand - 95% hit chance for 81 damage and Pazuzu is cursed and sickened for 1 round

5.12 Free - demoralize attempt granted by Enforcer: Pazuzu panicked for 3 rounds (Intimidate +59 vs DC 57), dropping the Scepter Of Shibaxet
5.13 Free - bull rush as 5.10 above

5.14 AoO granted by Stance of the Thunderbrand - dirty trick granted by Seize the Opportunity: Pazuzu dazzled for 5 rounds (dirty trick CMB +85 vs CMD 77)

5.15 Free - bull rush attempt as 5.10 above

5.16 AoO granted by Stance of the Thunderbrand - dirty trick granted by Seize the Opportunity: Pazuzu dazed for 10 rounds (dirty trick CMB +85 vs CMD 77)

5.17 Free - bull rush attempt as 5.10 above
5.18 Automatic - Pazuzu is pushed back the total distance (typically at least 20') caused by successful bull rushes (5.10, 5.13, 5.15 and 5.17 above)

6 Standard by Leftbal
In their current positions, none of the balor lords are close enough to Nelly's allies to be able to see and target them, so the demons are therefore likely to decide to first concentrate on the most immediate threat, meaning Nelly. Especially since that threat just made their boss soil his feathers in fear before hitting him over the head so hard even the balors can see the obligatory imaginary little chattering quasits flying in circles around their leader, cartoon style. So unless Leftbal decides to simply flee instead of attacking (unlikely), it must try to either charge Nelly, move south towards where it probably has heard Nelly's allies, and/or cast a spell. Going by the tactics section in the bestiary entry for balor lords, Leftbal is most likely to try using a damaging SLA, like firestorm, targeting the whole space Nelly occupies. And if Leftbal does so, all three balor lords are most likely doomed, each one taking 98 damage (mostly nonlethal), being frightened for 12 rounds, dazed for 16 rounds and pushed back up to at least 30', while Leftbal's firestorm never occurs since Nelly's immediate response to the threat interrupts the balor's action to use the SLA:

6.1 Immediate - Clairsentient Counter by Nelly expending her Deep Focus and Hunting Party, triggered by Nelly potentially being affected by Leftbal's firestorm
6.2 Standard granted by Clairsentient Counter - Hammer of the Immortal vs Leftbal: 95% hit chance (+57 vs AC 33) for 98 damage, -4 AC and CMD, and Leftbal is sickened for 1 round (and Nelly and her allies gain +2 morale to attack for 2 rounds)

6.3 Free - demoralize attempt granted by Enforcer: Leftbal is frightened for 6 rounds (Intimidate +59 vs DC 43)
6.4 Free - dirty trick attempt granted by Hammer of the Immortal: Leftbal is dazzled for 8 rounds (dirty trick CMB +85 vs CMD 62)
6.5 Free - bull rush attempt granted by Buckler Bash and Shield Slam: 99% success chance (bull rush CMB +74 best of two rolls vs CMD 62), moving Leftbal up to at least 15' after:

6.6 AoO granted by Stance of the Thunderbrand - dirty trick granted by Seize the Opportunity: Leftbal is cursed for 1 round and dazed for 16 rounds (dirty trick CMB +85 vs CMD 62)

6.7 Free - bull rush as 6.5 above
6.8 Automatic - Leftbal is pushed back the total distance (typically up to at least 30') caused by successful bull rushes (6.5 and 6.7 above)
6.9 None - Hammer of the Immortal vs Midbal: as 6.2 - 6.8 above but against Midbal
6.10 None - Hammer of the Immortal vs Rightbal: as 6.2 - 6.8 above but against Rightbal

Resources Spent When the first round ends, Nelly has expended Hunting Party and all her readied zealot/awakened blade maneuvers except Temporal Body Adjustment, Thrashing Dragon Twist and Time Skitter, plus her psionic focus and Deep Focus. She has also used her Hypercognitive Focus for the round and made 6 AoOs (10 additional AoOs possible before the start of her next turn).

Clearly, Pazuzu and his balor lords lost this fight almost before it started. As they end up dazed and cowering or frightened for several rounds, Nelly and her allies have plenty of time to take care of the beaten demons in the way they prefer before Pazuzu is able to threaten anyone with so much as bad language.

Due to Pazuzu's +13 to Initiative and the inherently fluky nature of opposed d20 rolls, there's a considerable risk Pazuzu wins the initiative and may act before Nelly. But even if he can do so, he still doesn't stand much of chance against her in a straight up fight like this. None of his SLAs or (Su) abilities has a DC high enough to affect Nelly while she's affected by Lord of the Pridelands, and even should she not be, none of his SLAs will be effective and none of his (Su) abilities will have more than a 40% chance to succeed if Nelly makes a saving throw (the most powerful ones being avoided with a successful Fortitude or Will save vs DC 43). But most importantly, any effect he tries to expose Nelly to can be countered by her Clairsentient Counter or Break the Hourglass, meaning Pazuzu grants Nelly up to a standard and a move action to interrupt his triggering standard action each time he uses any such offensive SLA or (Su) ability. On top of that, Nelly's Precognitive Defenses, Deep Focus and Hypercognitive Focus ensures she may typically make two such interrupting counters per round at any time, in addition to her normally granted actions, while Pazuzu may only take the normal single standard action during his own turn, leaving him far behind Nelly in the action economy race.

Instead, if Pazuzu is lucky and gets to go first, to avoid further humiliation and likely being captured, his best chance is actually to just get the hell abyss out by using his greater teleport as his very first action. That can at least save his ruffled feathers long enough for him to start trying to deal with Nelly in some much less overt manner. But Pazuzu is highly unlikely to realize this without having very extensive and highly detailed knowledge of Nelly's combat abilities. And if he does have such knowledge, he probably would've used his considerable power to ensure he doesn't risk ending up anywhere remotely close to Nelly in the first place, much less in a fight he knows he's bound to lose. Instead, he'd probably try offering Nelly some kind of agreement to help her against common enemies, hoping to (further) corrupt her soul in the process so he may eventually turn her into his powerful servant once her life is at an end.

The next best thing Pazuzu can do if he wins initiative is probably to go for Nelly's magic items and buffs using a targeted greater dispel magic. This action has the same problem of triggering Nelly's Clairsentient Counter or Break the Hourglass, and may very well put Pazuzu within range of Nelly's interrupting attacks since he must be within 60' in order to see and target her. But this option at least has a chance of causing Nelly some minor annoyance and may delay Pazuzu's downfall another round if he can get most of his allies between him and Nelly.




Maybe there's a disconnect between my experiences and others. Can you give some more concrete example of what you're talking about?The last such incident I can recall in a game I played in myself included a long chain of mostly non-magic but nasty defenses guarding the entrance passage to the keep in a huge fortress, taken over by goblinoids led by a group of evil wizards and clerics (none of a level/CR much higher than that of the 9th level party). Teleport made the whole thing a cake-walk, while it otherwise would've been a pretty significant challenge requiring a lot of creative thinking and numerous different talents (including other spells). But come to think of it, I don't really believe it's a particularly great example, since I think using teleport was also a pretty creative and far from obvious solution. And our DM agreed, though we felt kinda cheated when he later told us about the awesome potential social interactions with hobgoblin generals and bugbear chefs we missed...


In general, I don't think you can make martials viable at high levels without hitting complaints about being "castery". Maybe you can do it in combat, but out of combat is probably impossible. It's certainly impossible working with mostly existing material.This.


Overhauling the system, I would probably just institute something like Paragon Paths and mandate that Fighters got their high level powers from being Thunder Lords or Verdant Princes.That could've worked far better than the current system, likely also avoiding most of the "too caster-y"-complaints any mechanic of value given to fighters now are likely to get.

[death390]

Hey! Some (two?) of us have actually been discussing solutions for quite a while now.

I can't think Knockback/BR would be a fitting game mechanic to describe what is shown in that gif, it's more like some kind of super-boosted Awesome Blow + Cleave/Whirlwind combo. Which might be a decent development of Knockback in a high power game, come to think of it.

(Dunno what Sauron is, as the terms in used in the descriptions of him in the books are intentionally changing dependent on the context/speaker and also kinda vaguely defined. But a sorta semi-corporeal ghost-ish(?) "fallen angel" older than time itself would be a "caster" in some sense, I guess? Anyhow, in the movies, his previous more corporeal form shown in the gif is definitely not fighting like anything resembling a caster IMO. And he's not using any kind of apparent magic while doing so, aside from his obviously supernaturally high innate strength, great durability and awesome martial prowess, enhanced by a magic item. Pretty much exactly like your typical high level fighter does in 3.5, really, except with results far less impressive than those of Sauron for some weird reason...)

I'd simply add a number of (Su) flight minutes/day to any martial stance of say 3rd level or higher. Magic, in the "supernatural" sense, is required for "super-jump-flight" anyways, and in order to get martials up to scratch in other regards for that matter.

Considering difficult terrain is typically irrelevant by no later than 10th level, I don't really see how these abilities are supposed to be powerful. Maybe if they had a similar slowing effect on all movement types and also worked as an AoE dimensional anchor within a sphere radius? (Fluffed as the blow disrupting all matter in the sphere to such an extent it becomes impossible to enter from/exit into another dimension, or something along those lines?)
~snipped since deals with outhers ideas~

i get what you mean by it doesn't quite fit but the point was that people were hit and subsequently flung away. that is in of itself knockback just not the totality of the thing (power attack and great cleave or like you said whirlwind attack). funny thing is i don't think sauron can do what he did with that strike in the actual LorR RPG since you can't multi-hit from what i remember. hell it takes 3 combat actions to fire an arrow (draw weapon, nock an arrow, fire) because the edge ["feat"] quickdraw doesn't technically work with arrows (my dm ruled for it though). i think that the most strikes you can get in a round are 3? 2 for action economy & +1 for two weapon fighting edge ["feat"]. but i digress... as for him not using magic, in LotR rpg there are a number of combat enhancements (one of the few decent magics in that game) so he is probably buffed to high hell (CoDZILLA anyone?)

idk about just giving flight/minutes flat out. that just leads to everyone getting it for some reason (tbh everyone does need it at higher levels). more likely a feat that allows jump checks to "grant flight" based on the check would be more in tune with that. probably for 1 round/ 5pts above DC or something and the ability to "push off of air" at a DC increase to allow continuous flight (one piece air step basically).

difficult terrain is often negated by flight so how about aireal difficult terrain generation by creating "waves" of air pressure by swinging a weapon?

[Bucky]

If level 15+ martials need to be superheroes to compete, you might as well throw in flight and breath weapons and stuff.

[ryu]

If level 15+ martials need to be superheroes to compete, you might as well throw in flight and breath weapons and stuff.

I mean.... It's a positive step?

[Nifft]

If level 15+ martials need to be superheroes to compete, you might as well throw in flight and breath weapons and stuff.

I dunno, that's all just combat stuff.

Martial PCs need help with everything else except combat.

[skunk3]

The debate between Ryu and Karl demonstrates exactly why the Tier System is unhelpful for discussions of this type. Karl is loudly and repeatedly insisting that it is impossible to challenge true Tier Ones. Ryu is loudly and repeatedly insisting that you can challenge characters with appropriate opposition. Careful examination shows that these positions are not in conflict. Tier One can be defined as "unchallengable" (making Karl right) while there still exist campaigns that rely on the particular features of classes in Tier One that challenge those classes (making Ryu right). The entire debate is a result of assuming different semantics for "Tier One", and is therefore stupid. Talking about this in terms of the Tiers obscures the important (and, in my view, obviously true) point that there are exciting and worthwhile campaigns that are unique to full casters with the much less important observation that cheese exists.

One is tempted to speculate that this conflation is intentional, but that speculation is pointlessly conspiratorial, and should instead be replaced by an attempt to produce alternative language that refers precisely to "characters with non-broken abilities non-casters can't duplicate". Then we can stop trying to pretend that Chain Binding is a reason that evard's black tentacles needs to be worse.



Yes. This thread is examining a particular set of tools DMs might use to prevent the imbalance that exists in RAW from impacting the game. Namely, providing options to non-casting characters at a power level compatible, if perhaps not comparable, with casters.



I think it reflects poorly on you that you would intentionally play a character that doesn't carry its weight. D&D is a cooperative game, and you are defecting. That makes you a bad person.


Not at all. A properly optimized martial character (not even talking about uberchargers or any other generic cheese) is going to be very helpful in most games, at least until roughly the halfway mark. Even after that point a straight-up fighter with no fancy min/maxing is still going to be reasonably competent at many tables. Not carrying one's "weight" completely depends on the game you're playing. Sure, if you are playing in a high OP game full of casters and psionics then yeah, your fairly vanilla fighter is going to be a joke after a certain point compared to other character classes, but even then that doesn't mean that they cannot fulfill certain roles. You just have to play your role and stop being worried about being a badass demi-god juggernaut. There's nothing wrong with being an above-average human being doing their best to thrive in a crazy world with strength and steel. Your contrary opinion kinda illustrates the point behind my comment... Nobody is "defecting" by choosing to play a class that doesn't shine as brightly as a full caster. Yes, D&D is a cooperative game and there's many ways to play and cooperate. I am not saying that there is no imbalance here... I'm just saying that people can and should homebrew any (relatively minor) changes that they see fit but not go overboard because playing less powerful / capable character often leads to a lot of fun. Imagine how boring D&D would be if you played a T1/T2 class every time.

[skunk3]

Well first off, there is the Oberoni Fallacy. We can't call 3e or PF "balanced" because a GM can fix it.

I will say that people might not want to be outshone is a definite thing. It kind of breaks verisimilitude when there's a guy in the party who does nothing. Of course, DND is a cooperative and also a roleplaying game, meaning that you are greater than the sum of your sheet. On the other hand, some DMs are just incompetent, or the players are simply not on the same page.

Furthermore, people don't understand Tiers. Tiers past T1-2 is a measure of game brokeness. If there is that stuff going on, your game is busted unless your DM is prepared and doing equally busted stuff. T4 is barely competent, and T5-6 are incompetent, but if you have a low power samurai game going on, it could totally work.

Snowbluff Axiom

I personally do not feel that the game is as imbalanced as many people here make it out to be. It was never meant to be perfectly balanced. Yeah, there's a lot of minor changes here and there that COULD be make to certain classes and/or PrCs to make them more viable and attractive, but I think the larger issue here, for me anyway, is that people seem to not want to play anything unless it is fairly powerful and optimized. I don't know if this is because they feel inadequate IRL and want to be a beast on the table or what... but I find it repellant in general. I could have plenty of fun playing any class. Does this perceived imbalance cause you to not have fun playing the game? If so, why? Are you mad that after a certain point you're outshone? Why do you feel that being outshone isn't going to or shouldn't happen? As I have mentioned before, I feel that a lot of people take issue with certain balancing issues because they simply don't want to be the weak link... which speaks to their personality. I get it - being a badass in the game is fun. Who doesn't like to feel godly from time to time? That said, I think that the overall balance of most classes is acceptable. Some homebrew tweaks here and there wouldn't hurt but the problem is that if you're going to play in a game in which one class gets buffs or added class skills or whatever non-standard bonuses, you have to look at each and every class for the PC's in that game and determine if they too get any buffs or nerfs, and DM's also have to factor all of these changes in when it comes to generating CR-appropriate challenges. It's essentially opening a can of worms. From what I gather here on the forums a lot of people play in games in which they can do almost anything they want in terms of taking feats, selecting classes/prc's, taking flaws that don't really hurt their character in any meaningful way, and generally optimizing to the high heavens. In most of the games that I have played in, DM's have been very strict about what is and isn't allowed, so a great deal of these hypothetical character builds on the forum wouldn't fly at all due to being way, way OP.

[Nifft]

I think there are several reasons why IRL experience so often does not match with forum expectations.

1 - People are generally bad at optimizing.

2 - People disproportionately play lower level games.

3 - People who are better at optimizing are disproportionately stuck being the DM, because a necessary aspect of being a good optimizer is having a solid grasp of the rules.


The trouble is, none of those are stable reasons. The fact that people are bad at optimizing doesn't prevent someone from randomly stumbling into Incantatrix + Persist, and once someone does that, that game goes boom.

The forum's expectations about class performance can be seen as a worst-case scenario. It's not the average case, which is why it doesn't match the average IRL game -- but you don't put safety features on your bandsaw because someone loses one finger per day, you put the safety features to prevent something which ought to be rather unusual in the first place.


tl;dr - The game is as imbalanced as people claim, but it's not usually relevant because people usually play low-level games with badly made characters vs. badly run opposition, so it usually all evens out. The imbalance should be addressed anyway because if you don't, you're playing golf on a mine-field. Most of the time you'll be fine, but that one time when you're not fine is highly relevant even if it's not common.

[theblasblas]

...You just have to play your role and stop being worried about being a badass demi-god juggernaut...

What happens when you don't have a role anymore? What happens when a stealth mission comes up and instead of looking towards the Rogue, the party looks towards the Wizard because his spells provide much greater options for stealth and utility? What if, by the time a Fighter can charge and defeat a single foe, the Wizard has already left the rest a charred mess with some fireballs? When before the Barbarian can act as a meatshield the dragon is already lying immobile on the ground with 0 Dex? There eventually reaches a point of imbalance where whatever the mundane character does stops mattering.

[ryu]

I also find the idea of a single stealth character in a party rather useless. It forces two bad options. Either your party is with you in case of detection but your stealth is as bad as the weak link stealth wise, stealth almost certainly useless outside of very strange parties, or your party isn't with you to improve your odds of stealthing. I shouldn't have to explain why that's a stupid idea designed to get a character killed.

This is why magic stealth is better. It doesn't force this situation.

[upho]

One is tempted to speculate that this conflation is intentional, but that speculation is pointlessly conspiratorial, and should instead be replaced by an attempt to produce alternative language that refers precisely to "characters with non-broken abilities non-casters can't duplicate". Then we can stop trying to pretend that Chain Binding is a reason that evard's black tentacles needs to be worse.Yes indeed. Eh... "NBC" ("non-broken caster") for short?

Of course, that acronym might be mistaken for referring to some kind of scrying service... :smallwink:


I dunno, that's all just combat stuff.

Martial PCs need help with everything else except combat.That's far from the truth IME. Uberchargers, Tripstars etc typically suck in higher level combat intended to challenge their caster allies. But yes, non-casters need even more help outside of combat.


tl;dr - The game is as imbalanced as people claim, but it's not usually relevant because people usually play low-level games with badly made characters vs. badly run opposition, so it usually all evens out. The imbalance should be addressed anyway because if you don't, you're playing golf on a mine-field. Most of the time you'll be fine, but that one time when you're not fine is highly relevant even if it's not common.This. Bit weird it always has to be repeated though, as one really should be able to assume this to be general knowledge by now.

[Nifft]

That's far from the truth IME. Uberchargers, Tripstars etc typically suck in higher level combat intended to challenge their caster allies. But yes, non-casters need even more help outside of combat. You're surely right regarding mid-to-high op games, but the premise of my assertion was that the DM ran naive challenges, and the players made beginner mistakes -- so the casters might be a blaster-Wizard and a bear-Druid, for whom T3 challenges are par.

Either way, I think it's true that martial PCs need more non-combat help than they need combat help -- that seems valid, even if they do also need some combat help.


This. Bit weird it always has to be repeated though, as one really should be able to assume this to be general knowledge by now.

Well, it's the sort of people who wander in and tell us that they've been playing the game for 10 years now, and it didn't feel broken, so how can we say it's broken?

Basically, the people who make the argument today weren't here when the same argument was raised last month.

So, we tell them the answer, and we expect a new poster next month.

[skunk3]

It's not that myself or most other people don't see any imbalance. That's not the issue. The issue is that in most games the imbalance never matters.

IF a game is going to be high OP and IF the game is expected to run to 20th level or even beyond, then yeah, we can talk about homebrew fixes to make martials/mundanes a bit more useful... a wider array of class skills, perhaps more skill points per level, feat re-works, amendments to feat chains and prerequisites, amendments to prestige class requirements, a buff to saving throw progressions, etc. That's all well and good. However, as I said, that's only really needed in certain circumstances... but how many people, when planning a character for a high OP / high level game go with extremely lackluster choices unless they are ignorant? Anyone wanting to fill the role of a fighter could easily just be a cleric and be a better fighter than a fighter, and most people know this.


As far as mundanes being outshone to the point of being virtually useless, how often does that REALLY happen in practice? Rogues have UMD... it's not like Wizards are going to be stealthier than rogues the vast majority of the time. Yeah, a barbarian might not need to be a meat shield anymore for big baddies but they can still fill a role by mopping up mooks and pestering more challenging enemies and allowing spellcasters to conserve spells. I feel that a lot of the concerns expressed here are overblown to a certain degree. All classes have a role to play and while some become less effective at higher levels, it can still be a fun experience regardless even if that means riding the bench sometimes.

[death390]

the only current fix for out of combat is currently skills in the case of mundane characters. that being said there is not much that can be done about that, other than give everyone more skill points, this is part of why i like the pathfinder approach to skills but find that there are still not enough for the classes. a rouge gets 8-10+ int in a list of 36 skills... these are out skill monkeys and they still barely have enough to cover their bases. it is worse in 3.5 where there are about 45 skills and its 2:1 ratio for cross class. even then in 3.5 no one can find traps without trapfinding, nor can they track without the feat (which is a huge investment).

hell double every classes base amount (rouge gets 16+int) with a minimum of 6+int. so that skills actually get more use. it is honestly a cop out how little skills everyone gets. several of the skills should just be 1 rank per level because they are so important (perception, 1 profession, diplomacy) but that would make everyone equal and some people are not as good as others so the choice should be there to put less ranks in a skill. this doesn't even touch the mult-skill categories: craft, profession, speak language. these categories themselves could take a large chuck of the points.

i mean honestly how many people have made backstories where they are a guard/ farmer/ street thief and actually used some of their precious points in profession? i don't because there arn't enough to keep up with what is minimally needed.

[heavyfuel]

How's this:

We take the Automatic Bonus Progression from Pathfinder (https://www.d20pfsrd.com/gamemastering/other-rules/unchained-rules/automatic-bonus-progression/) and make it not tied to Character Level, but to "Tier Level"

Tier Level works much like Initiator Level does. All Tier 5 & 6 classes add their full level, Tier 4 classes add 3/4 their level, Tier 3 classes add 1/2 their level, Tier 1 and 2 classes don't add any level.

eg.: Nale from OOTS, a Fighter 2/Rogue 3/Sorcerer 8, would have the automatic bonus progression of a Lv 4 character (Resistance +1, Armor and Weapon attunement +1). Meanwhile, a straight Bard 13 would have the bonus of a lv 6 character (Resistance and Deflection +1, Armor and Weapon attunement +1, Mental and Physical Prowess +2)

Doesn't fix the problems, but it does help out lower tier classes.

[EldritchWeaver]

How's this:

We take the Automatic Bonus Progression from Pathfinder (https://www.d20pfsrd.com/gamemastering/other-rules/unchained-rules/automatic-bonus-progression/) and make it not tied to Character Level, but to "Tier Level"

Tier Level works much like Initiator Level does. All Tier 5 & 6 classes add their full level, Tier 4 classes add 3/4 their level, Tier 3 classes add 1/2 their level, Tier 1 and 2 classes don't add any level.

eg.: Nale from OOTS, a Fighter 2/Rogue 3/Sorcerer 8, would have the automatic bonus progression of a Lv 4 character (Resistance +1, Armor and Weapon attunement +1). Meanwhile, a straight Bard 13 would have the bonus of a lv 6 character (Resistance and Deflection +1, Armor and Weapon attunement +1, Mental and Physical Prowess +2)

Doesn't fix the problems, but it does help out lower tier classes.

What exactly is this supposed to fix? Also note, that the ABP assumes that you get a full equivalent to the normal stuff you can buy (actually, the implementation has some problems like having lower bonuses compared to real PCs with some specialization in their equipment). Which means that anyone who gets lower than full bonus simply ignores it and simply buys the normal stuff. Or maybe that even full ABP classes buy something which has a higher bonus. Unless you say that the ABP rules import also includes the removal of all items which improve ABP bonus like-bonuses.

[heavyfuel]

What exactly is this supposed to fix? [...] Unless you say that the ABP rules import also includes the removal of all items which improve ABP bonus like-bonuses.

It's supposed to let lower tier classes have more diverse magical items and not have to focus so much in +X bonus. Gaining more utility instead of simply better numbers

That second part might be interesting

[Bakkan]

With regard to the question of "what abilities should we give non-spellcasters in order to increase their capability", I would like to see a lot more ability for non-spellcasters to shape the battlefield, before and during a battle, as well as some ways to affect when and where combat occurs. As it is, spellcasters have many options for this, including divinations, battefield control spells, teleport effects, and so on. Some ideas I have for non-spellcaster abilities are below. I tried to come up with abilities that would be important and useful while still feeling very "physical", which might differentiate them from spellcasters, whose abilities often seem ephemeral. The numbers I have below are simply my first thoughts.

Constructor: In one hour, you construct fortifications out of the natural resources around you. For instance, if you are in a forest, you may make them out of wood, and you may use stone almost anywhere. You may mix materials you have access to. The fortifications may take any shape you desire, such as a wall, keep, or castle, with a total volume not to exceed ten 10-ft cubes per point of BAB. You decide all details of its construction, including whether it has crenellations, its type of doors or windows, and any secret passages. You may include decorations such as carvings or sculptures, but these may require a Craft check.

Earthshaker: As a standard action, you may strike the ground below you with a limb or weapon, causing reverberations in the earth. This vibration causes a 20 foot tall, 5-ft diameter column of earth and stone to erupt out of the ground at a point you designate within 5ft/level of your location. This column has been shifted up from the ground below, and is thus there permanently. Any creature standing over the column may make a Reflex save (DC 10 + your BAB) to avoid it. On a success, the creature moves to a random adjacent square. On a failure, the creature is launched upward by the column. If there is a ceiling at most 20 feet above the floor where the column erupts, a creature who fails its save takes 1d6 bludgeoning damage/point of BAB you have (minimum 1d6, maximum 10d6) and then falls into a random square adjacent to the column. If there is not a ceiling within 20 ft of the floor, the creature falls in a random square within 10 ft of the column and takes 3d6 falling damage.

Fleet of Foot: You have been adopted by the wind spirits and may when needed move at their speed. When you use this ability you may move up to 100 miles per round. You may move with this increased speed for a total number of rounds per day equal to your BAB. You may only travel to places you would normally be able to go simply using movement modes for which you have a listed speed; for instance, if you cannot fly, cannot walk on water, and do not have a swim speed, you may not cross a body of water without taking a bridge. You also may not unlock doors, though you may pass through unlocked ones. You may take one additional creature with you per 3 points of BAB; for this purpose, Large creatures count as 2 creatures, Huge creatures count as 4, and so forth.

Feel the Ether: You can feel the subtle vibrations in reality caused by creatures teleporting. Whenever a creature teleports into your threatened area, you may take an Attack of Opportunity against it. Whenever a creature teleports to within 5 ft/BAB of you, you immediately know where the teleporting creature(s) will arrive, and may take an immediate action to move up to your speed.

[zlefin]

In terms of general inspiration; looking to related systems is handy.
Legend was designed in part to address these kinds of issues iirc; not sure whatever happened with it, haven't heard about it in years.

One thing I do remember is that the skill scaling was different: effects similar to 3.5's Epic Skill uses came online much much earlier. sadly you can' directly import something like that into 3.5 cuz there's so many ways in 3.5 to boost a skill by a lot.

maybe someone else cna remember some other notes from it that'd be helpful.

[Goaty14]

With regard to the question of "what abilities should we give non-spellcasters in order to increase their capability", I would like to see a lot more ability for non-spellcasters to shape the battlefield, before and during a battle, as well as some ways to affect when and where combat occurs. As it is, spellcasters have many options for this, including divinations, battefield control spells, teleport effects, and so on. Some ideas I have for non-spellcaster abilities are below. I tried to come up with abilities that would be important and useful while still feeling very "physical", which might differentiate them from spellcasters, whose abilities often seem ephemeral. The numbers I have below are simply my first thoughts.

Constructor: In one hour, you construct fortifications out of the natural resources around you. For instance, if you are in a forest, you may make them out of wood, and you may use stone almost anywhere. You may mix materials you have access to. The fortifications may take any shape you desire, such as a wall, keep, or castle, with a total volume not to exceed ten 10-ft cubes per point of BAB. You decide all details of its construction, including whether it has crenellations, its type of doors or windows, and any secret passages. You may include decorations such as carvings or sculptures, but these may require a Craft check.

Earthshaker: As a standard action, you may strike the ground below you with a limb or weapon, causing reverberations in the earth. This vibration causes a 20 foot tall, 5-ft diameter column of earth and stone to erupt out of the ground at a point you designate within 5ft/level of your location. This column has been shifted up from the ground below, and is thus there permanently. Any creature standing over the column may make a Reflex save (DC 10 + your BAB) to avoid it. On a success, the creature moves to a random adjacent square. On a failure, the creature is launched upward by the column. If there is a ceiling at most 20 feet above the floor where the column erupts, a creature who fails its save takes 1d6 bludgeoning damage/point of BAB you have (minimum 1d6, maximum 10d6) and then falls into a random square adjacent to the column. If there is not a ceiling within 20 ft of the floor, the creature falls in a random square within 10 ft of the column and takes 3d6 falling damage.

Fleet of Foot: You have been adopted by the wind spirits and may when needed move at their speed. When you use this ability you may move up to 100 miles per round. You may move with this increased speed for a total number of rounds per day equal to your BAB. You may only travel to places you would normally be able to go simply using movement modes for which you have a listed speed; for instance, if you cannot fly, cannot walk on water, and do not have a swim speed, you may not cross a body of water without taking a bridge. You also may not unlock doors, though you may pass through unlocked ones. You may take one additional creature with you per 3 points of BAB; for this purpose, Large creatures count as 2 creatures, Huge creatures count as 4, and so forth.

Feel the Ether: You can feel the subtle vibrations in reality caused by creatures teleporting. Whenever a creature teleports into your threatened area, you may take an Attack of Opportunity against it. Whenever a creature teleports to within 5 ft/BAB of you, you immediately know where the teleporting creature(s) will arrive, and may take an immediate action to move up to your speed.

I like a BaB-focused ability that allows characters to do much more than their job description (Hey! Why is the fighter digging around all of a sudden?), but what level do you feel stuff like this should be doled out? Certainly something like this at lower-levels kinda makes casters far weaker than they are.

[Remuko]

With regard to the question of "what abilities should we give non-spellcasters in order to increase their capability", I would like to see a lot more ability for non-spellcasters to shape the battlefield, before and during a battle, as well as some ways to affect when and where combat occurs. As it is, spellcasters have many options for this, including divinations, battefield control spells, teleport effects, and so on. Some ideas I have for non-spellcaster abilities are below. I tried to come up with abilities that would be important and useful while still feeling very "physical", which might differentiate them from spellcasters, whose abilities often seem ephemeral. The numbers I have below are simply my first thoughts.

Constructor: In one hour, you construct fortifications out of the natural resources around you. For instance, if you are in a forest, you may make them out of wood, and you may use stone almost anywhere. You may mix materials you have access to. The fortifications may take any shape you desire, such as a wall, keep, or castle, with a total volume not to exceed ten 10-ft cubes per point of BAB. You decide all details of its construction, including whether it has crenellations, its type of doors or windows, and any secret passages. You may include decorations such as carvings or sculptures, but these may require a Craft check.

Earthshaker: As a standard action, you may strike the ground below you with a limb or weapon, causing reverberations in the earth. This vibration causes a 20 foot tall, 5-ft diameter column of earth and stone to erupt out of the ground at a point you designate within 5ft/level of your location. This column has been shifted up from the ground below, and is thus there permanently. Any creature standing over the column may make a Reflex save (DC 10 + your BAB) to avoid it. On a success, the creature moves to a random adjacent square. On a failure, the creature is launched upward by the column. If there is a ceiling at most 20 feet above the floor where the column erupts, a creature who fails its save takes 1d6 bludgeoning damage/point of BAB you have (minimum 1d6, maximum 10d6) and then falls into a random square adjacent to the column. If there is not a ceiling within 20 ft of the floor, the creature falls in a random square within 10 ft of the column and takes 3d6 falling damage.

Fleet of Foot: You have been adopted by the wind spirits and may when needed move at their speed. When you use this ability you may move up to 100 miles per round. You may move with this increased speed for a total number of rounds per day equal to your BAB. You may only travel to places you would normally be able to go simply using movement modes for which you have a listed speed; for instance, if you cannot fly, cannot walk on water, and do not have a swim speed, you may not cross a body of water without taking a bridge. You also may not unlock doors, though you may pass through unlocked ones. You may take one additional creature with you per 3 points of BAB; for this purpose, Large creatures count as 2 creatures, Huge creatures count as 4, and so forth.

Feel the Ether: You can feel the subtle vibrations in reality caused by creatures teleporting. Whenever a creature teleports into your threatened area, you may take an Attack of Opportunity against it. Whenever a creature teleports to within 5 ft/BAB of you, you immediately know where the teleporting creature(s) will arrive, and may take an immediate action to move up to your speed.

i like all of this a lot.

[Ignimortis]

What exactly is this supposed to fix? Also note, that the ABP assumes that you get a full equivalent to the normal stuff you can buy (actually, the implementation has some problems like having lower bonuses compared to real PCs with some specialization in their equipment). Which means that anyone who gets lower than full bonus simply ignores it and simply buys the normal stuff. Or maybe that even full ABP classes buy something which has a higher bonus. Unless you say that the ABP rules import also includes the removal of all items which improve ABP bonus like-bonuses.

Except they explicitly do. The ABP rules are supposed to remove "the big six" type of item, the only purpose of which is to increase your passive stats. Granted, the progression is slow, and it doesn't really help matters much, but it's a start.

[death390]

Except they explicitly do. The ABP rules are supposed to remove "the big six" type of item, the only purpose of which is to increase your passive stats. Granted, the progression is slow, and it doesn't really help matters much, but it's a start.

yeah but standard progression barely fixes anything in the first place (for many it doesn't), due to how slow the progression is. but to get it even slower just wouldn't help, add in the fact that unless it is an untyped bonus the PC's would just buy what they need anyway nullifying the bonus gained in the first place. IF it WAS an untyped bonus then you get double dipping problem where they buy the items anyway and then get the slow progression on top of it.

[upho]

Except they explicitly do.That part was obviously not (originally) intended by heavyfuel to be imported, hence:

Unless you say that the ABP rules import also includes the removal of all items which improve ABP bonus like-bonuses.That /snip/ part might be interestingNor is that part somehow required for the system to work at all, though without it the system sorta encourages many builds to spend gold on big six stuff anyways. This inflexibility is also the major reason I don't use the system in my own games, even though I really would've preferred big six not being item bonuses.

Instead, I use the alternative item rules from DSP's Steelforge, which simply allows any and all big six and skill competence bonuses (of +1 to +10) to be added to any slotted item without increased costs due to improper slot or effect stacking, regardless of any other magic effects granted by that item, big six or not. Which means the cost of for example a Belt of Physical Perfection +6 goes from 144k to 108k (no x1.5 stacking costs), and the bonuses aren't bound to the belt slot. This is of course a greater boon for non-casters than for casters, the former being much more dependent on magic item bonuses (especially big six) than the latter.

And since this allows for having several different effects on the same item at no additional cost, the silly "christmas tree" effect can thankfully also be cut considerably.

[Ignimortis]

That actually got me thinking...what if you could get and equip one magic item per non-spellcasting level, and couldn't equip magic items at all if all you have are spellcaster levels? That might need refinement, but the basic idea seems rather interesting.

[upho]

You're surely right regarding mid-to-high op games, but the premise of my assertion was that the DM ran naive challenges, and the players made beginner mistakes -- so the casters might be a blaster-Wizard and a bear-Druid, for whom T3 challenges are par.With that premise, I think I agree. And if the players in such a game are generally better at building PCs than playing them, the casters might actually be the ones in most need of combat help.

That said, IME the kinds of very low-op games required for this to be true (games barely at blaster-wizard/bear-druid comparable levels) are rare once the group have played more than say a campaign or two. Meaning I think it's generally much more likely less experienced players discover strong caster combat options and/or pure win buttons, and typically also find it much easier to benefit from those in-game, than it is for such players to optimize non-caster combat prowess to the point it has any comparable impact on the outcome of combats, at least in mid and high levels.


Well, it's the sort of people who wander in and tell us that they've been playing the game for 10 years now, and it didn't feel broken, so how can we say it's broken?

Basically, the people who make the argument today weren't here when the same argument was raised last month.Course. My thought was just that since these people must at least have read enough to have a general impression of the community's views, and since variants of this question/opinion has been popping up frequently and regularly in forums like this for more than 15 years by now, one might think the probability for these people to have stumbled across at the very least one of these previous questions/opinions and related replies should be very high by now.


So, we tell them the answer, and we expect a new poster next month.Yeah, looking back at the last 15 years, there are no indications of this actually changing, apparently regardless of mentioned probabilities.

[upho]

It's not that myself or most other people don't see any imbalance. That's not the issue. The issue is that in most games the imbalance never matters.Thing is, as Nifft said, once a game runs into C/MD issues, it tends to quickly escalate to become pretty darn serious IME. And a non-trivial part of the very reason why this is the case is that most groups have never needed to consider such serious balance issues, which means they're not only poorly equipped to deal with it, but also to actually realize what is about to happen and why before the issue becomes serious enough to ruin the fun.


IF a game is going to be high OP and IF the game is expected to run to 20th level or even beyond, then yeah, we can talk about homebrew fixes to make martials/mundanes a bit more useful...If a group is already capable of deciding and defining a game's expected mechanical PC power before the game starts, it's not very likely the game will also run into C/MD issues. In that case, the reason for using balance fixes such as the ones discussed in this thread is primarily to increase the number of character concepts which can be appropriately mechanically reflected, not to prevent C/MD issues from occurring.


As far as mundanes being outshone to the point of being virtually useless, how often does that REALLY happen in practice?I've personally played in a 3.5 game in which this happened, big time, despite having a competent DM and most players being knowledgeable enough even to create pretty balanced homebrew options. (For example, I played a ranged rogue mostly based on a homebrew sniper PrC and Savage Species-like racial progression levels, none of which I'd now consider OP in a T3-ish game.) None of us had visited any char-op forums at that time, but we sure wished we had when we actually found out how much the 3.5 online community already knew about our problems, even though at the time it couldn't offer much in the way of viable solutions outside of vastly reducing the number of allowed PC options.


I feel that a lot of the concerns expressed here are overblown to a certain degree. All classes have a role to play and while some become less effective at higher levels, it can still be a fun experience regardless even if that means riding the bench sometimes.If you had said this to me 15 years ago, I most likely would've agreed. Having experienced a game running into much more serious yet unintentional C/MD problems, as well as games with greatly improved balance through various homebrew fixes, I no longer believe the concerns are overblown, nor that one should be satisfied with half of the classes dictating your role or that the game "can still be a fun experience".

[Talakeal]

Not really. Throughout their careers differing T1s perform various tasks easier or with less spent resources than each other if they've even reach a level where they've access to the other's tricks at all. In a game where everyone has some level of access to all tricks with effort it becomes less about what you ultimately can do, and more about what you can do easily. A game of opportunity cost as opposed to absolute cost. This is most important at the low levels and gradually slackens as increasing level affords more freedom. At high levels things that make you unique are less spell list access and more prestige class benefits unless you've a list no one else in the party bothered to expand into. Could be because they wanted more prestige class benefits.

Exactly which part of my statement are you disagreeing with?

Tier 2 is defined as game breaking power at mid levels with standard levels of optimization, Tier 1 is that + great versatility.

It is possible to make full casters without game breaking power or characters that are stronger and / or more versatile than existing tier 3s, but 3.5 doesn't have any.


The problem, I think, is that what Talakeal wants in terms of differentiation is for some things to be adventures. When you ask people how the Fighter should get to another plane, the answer is almost always either "get a Wizard to do it" or "find a portal". But the problem is that those things aren't different ways of overcoming the challenge, they are lower level ways of overcoming the challenge. There was nothing stopping the Wizard (actually, the Cleric -- hey look, a way casting classes are different) from finding planar portal, it's just not as good as using plane shift. It's like the Frank Trollman quote from earlier says. What the people who dislike the idea of Fighters being buffed want is for their characters to be low level. When you ask people how they would like Fighters to solve problems, their answer is "with low level solutions".

Maybe?

I am still not quite sure about your definition of "high level".

If you mean character level, it is possible to have a character that increases in power without increasing in versatility and vice versa. I can easily imagine a high level evoker who can turn entire cities to ash with a wave of his hand but still be no more capable at traveling the planes without ever gaining the ability to cast plane-shift, and I don't think there is anything wrong with having clearly defined character limits at any level.

I don't think every member of the party needs to be able to do everything. If they need to do something that nobody in their party can do they can go on an adventure to find an extraordinary solution, or they can just buy a consumable item, or get someone else to do it for them (whether this is through purchasing services, summoning a minion, or whatever), or get a magic item to do it for them (I would go with the latter if it is going to be a major element of the campaign).

Would you mind linking the Trollman quote again? I am not seeing it.

[EldritchWeaver]

It's supposed to let lower tier classes have more diverse magical items and not have to focus so much in +X bonus. Gaining more utility instead of simply better numbers


Unless you say that the ABP rules import also includes the removal of all items which improve ABP bonus like-bonuses.

That second part might be interesting


Except they explicitly do. The ABP rules are supposed to remove "the big six" type of item, the only purpose of which is to increase your passive stats. Granted, the progression is slow, and it doesn't really help matters much, but it's a start.

That's right. ABP is not meant to be used in parallel with the standard items, so either you employ nonetheless both, so people can concentrate their wealth on the important bonuses or end up ignoring it with a slow progression, or you give only the big 6 stuff to to martials and similar, which ends up screwing over casters - at least until they can afford to use buff spells. Starting at level 12 they can use Extend Spell to get all benefits, which means that instead of money they expend spell slots. Unless they craft an item which does the casting for them.

Also, outside the big six the magic items are effectively portable spells, so trying to buff martials with magic items is effectively to make them limited casters.


yeah but standard progression barely fixes anything in the first place (for many it doesn't), due to how slow the progression is. but to get it even slower just wouldn't help, add in the fact that unless it is an untyped bonus the PC's would just buy what they need anyway nullifying the bonus gained in the first place. IF it WAS an untyped bonus then you get double dipping problem where they buy the items anyway and then get the slow progression on top of it.

The bonuses have the same types as the stuff which they are supposed to replace.


That part was obviously not (originally) intended by heavyfuel to be imported, hence:Nor is that part somehow required for the system to work at all, though without it the system sorta encourages many builds to spend gold on big six stuff anyways. This inflexibility is also the major reason I don't use the system in my own games, even though I really would've preferred big six not being item bonuses.

Instead, I use the alternative item rules from DSP's Steelforge, which simply allows any and all big six and skill competence bonuses (of +1 to +10) to be added to any slotted item without increased costs due to improper slot or effect stacking, regardless of any other magic effects granted by that item, big six or not. Which means the cost of for example a Belt of Physical Perfection +6 goes from 144k to 108k (no x1.5 stacking costs), and the bonuses aren't bound to the belt slot. This is of course a greater boon for non-casters than for casters, the former being much more dependent on magic item bonuses (especially big six) than the latter.

And since this allows for having several different effects on the same item at no additional cost, the silly "christmas tree" effect can thankfully also be cut considerably.

Granted, Steelforge makes some stuff cheaper, but I don't think it addresses the same problem as ABP.

[skunk3]

Thing is, as Nifft said, once a game runs into C/MD issues, it tends to quickly escalate to become pretty darn serious IME. And a non-trivial part of the very reason why this is the case is that most groups have never needed to consider such serious balance issues, which means they're not only poorly equipped to deal with it, but also to actually realize what is about to happen and why before the issue becomes serious enough to ruin the fun.

If a group is already capable of deciding and defining a game's expected mechanical PC power before the game starts, it's not very likely the game will also run into C/MD issues. In that case, the reason for using balance fixes such as the ones discussed in this thread is primarily to increase the number of character concepts which can be appropriately mechanically reflected, not to prevent C/MD issues from occurring.

I've personally played in a 3.5 game in which this happened, big time, despite having a competent DM and most players being knowledgeable enough even to create pretty balanced homebrew options. (For example, I played a ranged rogue mostly based on a homebrew sniper PrC and Savage Species-like racial progression levels, none of which I'd now consider OP in a T3-ish game.) None of us had visited any char-op forums at that time, but we sure wished we had when we actually found out how much the 3.5 online community already knew about our problems, even though at the time it couldn't offer much in the way of viable solutions outside of vastly reducing the number of allowed PC options.

If you had said this to me 15 years ago, I most likely would've agreed. Having experienced a game running into much more serious yet unintentional C/MD problems, as well as games with greatly improved balance through various homebrew fixes, I no longer believe the concerns are overblown, nor that one should be satisfied with half of the classes dictating your role or that the game "can still be a fun experience".

I think that where we disagree is what actually constitutes a "C/MD issue." I am assuming here that some things you would consider to be an issue, I would consider to be a non-issue. If a party member all of a sudden becomes far more powerful due to a feat, level benefits / class features, or the like then obviously the dynamic of the group is going to shift a bit but how is it an issue exactly? I guess what I am not understanding here is what precisely it is that you consider to be problematic other than certain classes outshining others. Is there something more to it than that?

The only scenarios in which I can imagine these sorts of 'issues' occurring in is a game in which:

A) One or more players are intentionally powergaming and trying to be as OP as possible (looking at forums such as this and copying builds or taking ideas to make their own variants)

B) One person in the game has far more knowledge of the system than everyone else, and while they aren't powergaming per se, they are still far more effective than everyone else

C) The DM approves anything and everything a player wants to take, from levels to feats, leading to an unintentional synergistic huge boost in overall power/effectiveness that isn't matched by the rest of the group

D) The DM has a 'Magic Mart' policy in which they let players buy anything they want as long as they can afford it, which results in PC's become hyper-specialized or really, really effective at doing a particular thing


...and so on.

I think that as long as everyone is transparent and honest about things from the start (and are capable of being mature and sensible) then most issues can either be avoided or fixed.

I have never played under a DM that has allowed any online homebrew stuff at all because while there might be some good stuff out there that is balanced and makes sense, there's soooo much that is totally absurd and/or stupid. I've always stuck to what is contained in the official books. I've only been playing 3.5 for a bit over 10 years now, which is nothing compared to some people. However, that being said, I've played under several DM's and have played a wide variety of classes and seen lots of classes played out. In all of that time I've never seen a game get past level 13-14 or so, so maybe these issues you are talking about primarily happen in higher-level games?

Also, I tend to pick my class after everyone else when starting a new game so I can try to fill in a missing role... sneaky dude, meat shield, healbot, blaster, whatever. Most of the time I am a mundane character so I guess that I am used to not being the star of the show.

[Cosi]

narratively powerful like teleport.

Players should have narratively powerful abilities. Being able to direct the narrative is part of the reason to play a TTRPG instead of a computer game.


That depends on what tier list you use, Shugenjas get teleport and domain adepts can get the travel domain. Warmages ecletic ACF can let it grab teleport or planeshift with its advanced learning and then there is the nonclass options like arcane domain and fiendish heritage feats or just using magic items. Now obviously it is much narrower and/or coming at a higher cost for them than that of a tier 1/2.

Sure, I missed on teleport (though I only count the Shugenja). But I think the point obviously stands -- abilities the alter the narrative belong almost exclusively to Tier One/Tier Two classes.


There is a problem with giving noncombat abilities to the iconic martial class of D&D: Said class is only characterized as a "fighter". Much the same is true of the silver-medal martial class, the barbarian. These two classes really can't have any thematic non-combat abilities aside from "break stuff" and "threaten to break stuff," since their core concepts are basically "guy who fights" and "guy who fights while mad".

While I agree about the Fighter, I think the Barbarian could easily extend to non-combat abilities. Throw some spirit or totem powers in there and you're good to go. The Barbarian could easily walk in with whatever spirit abilities you felt were appropriate.


Actually, using the portal is better than casting Plane Shift in a number of ways - the most obvious of which is conservation of resources. Subtlety, not giving away your capabilities... there's lots of reasons using the existing portal could be a better plan.

All of those sound like different ways of saying "it is a low level option". Yes, sometimes you might use a low level option. But you have to also have high level options.


I'd simply add a number of (Su) flight minutes/day to any martial stance of say 3rd level or higher. Magic, in the "supernatural" sense, is required for "super-jump-flight" anyways, and in order to get martials up to scratch in other regards for that matter.

You could also move the flght stance (in Tome of Battle it's 8th level I think) down to ~5th level.


Sure. But the swiss army shtick isn't really the goal I was trying to describe. It's about adding stuff which: a) makes an entire specific shtick combo like Tripstarring applicable in a greater number of scenarios - but far from every scenario - and b) can use of many of the shtick's required individual investments (feats, items, stat priorities etc) in other combos applicable in other scenarios.

I suppose that's a way of making it work. But I don't think it wins on merits (I would prefer making individual options more effective), and I don't think it's easier.


The last such incident I can recall in a game I played in myself included a long chain of mostly non-magic but nasty defenses guarding the entrance passage to the keep in a huge fortress, taken over by goblinoids led by a group of evil wizards and clerics (none of a level/CR much higher than that of the 9th level party). Teleport made the whole thing a cake-walk, while it otherwise would've been a pretty significant challenge requiring a lot of creative thinking and numerous different talents (including other spells). But come to think of it, I don't really believe it's a particularly great example, since I think using teleport was also a pretty creative and far from obvious solution. And our DM agreed, though we felt kinda cheated when he later told us about the awesome potential social interactions with hobgoblin generals and bugbear chefs we missed...

I think "there is a fortress, go kill the guy holed up in it" isn't a high level adventure. It's a high level encounter, and teleport is very much how you solve it. The high level version of that adventure spreads the enemies out, and hides who it is you're actually after.


The game is as imbalanced as people claim, but it's not usually relevant because people usually play low-level games with badly made characters vs. badly run opposition, so it usually all evens out. The imbalance should be addressed anyway because if you don't, you're playing golf on a mine-field. Most of the time you'll be fine, but that one time when you're not fine is highly relevant even if it's not common.

The deeper problem with imbalance is that it manifests in how games are played. If the Fighter doesn't have non-combat options, the game can't include extended non-combat sequences or challenges where non-combat abilities are necessary.


We take the Automatic Bonus Progression from Pathfinder (https://www.d20pfsrd.com/gamemastering/other-rules/unchained-rules/automatic-bonus-progression/) and make it not tied to Character Level, but to "Tier Level"

Bigger numbers doesn't fix the problems Fighters have. Fighters need other abilities. Though having ABP as the baseline is probably a good idea because it makes people less dependent on magic items.


I don't think every member of the party needs to be able to do everything. If they need to do something that nobody in their party can do they can go on an adventure to find an extraordinary solution, or they can just buy a consumable item, or get someone else to do it for them (whether this is through purchasing services, summoning a minion, or whatever), or get a magic item to do it for them (I would go with the latter if it is going to be a major element of the campaign).

None of those are acceptable. They make the game drag to a halt for what should be a minor obstacle. Just as it should not be possible for a 5th level combat challenge -- any 5th level combat challenge -- to require an entire adventure for a 15th level party -- any 15th level party, it should not be possible for a 5th level non-combat challenge -- any 5th level non-combat challenge -- to require an entire adventure for a 15th level party -- any 15th level party. If the game is going to have expectations for non-combat challenges, characters have to be able to deal with those challenges, and that means that characters have to scale in versatility. If you want a randomly selected party to fail to have an answer to less than one encounter in a hundred, each character has to be able to deal with 70% of challenges. That means out of ten encounters that require teleport-tier abilities, the Fighter has to have something to do in seven of them. Realistically, he should have something great to do in four, something okay to do in three, and something ineffective to do in the last three. Otherwise the game shuts down when you roll a party of a Fighter, a Barbarian, a Ranger, and a Monk.


Would you mind linking the Trollman quote again? I am not seeing it.

I don't know where that one is from. Arbane is the one who links it.

[upho]

Granted, Steelforge makes some stuff cheaper, but I don't think it addresses the same problem as ABP.You're right that it doesn't. But my point was more that I believe it's about the same relative boost to martials as ABP (used in its entirety for all PCs) but doesn't come with the same inherent inflexibility.

And of course, one could also simply give something like 10-20% extra WBL per martial level.


I think that where we disagree is what actually constitutes a "C/MD issue." I am assuming here that some things you would consider to be an issue, I would consider to be a non-issue. If a party member all of a sudden becomes far more powerful due to a feat, level benefits / class features, or the like then obviously the dynamic of the group is going to shift a bit but how is it an issue exactly? I guess what I am not understanding here is what precisely it is that you consider to be problematic other than certain classes outshining others. Is there something more to it than that?I understand why this may seem weird to someone who hasn't experienced it, as it may be difficult to see how large an impact the issue typically has on the game in its entirety. Here's an example: if the mechanical tools available to one or more party members are completely over-shadowed by those available to one or more of the other party members, not only is the weaker PCs' tools effectively rendered meaningless and the game very likely less fun for the players of the weaker PCs, but the DM's job also becomes increasingly difficult or simply impossible. How do you offer challenges appropriate for the strong PCs that won't be far too difficult/dangerous for the weaker ones, or challenges appropriate for the weaker PCs without having the stronger ones solving it without breaking a sweat?

Even in the rare case the players actually start out thinking it'll be fun playing "Willy Wizard and the Meaningless Martials" or "The Casting Crew (and random muggle hangarounds)", the DM will typically find it very hard to keep the game interesting for everyone past the earliest levels, since from a mechanical POV, the group will increasingly be playing two different games simultaneously. Of course, the DM could have the game focus entirely on stuff which aren't much affected by the mechanics, but in that case the group would be better off playing free-from instead of the very mechanics-heavy 3.5/PF. Note also that while the C/MD issue may seem largely separate from the fluff of PC's (and that of other creatures), in practice it also creates growing discrepancies between the fluff and the crunch, typically resulting in rapidly decreasing verisimilitude.

Similarly, the C/MD issue isn't made much easier to ignore through great RP, interesting PCs and an amazing story. (For example, the mentioned C/MD-ruined game I played in also had a fairy-tale inspired and very wonky yet adorable group of oddball PCs we all absolutely loved playing, and still regard as some of our most favorite and memorable characters ever from almost 40 years of TTRPG gaming. To give you an idea, the party included an extremely cute but somewhat borderline and whimsical party-loving petal sorcerer, who slept in a tiny velvet-padded bedroom built into the top of the helmet worn by his old best friend, the party's ugly and restless but endearingly naive, kind and loyal goody-two-shoes half-ogre fighter/barb.)


The only scenarios in which I can imagine these sorts of 'issues' occurring in is a game in which:

A) One or more players are intentionally powergaming and trying to be as OP as possible (looking at forums such as this and copying builds or taking ideas to make their own variants)

B) One person in the game has far more knowledge of the system than everyone else, and while they aren't powergaming per se, they are still far more effective than everyone else

C) The DM approves anything and everything a player wants to take, from levels to feats, leading to an unintentional synergistic huge boost in overall power/effectiveness that isn't matched by the rest of the group

D) The DM has a 'Magic Mart' policy in which they let players buy anything they want as long as they can afford it, which results in PC's become hyper-specialized or really, really effective at doing a particular thingIt doesn't really require any of these things, especially not to the level you describe. Besides, most games/groups include some or all of these to a certain degree, and that's often enough due to how imbalanced the system itself is. And of course, the more challenging the game is, the higher the risk.


I think that as long as everyone is transparent and honest about things from the start (and are capable of being mature and sensible) then most issues can either be avoided or fixed.Of course, but that also inevitably means that the game is restricted, and it requires everyone to fully understand what may actually turn out to be OP/UP in the game, which seems to rarely be the case in most groups. I do pretty much this in my own games, but I also include several new options to increase the number possible character concepts which can be reflected mechanically at the proper power level, replacing most of the options which aren't appropriate and therefore difficult to use (such as full casting progression in my games).


I have never played under a DM that has allowed any online homebrew stuff at all because while there might be some good stuff out there that is balanced and makes sense, there's soooo much that is totally absurd and/or stupid. I've always stuck to what is contained in the official books. I've only been playing 3.5 for a bit over 10 years now, which is nothing compared to some people. However, that being said, I've played under several DM's and have played a wide variety of classes and seen lots of classes played out. In all of that time I've never seen a game get past level 13-14 or so, so maybe these issues you are talking about primarily happen in higher-level games?They're typically far more serious in late levels, but they can also start becoming noticable as early as 5th. Creating and properly analyzing mechanics requires a lot of system mastery, of course. But I surely wouldn't trust content to be more balanced simply because it's official 1PP, as evidenced by the thousands of posts discussing the C/MD issue. PF also includes a good example, with most Dreamscarred Press (3PP) material (notably Psionics, Path of War and Akashic Mysteries) being far better balanced than Paizo material, especially when compared only to the core 1PP options.

[Nifft]

The deeper problem with imbalance is that it manifests in how games are played. If the Fighter doesn't have non-combat options, the game can't include extended non-combat sequences or challenges where non-combat abilities are necessary.

I'd argue that symptom has several possible causes, including player expectations. For example, I had one Wizard player who needed to "get his gun off" every session, so there had to be combat every single session or he'd leave unhappy. No matter what class that guy played, the game couldn't include extended non-combat sequences and also include him.

Another design failure which leads to that same issue is niche protection. For example, very party needs a Rogue because every dungeon needs traps because the Rogue needs something special to do. Skills like Pick Pockets in earlier editions were even more constraining -- at least Sleight of Hand encourages finding some creative uses.


So, yeah, you do want to fix the class palette to not include classes which can only engage in small slices of the game. But doing that won't necessarily fix the game.

[Arbane]

If level 15+ martials need to be superheroes to compete, you might as well throw in flight and breath weapons and stuff.

Superheroes? You mean unlike the totally realistic wizard, who has been flying and throwing lightning-bolts since level 5?

And yes, a fighter who can't fly in some way by around MID-levels isn't going to achieve much.


the only current fix for out of combat is currently skills in the case of mundane characters. that being said there is not much that can be done about that, other than give everyone more skill points, this is part of why i like the pathfinder approach to skills but find that there are still not enough for the classes. a rouge gets 8-10+ int in a list of 36 skills... these are out skill monkeys and they still barely have enough to cover their bases. it is worse in 3.5 where there are about 45 skills and its 2:1 ratio for cross class. even then in 3.5 no one can find traps without trapfinding, nor can they track without the feat (which is a huge investment).

hell double every classes base amount (rouge gets 16+int) with a minimum of 6+int. so that skills actually get more use. it is honestly a cop out how little skills everyone gets. several of the skills should just be 1 rank per level because they are so important (perception, 1 profession, diplomacy) but that would make everyone equal and some people are not as good as others so the choice should be there to put less ranks in a skill. this doesn't even touch the mult-skill categories: craft, profession, speak language. these categories themselves could take a large chuck of the points.

i mean honestly how many people have made backstories where they are a guard/ farmer/ street thief and actually used some of their precious points in profession? i don't because there arn't enough to keep up with what is minimally needed.

And I agree. There's NEVER enough skillpoints. (Probably an artifact of the decision that all the PCs in a party, TOGETHER, should equal roughly 1.5 competent adventurers.)

[death390]

Superheroes? You mean unlike the totally realistic wizard, who has been flying and throwing lightning-bolts since level 5?

And yes, a fighter who can't fly in some way by around MID-levels isn't going to achieve much.



And I agree. There's NEVER enough skillpoints. (Probably an artifact of the decision that all the PCs in a party, TOGETHER, should equal roughly 1.5 competent adventurers.)

you know that is a good question to ask, WHY are there so few skill points? even casters get shafted with this.

in PHB alone we have a wide gap of skill points (not yet looking at class skill cause thats another issue [pathfinder fixed that though]);

Rouge 8+ int

Ranger/ Bard 6 + int

Barbarian/ druid/ monk 4 + int

cleric/ fighter/ paladin/ Sorc/ Wizard 2 + int

out of all these classes only the wizard has a mandatory above 10 Int. the rest will probably just put what is needed for comat expertise (if using it) or RP purposes. the rest often have it as a dump stat or base 10. remember that 3d6 has an average of 10.5 on the roll, standard array only has 2 stats above a 11 (non-elite array), and point buy often is low on points so leaving it a dump stat doesn't matter for most. this means that while the wizard generally will be closer to the ranger/bard in skill points most characters get equal to or less points than what is listed with a couple using good rolls/ higher int for RP will have 1-2 more.

looking at the bottom of the list we have the fighter who should have more points due to their roles being guards and sentries meaning that just off the top of my head they want search/ spot/ listen; additionally they want high physical skills climb/ balance/ use rope/ jump/ swim since they often will have higher penalties from armor. then they probably should have profession (guard/ soldier), knowledge (local) / intimidate / sense motive as a guard and if a soldier survival and heal.

paladin basically has a similar issue of needing higher physical skills due to armor, knowledge (religion), and everyone needs spot/ search/ listen.

Cleric is often a paladin without the crap casting and mount so also needs better physical skills due to armor (except cloistered cleric but that's not PHB), knowledge (religion) and probably a few others on top of that; (planes) for example, everyone needs spot/ search/ listen, and probably profession (priest/ scribe).

and lastly the poor Sorc probably the most boned out of all casters. is Cha based so basically gets defaulted to the party face if no bard/ rouge (and sometimes even then). the sorc can be anyone from any walk of life due to the style of the character; a person who spontaneously gains the ability to cast magic. so who am i? a soldier who found the arcane in the midst of a battle, a aristocrat charming my way through the courts, a cleric of boccob, a farmhand defending my livestock, a thief on the run from my latest heist. the rest of the classes often have an inbuilt idea of who the character is but the sorc mostly doesn't... due to this they often have large skill requirements but can't ever make the grade often only taking only diplomacy as it is cross class and thats it unless they have higher than 11 INT. not to mention they ONLY get a familiar as a bonus while druid/ ranger get a bunch of stuff and an animal companion; and the wizard get a familiar, feats, and more spells.

all of these characters have skill needs in the 10-12 range on average and can't do it due to how few they have; not to mention most of those skill are cross class on top of it. (sorc gets only 6 class skills even the fighter gets 7!

[PairO'Dice Lost]

you know that is a good question to ask, WHY are there so few skill points?

Because of this oft-missed sidebar in the PHB:


When you create your character, you will probably only be able to purchase ranks in a handful of skills. It may not seem as though you have as many skills as real people do—but the skills on your character sheet don’t actually define everything your character can do.

Your character may have solid familiarity with many skills, without having the actual training that grants skill ranks. Knowing how to strum a few chords on a lute or clamber over a low fence doesn’t really mean you have ranks in Perform or Climb. Ranks in those skills represent training beyond everyday use—the ability to impress an audience with a wide repertoire of songs on the lute, or to successfully scale a 100-foot-high cliff face.

So how do normal people get through life without ranks in a lot of skills? For starters, remember that not every use a skill requires a skill check. Performing routine tasks in normal situations is generally so easy that no check is required. And when a check might be called for, the DC of most mundane tasks rarely exceeds 10, let alone 15. In day-to-day life, when you don’t have enemies breathing down your neck and your life depending on success, you can take your time and do things right—making it easy, even without any ranks in the requisite skill, to succeed (see Checks without Rolls, page 65).

You’re always welcome to assume that your character is familiar with—even good at, as far as everyday tasks go—many skills beyond those for which you actually gain ranks. The skills you buy ranks in, however, are those with which you have truly heroic potential.

The assumption behind skill points per class and skill DCs was that characters shouldn't need lots of skill ranks to do their jobs, between taking 10 being a thing and high DCs being uncommon. In fact, it was probably expected that PCs would put 5 or 10 points into a bunch of different skills instead of maxing out a few skills, given that that's how non-weapon proficiencies worked in 2e (you'd rather have lots of different NWPs for versatility than stack up lots of slots to get a few +1s to existing NWPs) and given the fact that the designers obviously felt that investing skill points up to the cross-class max was a reasonable life choice.

Of course, it didn't turn out that way. Instead of most guards having no or maybe 1-2 ranks in Spot/Listen/Sense Motive and a "canny guard" having a +5 modifier (as per the sample DCs on DMG p.31) so that a 1st-level rogue could be expected to lie to or sneak past them, guards were expected to have Spot/Listen/Sense Motive as class skills and max them out so that even mid-level PCs were challenged by them. Instead of most checks being taken care of by taking 10 or by not being asked for at all (such as in the skill examples in the DMG, where guiding a mount down the sides of a "steep gully" is only DC 10 and sneaking past some distracted hobgoblin guards is easy because they "aren't even looking at the door, so no Hide check is required") DMs ended up asking for lots of rolls for tasks that really didn't need them, especially things like making Bluff rolls for every sentence or Hide/Move Silently rolls for every move action.

So it's understandable for classes to have their existing base skill points given the original assumptions made by the designers, but given the way the game actually ended up being played they're pretty darn low.

[death390]

you know that actually makes 5e make more sense looking on. 5e uses bounded accuracy to basically make people fail more often (even on stupid simple ****) compared to 3.5 but honestly if they wanted PCs to diversify more they should have made the "ceiling" on skills lower +1 per 2 lvls ( or +.5 per lvl) or something. the idea of "i want to be great at what i do" has always been a thing in ANY rpg.

imagine if the max ranks were 13 instead of 23 (3 to start out at) that would have forced people to diversify, usually on "odd" levels. it also would have caused PrC's skill requirements to be lower, skill focus (and dual skill) feats would have been more useful, and rolling a die would have had more of an impact. hmm cross class skills also would have been easier to maintain as well

of course that could be addressed in the current system by simply doubling the number of skill points available as well, but instead of having a "dead" skill level it would instead have twice as many Maxed skills per level.

[ryu]

So one skill rank counts as heroic now? Really? Given the kinds of things you can do at one skill rank that's actually kinda pathetic. As a matter of fact that actually makes the skill system worse. It means that in addition to giving people stated abilities and points to buy them that aren't all that impressive much less impactful they oversold their skill just like BAB.

[Nifft]

you know that actually makes 5e make more sense looking on. 5e uses bounded accuracy to basically make people fail more often (even on stupid simple ****) compared to 3.5 but honestly if they wanted PCs to diversify more they should have made the "ceiling" on skills lower +1 per 2 lvls ( or +.5 per lvl) or something. the idea of "i want to be great at what i do" has always been a thing in ANY rpg.

imagine if the max ranks were 13 instead of 23 (3 to start out at) that would have forced people to diversify, usually on "odd" levels. it also would have caused PrC's skill requirements to be lower, skill focus (and dual skill) feats would have been more useful, and rolling a die would have had more of an impact. hmm cross class skills also would have been easier to maintain as well

of course that could be addressed in the current system by simply doubling the number of skill points available as well, but instead of having a "dead" skill level it would instead have twice as many Maxed skills per level.

Good idea about reduced ceiling => forced diversity.

Another way to get diversity is to have fewer skills, and each skill has more applications.

If you really want diversity, then have skills which overlap situationally, or only apply situationally -- so the guy who's best at climbing through the rigging of a swaying ship might not be the best at climbing through tree branches in a jungle, nor the best at climbing the walls of a volcanic crater in the Nine Hells.

[death390]

Good idea about reduced ceiling => forced diversity.

Another way to get diversity is to have fewer skills, and each skill has more applications.

If you really want diversity, then have skills which overlap situationally, or only apply situationally -- so the guy who's best at climbing through the rigging of a swaying ship might not be the best at climbing through tree branches in a jungle, nor the best at climbing the walls of a volcanic crater in the Nine Hells.


to be fair i am more of a proponent to more specialized skills similar to the rifts/ hero system/ LotR systems. the idea that everyone can do everything is quite whacky. several things shouldn't be skills (diplomacy) while others should be advance per level skills rather than picked (narrow band of class skills, perception skills, at least 1 proffesion). i think that the knowledge skills are actually too generalized. giving everyone a set of skills based on their class that auto levels with them and have "other skills" that are from your background/ adventuring that you put ranks in makes more sense. but to make everyone less cookie cutter it would be something like pick x (based on class) from this list of class skills you are always max rank in those skills, plus you get X+int skill ranks per level to invest in other skills.

for example why is knowledge religion a catch all skill? why wouldn't there be general sections, (religion: good gods), (religion: evil gods), (religion: Monsters), ect ect. or survival? (mountains, forest, plains, sea, ect ect). Knowledge (local: area X), (local: Area Y), (local: monsters). crafting, perform and profession are already this way why not others? its because there are so few skill points.

honestly my kind of system would be:
Class max skills (as described above)
X+int skill points for misc mechanical skills.
Y + int skill points for non-mechanical skills (languages [max languages based on int], professions, non ID knowledge, crafts, perform skills, (and probably a 2:1 ratio to downgrade mech skill point to 2 non mech skill points [one way])

[PairO'Dice Lost]

you know that actually makes 5e make more sense looking on. 5e uses bounded accuracy to basically make people fail more often (even on stupid simple ****) compared to 3.5 but honestly if they wanted PCs to diversify more they should have made the "ceiling" on skills lower +1 per 2 lvls ( or +.5 per lvl) or something. the idea of "i want to be great at what i do" has always been a thing in ANY rpg.

imagine if the max ranks were 13 instead of 23 (3 to start out at) that would have forced people to diversify, usually on "odd" levels. it also would have caused PrC's skill requirements to be lower, skill focus (and dual skill) feats would have been more useful, and rolling a die would have had more of an impact. hmm cross class skills also would have been easier to maintain as well

of course that could be addressed in the current system by simply doubling the number of skill points available as well, but instead of having a "dead" skill level it would instead have twice as many Maxed skills per level.

Really, only the PrC prerequisites and a handful of skills would need changing. 3e already has several distinct categories of skills: those where you just need 1 rank so you can make checks at all in a trained-only skill (e.g. Knowledge to identify monsters), those where you need a low fixed number of ranks (e.g. getting 5 ranks in a skill for synergy bonuses), those where you want as high a modifier as possible because you can't do anything useful with a low modifier (e.g. UMD where the lowest DC is 20), and those where you want as high a modifier as possible because it's almost entirely opposed (e.g. Hide where you want to out-roll near-even-level opposition as much as possible).

Those first two categories are exactly what the designers were talking about. 1 rank in Knowledge (Arcana) lets you go from "can't make checks to know obscure stuff about magic" to "can make checks to know obscure stuff about magic." 5 ranks in Balance prevents you from being flat-footed while balancing. The third category mostly consists of UMD, with a few other outliers, and can be fixed easily by dropping DCs for those to reasonable levels. It's the fourth category that makes everyone want to max out all their skills and would require more extensive changes to encourage generalizing, and that's basically Spot/Listen/Hide/MS for the stealth and not-getting-ambushed minigames.

How exactly those should be fixed is an entirely separate question, and varies by skill; there's the easy and minimum-impact approach of granting automatic ranks to certain classes, giving +1/2 level bonuses to everyone, and so forth, but there are also skill-specific solutions. There's a common suggestion to change Spot/Listen into an "Awareness" derived stat or a "Perception" save or the like that would auto-scale without rank investment, for instance; that would mean that not everyone needs to sink ranks into Spot and Listen anymore. And if Hide was modified so that cover and concealment let you hide without needing to roll anything and you only need to roll Hide to e.g. hide while observed or dash across gaps in cover, and having 5 ranks in Hide was enough to let you do the latter like Balance and flat-footed balancing, then Hide would be less of a "must max this to be able to hide at all" skill and more of a "get 5 ranks to be competent in hiding, max it only if you want to be a flippin' ninja" skill. And so forth.


So one skill rank counts as heroic now? Really? Given the kinds of things you can do at one skill rank that's actually kinda pathetic. As a matter of fact that actually makes the skill system worse. It means that in addition to giving people stated abilities and points to buy them that aren't all that impressive much less impactful they oversold their skill just like BAB.

Ranks indicate heroic potential. Having 1 rank doesn't mean anything special in terms of modifiers, but going from untrained to trained gives you benefits for some skills, and having a handful of ranks does start to make a noticeable difference on a lot of checks even if the skill isn't maxed.


Another way to get diversity is to have fewer skills, and each skill has more applications.

If you really want diversity, then have skills which overlap situationally, or only apply situationally -- so the guy who's best at climbing through the rigging of a swaying ship might not be the best at climbing through tree branches in a jungle, nor the best at climbing the walls of a volcanic crater in the Nine Hells.

That could certainly help. If you could climb ropes and swim in choppy water with Profession (Sailor), climb trees and hide in forests with Survival, climb buildings and run on rooftops with a hypothetical Thievery/Streetwise skill, and so forth, that would make certain skills much less mandatory for competence. I've been working on a similar system for a little while now, and initial playtests are fairly promising.


to be fair i am more of a proponent to more specialized skills similar to the rifts/ hero system/ LotR systems. the idea that everyone can do everything is quite whacky.
[...]
for example why is knowledge religion a catch all skill? why wouldn't there be general sections, (religion: good gods), (religion: evil gods), (religion: Monsters), ect ect. or survival? (mountains, forest, plains, sea, ect ect). Knowledge (local: area X), (local: Area Y), (local: monsters). crafting, perform and profession are already this way why not others? its because there are so few skill points.

Well, Craft and Perform aren't actually that siloed; it's Craft (Weaponsmithing) and Perform (String Instruments), for instance, not Craft (Swords), Craft (Maces), Perform (Harp), and Perform (Mandolin), for instance. But regardless, having lots of granular skills can be annoying to work with. You have to track varying bonuses for everything, you might not know to invest in Knowledge (Local [Cormyr]) until you're already there and then by the time you invest ranks in it you've already jaunted off to Chult and need to start investing into Knowledge (Geography [Chult]), and so forth.

A better solution might be to have one skill with multiple specializations, or decouple those specializations from skills entirely. In 3.0, you didn't have separate Perform subskills with their own modifiers, you had one Perform skill modifier and each rank you spent in it let you use it with another category of performance, so instead of Perform (Oratory) +4, Perform (Dance) +6, etc., you'd have Perform (Oratory, Dance, String Instruments) +7. You could do something similar for those other skills--and if you must get really granular, you could do it at varying rates so maybe every rank of Knowledge Religion gave you another specialization since multiple religions are fairly similar, but Perform might do it every 3 ranks because the performance types are dissimilar--or have an entirely separate set of proficiencies like weapon and armor proficiencies, where you have something like "Regional Proficiency: Cormyr" and you could roll Knowledge checks about Cormyr to know Cormyrean geography, Cormyrean history, common religions of Cormy, and so on--which makes a lot of sense, since once you have training in one area of knowledge, crafting skill, type of instrument, or the like it's easier to transfer that training to similar areas than for someone to start from scratch in that area.

[death390]

Really, only the PrC prerequisites and a handful of skills would need changing. 3e already has several distinct categories of skills: those where you just need 1 rank so you can make checks at all in a trained-only skill (e.g. Knowledge to identify monsters), those where you need a low fixed number of ranks (e.g. getting 5 ranks in a skill for synergy bonuses), those where you want as high a modifier as possible because you can't do anything useful with a low modifier (e.g. UMD where the lowest DC is 20), and those where you want as high a modifier as possible because it's almost entirely opposed (e.g. Hide where you want to out-roll near-even-level opposition as much as possible).

Those first two categories are exactly what the designers were talking about. 1 rank in Knowledge (Arcana) lets you go from "can't make checks to know obscure stuff about magic" to "can make checks to know obscure stuff about magic." 5 ranks in Balance prevents you from being flat-footed while balancing. The third category mostly consists of UMD, with a few other outliers, and can be fixed easily by dropping DCs for those to reasonable levels. It's the fourth category that makes everyone want to max out all their skills and would require more extensive changes to encourage generalizing, and that's basically Spot/Listen/Hide/MS for the stealth and not-getting-ambushed minigames.

How exactly those should be fixed is an entirely separate question, and varies by skill; there's the easy and minimum-impact approach of granting automatic ranks to certain classes, giving +1/2 level bonuses to everyone, and so forth, but there are also skill-specific solutions. There's a common suggestion to change Spot/Listen into an "Awareness" derived stat or a "Perception" save or the like that would auto-scale without rank investment, for instance; that would mean that not everyone needs to sink ranks into Spot and Listen anymore. And if Hide was modified so that cover and concealment let you hide without needing to roll anything and you only need to roll Hide to e.g. hide while observed or dash across gaps in cover, and having 5 ranks in Hide was enough to let you do the latter like Balance and flat-footed balancing, then Hide would be less of a "must max this to be able to hide at all" skill and more of a "get 5 ranks to be competent in hiding, max it only if you want to be a flippin' ninja" skill. And so forth.



Ranks indicate heroic potential. Having 1 rank doesn't mean anything special in terms of modifiers, but going from untrained to trained gives you benefits for some skills, and having a handful of ranks does start to make a noticeable difference on a lot of checks even if the skill isn't maxed.



That could certainly help. If you could climb ropes and swim in choppy water with Profession (Sailor), climb trees and hide in forests with Survival, climb buildings and run on rooftops with a hypothetical Thievery/Streetwise skill, and so forth, that would make certain skills much less mandatory for competence. I've been working on a similar system for a little while now, and initial playtests are fairly promising.



Well, Craft and Perform aren't actually that siloed; it's Craft (Weaponsmithing) and Perform (String Instruments), for instance, not Craft (Swords), Craft (Maces), Perform (Harp), and Perform (Mandolin), for instance. But regardless, having lots of granular skills can be annoying to work with. You have to track varying bonuses for everything, you might not know to invest in Knowledge (Local [Cormyr]) until you're already there and then by the time you invest ranks in it you've already jaunted off to Chult and need to start investing into Knowledge (Geography [Chult]), and so forth.

A better solution might be to have one skill with multiple specializations, or decouple those specializations from skills entirely. In 3.0, you didn't have separate Perform subskills with their own modifiers, you had one Perform skill modifier and each rank you spent in it let you use it with another category of performance, so instead of Perform (Oratory) +4, Perform (Dance) +6, etc., you'd have Perform (Oratory, Dance, String Instruments) +7. You could do something similar for those other skills--and if you must get really granular, you could do it at varying rates so maybe every rank of Knowledge Religion gave you another specialization since multiple religions are fairly similar, but Perform might do it every 3 ranks because the performance types are dissimilar--or have an entirely separate set of proficiencies like weapon and armor proficiencies, where you have something like "Regional Proficiency: Cormyr" and you could roll Knowledge checks about Cormyr to know Cormyrean geography, Cormyrean history, common religions of Cormy, and so on--which makes a lot of sense, since once you have training in one area of knowledge, crafting skill, type of instrument, or the like it's easier to transfer that training to similar areas than for someone to start from scratch in that area.

i get what you mean, in every character i have 2 mandatory 1 rank skills tumble and UMD. because with them i can possibly negate fall damage (dc 15 for -1d6) and can use magic devices (though more is better here). Pathfinder collapsed all 3 awareness skills into perception, while other systems have a straight die roll and modifier (rifts), the problem with having a flat modifier and die roll is with how stealth works the perception modifier would have to be quite high on its own to keep pace with a stealth skill (move silent and hide combine in pathfinder).

if it wasn't for the feat tax the unchained skills in pathfinder would be a great reason to continue to put points into skills beyond 1 if not-opposed, or a flat amount needed to take 10, honestly a 15 UMD + take 10 lets you do almost everything needed with it (activate blind) with scrolls being the major difference (25+ sp lvl to read, 20 + CL to activate). however the problem is that the unchained system has some real stinkers for bonuses especially for feat cost, UMD for example: 5 ranks let you aid another UMD check, whoopee +2 to a check result you could probably do better. 10 ranks on nat 1 can still activate magic item but at -10 to check basically making it impossible to activate. 15 ranks emulate 2 races OR 2 alignments, the only good part is 2 alignments since chaotic/lawful evil/good is a thing and no one is a goblin dwarf :/. 20 ranks: on nat 1 reroll to activate with -10 is actually worth it, because that still at LEAST a 50/50 shot to activate but even taking 5 would activate things blind at this point. not to mention in Pathfinder you cant take 10 on UMD (but you technically can in 3.5 :P)

Other skills with crap unchained bonuses: spellcraft, perform (non-casters except 20 rank one), heal (honestly the skill is generally crap),

absolutely broken unchained skills: intimidate (free at will feat effects with a no save feat effect for a couple rounds (and a more powerful one that has a save), craft (still takes forever but now with more checks since @ 15 ranks you now NEED to craft by the day)

Sleight of hand is an example of good unchained due to the fact it reduces penalties for doing it quicker AND gives a +2 when used in combat.



EDIT: about the craft and all that, craft (weaponsmithing, armorsmithing, cooking, basketweaving, bowmaking, alchemy, trapmaking, [varies]), perform (act, comedy, dance, keyboard, oratory, percussion, string, wind, sing), profession (just listed ones: sailor, miner, and guardsman). [profession miner explicity has excavation of a tunnel in RoS btw, stormwrack i think had sailor, and cityscape for guardsman if i remember right]

[ryu]

There seems to be a misunderstanding of what I mean here. Even so many as five ranks at early levels doesn't actually meet the level of hype suggested by that text blurb. Why? When your common defense of why skills are rare is that my enemies WON'T EVEN PAY ATTENTION TO ENTRANCES AND EXITS WHILE ARMED FOR COMBAT, it's not heroic to sneak by them. They're a bunch of clowns with no understanding of even basic guarding not even meeting the basic standing of everyone has a baseline competence much less the "lofty peaks" of like five ranks in spot. That entire concept is stupid, and makes the entire world seem more embarrassing for its inclusion. It is a direct promise that I needn't worry about getting good at anything because my enemies, various neutral parties, and everyone else is painted serially incompetent.

[Nifft]

That could certainly help. If you could climb ropes and swim in choppy water with Profession (Sailor), climb trees and hide in forests with Survival, climb buildings and run on rooftops with a hypothetical Thievery/Streetwise skill, and so forth, that would make certain skills much less mandatory for competence. I've been working on a similar system for a little while now, and initial playtests are fairly promising. Please do post it when you've got something you feel comfortable sharing.

Mine so far is an attempt at doling out relatively even access to utility, but letting that utility be divided up in some fairly arbitrary ways.

Like:

Sailor
- Swim (surface only) full
- Swim (other) half
- Use Rope (knots, rigging) full
- Climb (rigging) full
- Balance (on a ship) full
- Knowledge: history (ports & nautical events) half
- Knowledge: geography (ports) half
- Knowledge: monsters (aquatic) half
- Survival (coast or at sea) half

Kordite
- Climb (any) full
- Jump (any) full
- Swim (any) full
- Knowledge: religion (Kord) full
- Knowledge: history (competitive events) half

Trapper
- Survival (woodlands) full
- Craft: trapmaking (woodlands) full
- Craft: leatherwork (any) full
- Search (outdoors) full
- Move Silently (outdoors) half
- Hide (outdoors) half
- Listen (any) half


The basic idea is to give roughly equal bundles of functionality centered around some theme or other.

Ideally, I'd be able to quantify the value of each bundle element, and allow players to build their own bundles.

[PairO'Dice Lost]

There seems to be a misunderstanding of what I mean here. Even so many as five ranks at early levels doesn't actually meet the level of hype suggested by that text blurb. Why? When your common defense of why skills are rare is that my enemies WON'T EVEN PAY ATTENTION TO ENTRANCES AND EXITS WHILE ARMED FOR COMBAT, it's not heroic to sneak by them. They're a bunch of clowns with no understanding of even basic guarding not even meeting the basic standing of everyone has a baseline competence much less the "lofty peaks" of like five ranks in spot. That entire concept is stupid, and makes the entire world seem more embarrassing for its inclusion. It is a direct promise that I needn't worry about getting good at anything because my enemies, various neutral parties, and everyone else is painted serially incompetent.

The DMG isn't at all saying that most guards are a bunch of bumbling idiots so you don't need to put ranks in Hide. Here's the full Hide/MS example, for reference:


Sneaking: Lidda is sneaking through a dungeon filled with hobgoblins. She must pass by an open doorway beyond which is a room where the brutes are drinking from a keg of ale. She makes a Move Silently check, and the hobgoblins make opposed Listen checks, but they’re not paying much attention, so the halfling sneaks by easily. The hobgoblins aren’t even looking at the door, so no Hide check is required. To get out, however, she must pass right through a guard room. She must make a Hide check to keep to the dark shadows near the walls, and a new Move Silently check (new because the listeners are different individuals, plus they’re more alert) to get past the guards and through the room.

A new Move Silently check is needed for each different group that a sneaker is trying to avoid. Sometimes both a Move Silently check and a Hide check are needed when sneaking around. Sometimes they’re not.

It's saying that by an absolutely strict reading of the Hide rules it's impossible to walk past an open door without being instantly seen because you need cover or concealment to hide and people are assumed to be looking in every direction at all times...but that the DM is encouraged to let characters succeed without making checks when it makes sense in the fiction, and with circumstance modifiers and such many tasks shouldn't be too far out of reach of an untrained character so that a character with a modicum of training is noticeably better.

Now, I'm not saying I agree with this philosophy, necessarily; I'm not a big fan of the fail-forward and roll-as-little-as-possible principles used in many recent games, at least as they're commonly interpreted, and I definitely fall on the side of "give characters more bang for their skill point buck" rather than "characters should spread their skill points thin to be more versatile." But I do think that the sidebar in the PHB and the explanations and examples in the DMG show that the designers at least had a coherent vision of how skills should work, even if it didn't end up working out as planned, and the common forum view of "Well obviously classes don't get enough skill points, what were the designers thinking!?" is a bit too uncharitable.


Please do post it when you've got something you feel comfortable sharing.

I posted a brief explanation of them in another thread recently, so I'll just quote myself on that (spoilered for space):

On broad skills grouped by theme rather than by task:


I've used something similar to this in the past, and am working on fleshing out a more complete system. Basically, going farther than not always using an associated ability score, skills don't have an associated ability score and each skill can be used with each of the six attributes (in theory; some combinations won't be used often or at all), kind of like how Shadowrun has un-attribute-associated skills and always specifies "Roll [stat]+[skill]" for its checks. My skill list looks a lot like Corneel's, where each skill represents a general approach to doing things rather than representing the things you do.

Individual tasks/subskills for each skill (the "things you do" part) do have associated ability scores, though, based on what kind of task each is: Str-based rolls generally involved physical force or movement, Dex-based rolls generally involve finesse or complex/intricate/involved tasks, Con-based rolls generally involve long-term or endurance-based tasks, Int-based rolls generally involve knowing things (and replace Knowledge-type skills), Wis-based rolls generally involve intuition or observing/noticing details, and Cha-based rolls generally involve social interaction.

For a relevant social skills example, there are two skills for doing things in an underhanded fashion (Deception and Stealth, the former for tricking or misdirecting people and the latter for doing things unnoticed), and there's a skill called Culture that covers both "culture" as in customs and social institutions, like Corneel's Politics skill above, and also "culture" as in the arts and other upper-class pastimes. Here's how you might use those skills in practice and with which attributes:


Ability scoreDeception skill uses3e analogsStealth skill uses3e analogsCulture skill uses3e analogs[th]
StrFooling people as to what combat maneuver you're attempting, making people think you'll punch their head off if they don't cooperateBluff (feinting), IntimidateRapid stealthy movement, hanging from windowsills for a whileHide/Move Silently (with penalties for movement)N/AN/A
DexLegerdemain, pickpocketingSleight of Hand, Open Lock (simple locks)Careful stealthy movement, silently removing windowsHide/Move Silently (used normally), Disable Device (traps), Open Lock (complex/puzzle locks)Playing instruments, art forms like painting or weavingCraft (Painting/Pottery/etc.), Perform (technical performance)
ConN/AN/AExtended stealth (like a sniper lying in wait or hanging from the rafters to overhear a conversation)N/AN/AN/A
IntForging documents, making and using ciphersForgery, Decipher Script (codes)Tailing people unnoticed, identifying hidden entrance points, constructing camouflageKnowledge (Architecture/Dungeoneering), Survival (urban tracking), some class featuresCultural knowledge, navigating bureaucracyAppraise, Knowledge (History/Local/Nobility), Decipher Script (legalese)
Wis"Reading" a mark for a later con, identifying fellow ne'er-do-wellsInnuendo (3.0), Sense Motive (noticing lies)Noticing pressure plates and alarmsSearch, TrapfindingIdentifying movers and shakers, determining how honest or corrupt an official isInnuendo (3.0), Sense Motive (getting a hunch)
ChaLying, making yourself look more dangerous or well-connectedBluff (lying), Intimidate, Gather Information (word on the street)Disguises, impersonationDisguise, Diplomacy (appeal to authority)Wheeling and dealing, public performanceDiplomacy (illicit deals), Perform (emotional performance), Gather Information (gossip at a party)


(A "N/A" doesn't mean those skill+attribute combinations can't be used, just that I couldn't think of a good example off the top of my head while making the table.)

So as you can see, these skill groupings mean that non-traditional social skills can all be used for social stuff, and there's some overlap in Bluff-like, Diplomacy-like, and Intimidate-like tasks depending on who the audience is and how you're going about the task. There's also ways to slice things up by attribute, like being able to train only certain attributes for a given skill for fewer resources than training the whole skill, having Bardic Knowledge effectively being able to substitute for any Int-based skill checks and Rage granting something similar for Str-based checks, and so forth, but that's all outside the skills themselves.

There aren't actual Bluff/Diplomacy/Intimidate skills in this setup that characters can take since all of those skills' uses fall under other skills (nor are there Knowledge or Spot/Listen skills, since those fall under Int- and Wis-based tasks, respectively, of other skills), but each of those is mostly covered by just one to three skills (Deception/Tactics, Culture/Empathy/Insight, and Deception/Empathy, respectively) so you can "be good at Bluff" without too much investment and it's possible to "be good at social skills" with enough skills trained.

So this has the benefits of the skill group/subskill setup I mentioned earlier, in that each skill covers quite a broad area so that characters can be fairly competent by default without investing too many resources into one area, but between splitting uses of certain old skills over multiple new skills and allowing training/specialization of subskills you don't have an issue where all the social characters invest in the same one to two "social interaction" skills and end up too similar to one another and you don't have to make a character or creature good at a bunch of related things if you want them to be good at one particular thing.


And to your earlier point about magic skills, though it's not directly relevant to the social skill discussion, there's Arcana, Nature, and Religion for arcane, divine (druid-y), and divine (priestly) magic, respectively. They each have areas of mundane use--the usual Knowledge (Arcana/Nature/Religion) stuff, plus Arcana has alchemy, harvesting and using monster parts, and working with magic traps; Nature has Survival and Profession (Sailor) navigation stuff, the parts of animal breeding and training that don't fall under Empathy, and herbalism and potion-making; and Religion has the social religious stuff like holidays, minor miracles like prophetic dreams and omens, and everything related to undead-slaying. On the magical side, they all have basically identical uses for their different categories of magic: Str for busting through force effects or other magical barriers and disrupting usage of magical abilities, Dex for hiding somatic components or using them in constricted spaces, Con for concentration and not losing spells when attacked, Int for identifying spells and items and some parts of UMD, Wis for sensing magic, and Cha for the rest of UMD and misdirecting observers as to what you're trying to cast.

So not only does this slightly granulate the magic skills so that "magic guy," "sneaky guy," and "social guy" can all handle their main area of focus with a single skill if they want to but really need two or three skills to cover everything, but it folds together the directly magical skills with other skills that martial and skilled classes might find useful (fighters might want Arcana for mage-slaying and Nature for healing without a divine caster, rangers want Nature for getting along in the wild and Religion to deal with some favored enemies, and so on) so that at higher levels you don't have the noncasters who have been immersed in magic and magic-users for many levels now still being unable to ID an enemy spell because they can't afford to and have no pressing reason to invest in Spellcraft.

On using proficiencies to granulate and expand on skills:


Of course. So, the basic goals of the system are (A) to fold in the boring-but-useful feats into things you get for free at starting levels, (B) to add "hooks" for downtime activities like training and crafting, and (C) to provide a way for low-level characters to be very good smiths, sages, guards, and so forth without requiring them to have lots of HD for the feats or skill ranks they'd otherwise require to fill those roles.

There are six proficiency categories and three proficiency ranks. The categories are Weapon, Armor, Knowledge, Profession, Region, and Faction. The first two map to weapon and armor proficiencies, the second two map to Knowledge and Profession/Perform subskills, and the last two sorta kinda map to affiliation rules and the variant Knowledge (Local) rules for Forgotten Realms. The proficiency ranks are Basic, Expert, and Master. Basic proficiency removes nonproficiency penalties and Expert and Master each grant a general benefit by category, and each proficiency has its own Basic/Expert/Master perks as well that are roughly on the scale of a feat.

Various other parts of the rules are modified to use proficiencies as prerequisites as much as possible, such as shortening feat trees and taking feat and skill taxes out of PrC prerequisites. They can also be used numerically for certain things (Basic = 1, Expert = 2, Master = 3), like multiplying crafting progress or adding to a weapon's threat range and other things that would be nice to scale to a small degree.

Weapon Proficiencies
These are by weapon type and fighting style: Axes, Crossbows, Dual Weapons, Mobile Fighting, Natural Weapons, etc. The general Expert perk is to not provoke AoOs when making combat maneuvers with associated weapons and the general Master perk is to reduce iterative or multiattack penalties with associated weapons; specific perks include things like Reflexive Toss for Master Thrown Weapons (threaten an area and make AoOs with thrown weapons) or Never Surrounded for Expert Dual Weapons (negate flanking bonuses while wielding two weapons).

Armor Proficiencies
These are by weight and material: Light Armor, Light Shields, Hide Armor, Scale Armor, Unarmored, etc. The general Expert perk is to increase AC by +1 and the general Master perk is to decrease ASF and effective armor weight for encumbrance; specific perks include things like Duck and Cover for Master Heavy Shields (take a move action to gain cover or improved cover) or Scorn Blows for Expert Heavy Armor (adds DR).

Because weapons and armor use a build-your-own system in conjunction to these rules, weapon and armor proficiencies are used to determine whether you can use common/rare/exotic armors and wield simple/martial/exotic weapons, and they also replace "boring" feats like Shield Specialization or Two-Weapon Defense.

Knowledge Proficiencies
These are by knowledge category: Outer Planes, Fey, Ancient History, Warfare, Commerce, etc. The general Expert perk is +5 to Knowledge checks in a sub-field like Outer Planes (Upper Planes) and the ability to take 10 on all such checks even under pressure and the general Master perk is +10 in a sub-sub-field like Outer Planes (Lower Planes [Gehenna]) and the ability to take 15 on those checks; specific perks include Art of War for Master Warfare (predict enemies' mass combat maneuvers) and Portal Hound for Expert Outer Planes (sense nearby portals and gain some idea of how to activate them).

Profession Proficiencies
These are by profession: Craftsman, Sailor, Barrister, Steward, Herbalist, etc. The general Expert perk is +5 to Profession checks in a sub-field like Craftsman (Blacksmithing) and the ability to roll Profession in place of other skill checks in a limited fashion (e.g. Expert Sailor could let you roll Profession instead of Climb to climb a ship's rigging, instead of Use Rope to tie up a ship, and so on) and the general Master perk is +10 in a sub-sub-field like Craftsman (Blacksmithing [Swords]) and a large reduction in the time required for relevant long-term tasks like crafting or researching things; specific perks include Common Language Families for Master Linguist (be able to speak and understand unknown languages at a basic level) and Pack Mule for Expert Laborer (increase encumbrance limits and reduce speed penalties for being encumbered).

Knowledge and profession proficiencies are used to replace Knowledge and Profession subskills in the core rules or to augment the skill tasks in the revised skill system posted earlier, and to replace "boring" feats like Skill Focus. The sub-field/sub-sub-field thing lets you have, say, a sage who's an expert on famous red dragons during the Third Suloise Dynasty or a blacksmith capable of reforging that broken legendary dwarven hammer without needing them to be ~12th level to let them reliably make DC 30 checks.

Region Proficiencies
These are by political region or natural region: Cormyr, The Sword Coast, North Underdark, The Sea of Swords, The Plane Of Fire, etc. Each rank gives you some knowledge of the area in all categories as a Knowledge proficiency one rank lower (so e.g. Basic Cormyr would give a Thayan the kind of common knowledge known by anyone who grew up in Cormyr, Expert Cormyr would give him Basic Politics, Basic Geography, Basic History, etc. knowledge strictly as it relates to Cormyr, and Master Cormyr would give him Expert Politics, Expert Geography, Expert History, etc. knowledge) and lets you speak some of the dominant languages of the region with varying levels of fluency (including things like local accents, handy for rogueish or diplomatic types).

Faction Proficiencies
These are by group: Cormyrean Nobility, Waterdeep Thieves Guild, Suel Arcanamachs, House Cannith, The Athar, etc. Each rank gives you some insider knowledge relevant to the faction in all categories as a Knowledge proficiency one rank lower, as Region proficiencies do, and gives you appropriate social benefits (and drawbacks) when your allegiance is known.

There are no specific perks for Region or Faction proficiencies, as they're very setting-specific and there are a bazillion regions and factions that would need to be filled out, but each rank gives a character a benefit of the player's choice from a short list of perks, including things like taking a regional feat after 1st level, meeting a race or affiliation PrC prereq despite not being that race or a member of that organization, gaining a big bonus to a certain Affiliation score, making a local contacts in a new area, and the like.

These proficiencies are used to address some rules quirks like "commoners can't make the Knowledge DC to identify a cow" or "this elf grew up in a forbidding forest but can't navigate it because the Survival DCs are too high," and to give mechanical weight to flavor/background things like an elf who grew up among dwarves or an orphan taken in by the Assassin's Guild so players and DMs don't have to have "But my character would know/have X!" conversations.


Each class and each race grants a fixed set weapon and armor proficiencies at the Basic level; (sub)races grant certain region proficiencies (often some fixed and some player-selectable from a certain) set, and (sub)classes grant fixed and selectable knowledge proficiencies. Characters can start with N profession and faction proficiencies of their choice (where N is higher if you start at higher levels). Multiple granted proficiencies stack to increase their rank, and each character gains bonus proficiency ranks like they gain bonus skill ranks from Int which may be spent to increase any proficiencies they like or to gain Basic proficiencies they weren't granted through their race or class.

For a very basic example, let's say elf grants Basic Swords and Basic Bows, fighter grants Basic proficiency with all weapon and armor proficiencies, wood elf lets you choose between Basic Dalelands and Basic High Forest, and fighter lets you choose between Basic History and Basic Warfare. A wood elf fighter would start with Expert Bows, Expert Swords, Basic High Forest, and Basic Warfare, and could pick any Profession or Faction proficiency desired; if the character has bonus proficiency ranks from Int, he could increase Expert Bows to Master Bows, increase Basic Warfare to Expert Warfare, or pick up, say, Basic Fey.

[ryu]

So let me get this straight. HOBGOBLINS, the ones who if memory serves are supposed to be the lawful version with the actual military discipline, are not only getting drunk but doing so in such a way that literally none of them are even facing in the general direction of the door? We're even going to stack negative modifiers for a thing which doesn't even exist in the rules just to give all PCs a free pass? Disgusting. For any given encounter there should be enough of an edge that if you don't respect the capabilities of your opponents or otherwise screw up tactically failure is a real option. Like, someone dies or gets seriously injured forcing a hasty retreat real. If I'm guaranteed to succeed and the enemy isn't at least in the same ball-park as me I'm not adventuring. I'm doing a pest control job.

[Nifft]

I posted a brief explanation of them in another thread recently, so I'll just quote myself on that (spoilered for space): Cool stuff, and good formatting idea.


So let me get this straight. HOBGOBLINS, the ones who if memory serves are supposed to be the lawful version with the actual military discipline, are not only getting drunk but doing so in such a way that literally none of them are even facing in the general direction of the door?

Hobgoblins get drunk precisely at 5:PM, no sooner and no later.

They are Lawful Evil to a fault.