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Sordahon
2019-07-27, 02:31 PM
Casters who can cast from all their spells known using mana with 1 mana for 1st tier spells and 9 mana for 9th tier spells, each spell slot would give max mana based on it's tier. So a lvl 20 wizard would get to cast all their spells as long as they have enough mana of their for example 185+bonus mana based on modifier. That would make spell casters overwhelmingly powerful and thus the question, how strong melee/ranged physical classes would need to be to not fall short.

GrayDeath
2019-07-27, 02:47 PM
Spell Point Systems already exist.

It doesnt make them much more powerful, just much more flexible.


As for the original Question: As the martials already are easily and completely negated by (at the very most a third of) the spells a Vancian Wizard has, making them even more pointless would not be a big change. ;)

False God
2019-07-27, 03:11 PM
Add a "Stamina" system that gives martial-types access to a point-based resource which lets them perform maneuvers. (and don't lock it down to near-uselessness like Ki)

Yes I'm talking about Elder Scrolls.

Power Attack, Cleave, etc...all immediately become "abilities" that martial-types can use assuming they have the Stamina points to do so. No feat-taking required. OA's burn Stamina points, take as many as you have points for. Bull Rush? Sunder? All point-based. No I don't have a system worked out for this already.

Fundamentally there will still be things martial-types can't do. Flying. Teleporting. Summoning stuff. Polymorphing. It's all be about beating the snot out of other people faster and more efficiently. But they'll still be missing out on the truly powerful magical stuff.

Power comes from versatility. The spell-point system makes casters more versatile. Therefore it makes them more powerful.

Short answer: Much. They'd need to be much stronger and much more versatile. See: Tome of Battle.

Anonymouswizard
2019-07-27, 04:23 PM
Honestly it's easier to pick a level for mundane characters and then scale magic-users to that than trying to scale mundanes to the magic-users.

Although, as a rough baseline, we can use The Fantasy Trip to work out how weak a wizard would have to be to achieve balance with a (relatively) realistic warrior. The answer is: incredibly weak and rather MAD. MAD to deal with the fact that a realistic warrior is also fairly MAD, and incredibly weak because while wizards can't touch Warrior damage without spending points of Strength they can also do things like summon creatures, put up walls, and bypass some noncombat challenges.

At which point we have run into the actual problem: magic gives options, and generally a much wider variety than mundane characters can really hope to achieve. Even games where wizards can't deal direct damage have to deal with the fact that once they've got half the spell list they can probably pull out five ways to solve any problem. A 3.5 Fighter could have +100 to attack and 4d12+67 damage and they still wouldn't be able to Plane Shift, or Wish, or Fly, or employ Fabricate, or...

ExLibrisMortis
2019-07-27, 05:23 PM
All versions of magic are some "extra" power--they allow people do things they couldn't do in real life, without taking away any of the things you could already do (if there are any that don't, I haven't heard of them, but I'm no scholar on the topic). Consequently, in many cases, it doesn't make sense for a completely non-magical character to be more powerful than a character whose abilities are augmented by magic. D&D 3.5, of course, heavily favours magic--"completely incompetent" augmented by magic often beats "totally competent" without magic--but even in low-magic settings, magic is still an advantage, and it's better to have it than not (see, for example, the Mistborn books, specifically the various mistings).

In other words, to achieve balance (which I think you're asking about), balance the amount of magic (i.e. extra stuff you can do) between classes. Since 3.5 base classes start with almost no extra stuff (it's pretty much all "have bigger numbers to use against other mundanes' bigger numbers"), you've got a ways to go :smalltongue:.

OldTrees1
2019-07-27, 05:58 PM
Here is a good thought exercise:

Imagine a non casting character that is able to do 7 things per turn and each of those is as powerful as a 7th level spell and is as flexible as the entire list of 7th level spells. All without the character expending any resources.

If you can imagine that, then you can solve the non-caster imagination problem. If you require resources to be expended, then it will look like casting to some.

Now do it again BUT
1) You are allowed to require the character to expend resources
2) You cannot use any magical abilities

If you can imagine that, then you can solve the non-magic imagination problem. Be careful about Extraordinary abilities. While they are essential to solving this, it will require good communication to prevent them being seen as MAGIC.

Now do it again but solve for problems at the same time.

Basically, if you can imagine an Epic level character under your thematic restrictions, then you can design the mechanics for a High level character that also satisfies those thematic restrictions.

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

So the limit of my imagination is:
I can imagine the high level character acting many times on their turn and a few turns per round. I can imagine "attacks" becoming flexible enough that it boils down to "Name what you want to do with your limbs / weapon". For example the strong barbarian might hit a boulder as a means of fast travel. Or use it like artillery. Or use it to choke a dragon. Or use it to block a spell / attack. Or... Or... [...] In addition to "attacks", I see them as having many other passive & at will abilities other than "attacks".

Komatik
2019-07-28, 02:32 AM
There's also the issue that many non-magical classes are just oddly weak. Like, if you look at Fighters' flavour text and then their skill list, they actually straight up fail at living up to the fantasy the class is meant to sell even within the basic systems of the game, let alone special mechanics. Hello, I'm a guard. Spot, Search, Sense Motive? You wish. It's like Druids didn't have Survival or Knowledge(nature). Many non-magical book protagonists are defined in part by their resourcefulness, and Fighter is a class built to deny you the ability to be resourceful. It's like they were super afraid of stepping on the Rogue's toes.

A huge part of the reason the Tome of Battle classes for example are loved so much is not because of raw power - early on and especially at lower-op tables, they're really strong because their baseline power level is quite high, but they like other classes peter out as the levels stack up - but because they give options. Wider skill lists that sell the classes' themes, ability to move and still do strong things in combat rather than being a full attack bot, ability to apply conditions to enemies and just generally to do interesting things and stuff that sells the fantasy like no-selling some sorcerer's manipulation spell through sheer willpower, something more central to the fantasy than doing so much damage you basically have a burrow speed through adamantite. Conan would be proud.

comk59
2019-07-28, 07:42 AM
I personally think that DnD wizards are a terrible balancing point, but that's just me. If you want balance all the way to 20th level, you're going to need to do some heavy rebuilding to get non-magical classes anywhere close to their level.
The two most common ways I've seen this are by either making the non-magical classes appear magical (I.E. letting epic-level warriors perform epic-level feats that would make Cú Chulainn blush) or make them expressly anti-magical (I.E. Barbarian smashing apart a forcecage and shoving aside a wall of force, a Fighter deflecting spells and cleaving wards, a Rogue disabling contingencies and bypassing arcane locks).

If you want no-mag's to participate in high-level DnD, they NEED a way to influence the outcome of the magical chicanery that happens at that level. Whether it's through legendary feats of courage and strength, or by being able to straight up say "no" to enemy spellcasters. Or a third thing that I probably haven't thought of.

Jakinbandw
2019-07-28, 12:59 PM
Imagine a non casting character that is able to do 7 things per turn and each of those is as powerful as a 7th level spell and is as flexible as the entire list of 7th level spells. All without the character expending any resources.


Quick question: Why 7 actions per round? Or am I misunderstanding something?


The two most common ways I've seen this are by either making the non-magical classes appear magical (I.E. letting epic-level warriors perform epic-level feats that would make Cú Chulainn blush) or make them expressly anti-magical (I.E. Barbarian smashing apart a forcecage and shoving aside a wall of force, a Fighter deflecting spells and cleaving wards, a Rogue disabling contingencies and bypassing arcane locks).

If you want no-mag's to participate in high-level DnD, they NEED a way to influence the outcome of the magical chicanery that happens at that level. Whether it's through legendary feats of courage and strength, or by being able to straight up say "no" to enemy spellcasters. Or a third thing that I probably haven't thought of.

I always thought there might be room for a non-magical minion class that just has entire nations working for them or something. For example, if a guy had the entire backing of the plane of fire behind him, he'd probably be a force to be reckoned with. (Everything changed when the Fire Plane attacked!)

Also, while a few people don't like it, there is the option of allowing non-magical classes to retcon in actions that they took in the past to some interesting effects. "Oh, we're fighting a demon? Well I figured a situation like this might happen, so I spent some time a while ago and looked up this demons true name so I could control it if we ran into it."

Those are the other options I've thought of anyway.

Max_Killjoy
2019-07-28, 02:28 PM
I personally think that DnD wizards are a terrible balancing point, but that's just me. If you want balance all the way to 20th level, you're going to need to do some heavy rebuilding to get non-magical classes anywhere close to their level.
The two most common ways I've seen this are by either making the non-magical classes appear magical (I.E. letting epic-level warriors perform epic-level feats that would make Cú Chulainn blush) or make them expressly anti-magical (I.E. Barbarian smashing apart a forcecage and shoving aside a wall of force, a Fighter deflecting spells and cleaving wards, a Rogue disabling contingencies and bypassing arcane locks).

If you want no-mag's to participate in high-level DnD, they NEED a way to influence the outcome of the magical chicanery that happens at that level. Whether it's through legendary feats of courage and strength, or by being able to straight up say "no" to enemy spellcasters. Or a third thing that I probably haven't thought of.

Yeah, the spellcasters in D&D quickly hit a level of fantastic that's impossible to balance with not!fantastic, and you either have to accept the imbalance, let non-spellcasters be blatantly fantastic, or change where the line is for your setting (between not!fantastic and fantastic).

In one of my settings, I reduced what magic can do. In the other, I established that some characters are just blantantly fantastic.

King of Nowhere
2019-07-28, 02:43 PM
if we are talking about comparison with stories (I'm thinking for example the wheel of time saga) then a sort of balance is not achieved in making warriors more powerful but in making casters more vulnerable, so that they still need protection against assassination. this would mean removing a lot of the more versatile defensive spells, first and foremost contingency and almost all divinations (I'm counting "being able to predict being attacked in advance" as a defensive spell).

and casters can still do a huge lot of stuff. It's not really balance, but martials are useful to some extent.

Great Dragon
2019-07-28, 03:17 PM
Yes, the Town Guard not having at least Perception (both spot and listen for 3x) and Insight as skills didn't make much sense to me.

Using Points for Powers seems too much like 3x Psionics.
Giving ‘casters’ more options, and Lots more for everyone to keep track of.
The most unbalancing thing there was sacrificing lower level points for extra higher level powers.


****
IMO 5e is a little more "balanced" than 3.5.

Casters have Less Slots to use, but able to choose from any available spell of that level.
Upcasting costs a higher level choice. (and does not add any extra higher level spells, see Psionics above.)

Concentration required for more spells. Which Stopped "Super Untouchable" combinations.


*********
For spells: First, ditch Wish.
That's only available from Powerful beings:
Noble Genies, Arch-Devils/Dukes, Balor/Demon Lords, Archfey, and maybe Solars.
(Sure, most Deities can do it, but their 'Price' is usually higher.)
And no sympathy for those Players unhappy with the creative ways a DM 'screws the Wish up' !!!

If you want to allow Wizards to cast Cleric/Druid spells of 7th level or less with a 9th level spell slot, put in the 9th level Any Spell that the 3x D&D Magic Domain had.

Personally, I’d also switch Plane Shift and Astral Projection.

Have Miracle work like Wish normally does (without the 33% never cast again) in that the caster must be specific about what is asked for, and is still limited to the Portfolio and Domains of their Deity.

*****
Adding Tome of Battle for non-caster types?
Without taking actual levels in the respective Classes?

Maybe.
I’d really have to have a Playtesting Group to figure this out for 5e.
I did like the look of these, but sadly never had any players for them.

*****
Perhaps some 3e/5e combination might work?
You're going to have to find some Playtesters to really work the kinks out.

*****
For me running a 3x variant game:
I’d keep the 5e skill style, instead of tracking each Skill point spent per level.
Racial, Background (2 skills), and then what is given for the base 5e Class
(maybe just extra Languages for Int.)

Oh, and just keeping in mind that Dis/Advantage is a five point modifier.

*****
While I liked 3x for more Class Options (and easier to balance Monsters for ECL/CR calculations), 5e just flows better for actual play for me.
(The 20th level Fighter getting up to Eight attacks at +11 to hit each - without magic, plus Subclass options - really helps “balance” this class more.)

Flexible DMs can help with the non-combat stuff for martials.

*****
With fewer 3x D&D (non-Pathfinder) dedicated players and lots more 5e players, I have been converting some of the 3x Classes (some better balanced than others - Factotum = ARG!!) into 5e, most as Subclasses.

Anonymouswizard
2019-07-28, 03:40 PM
QI always thought there might be room for a non-magical minion class that just has entire nations working for them or something. For example, if a guy had the entire backing of the plane of fire behind him, he'd probably be a force to be reckoned with. (Everything changed when the Fire Plane attacked!)

This is what annoyed me about the Marshal/Warlord. It would have been a great opportunity to introduce 'has a bunch of followers' in the game without being unbalanced, give the player a limited amount of control over a large group of people, and a relatively small 'personal guard' to keep the 'I rush my 3872 conscripts at the dragon' problem to a minimum.


Yeah, the spellcasters in D&D quickly hit a level of fantastic that's impossible to balance with not!fantastic, and you either have to accept the imbalance, let non-spellcasters be blatantly fantastic, or change where the line is for your setting (between not!fantastic and fantastic).

One thing almost no edition of D&D has done is point out that past roughly level 12 your characters are just beyond the scale of Mythic Mortals, especially the spellcasters. At that point I struggle to think pre-D&D stories which have martials at that power level, and literally can't think of any for magic users.


In one of my settings, I reduced what magic can do. In the other, I established that some characters are just blantantly fantastic.

I've been a big proponent of establishing hard caps on magic and magic use for the past few years, ever since I played an Authentic Thaumaturge in Unknown Armies and had a lot more fun than with any of my D&D wizards, especially at higher levels.

I've seen some people claiming that wizards don't feel magical unless they're always casting spells, and I've come to think 'what's the problem with that?' If I wanted a character who used magic all the time I'd play a demon or a Djinni. If I'm a wizard I probably want my wise person's knowledge to count as much as their spellcasting.

Kaptin Keen
2019-07-28, 04:05 PM
I see no reason why non-vancian magic would require 'mundane' classes to be stronger.

Say magic users cast from HP, for instance: 1hp x spell level, for instance. Or, hey, call it 2hp x spell level. Not only would it be cool, and give magic users (generally the dull, grey, boring class of the game) some much needed flavor and flair - it would also serve as a wonderful limiting tool, without the need for Vance.

Anonymouswizard
2019-07-28, 04:23 PM
I see no reason why non-vancian magic would require 'mundane' classes to be stronger.

Say magic users cast from HP, for instance: 1hp x spell level, for instance. Or, hey, call it 2hp x spell level. Not only would it be cool, and give magic users (generally the dull, grey, boring class of the game) some much needed flavor and flair - it would also serve as a wonderful limiting tool, without the need for Vance.

Take a look at The Fantasy Trip. Both damage and spellcasting reduces a character's Strength (kind of, it's not clear if it affects rolls against it, and it definitely doesn't impact weapon use). Because stats are roughly in the 8-12 range for starting characters and strong spells can take four points of Strength to cast it means that wizards will either lag behind a warrior-build in damage terms or only be able to cast a couple of spells before needing to rest (15 minutes per point of Strength regained). In addition damage recovers relatively slowly and healing (in the corebook at least) is rather limited, giving wizards another reason to avoid melee.

Anyway, the problem isn't Vancian Magic, it's the power levels of wizards. Very few games allow you to reach the power levels of a 20th level D&D wizard, most of the ones that I know of are superhero games.

Lots of games also have relatively balanced magic and mundane characters, generally through magic having severe limits, problematic drawbacks, or both. Limitations generally come from time requirements, strictly limited mana pools, slow mana recharge rates, enforced specialisation, ways to shut down a character's magic, or any combination of the above. Drawbacks are things unrelated to the use of magic itself, but things that still come alongside it, such as reduced physical abilities, problems functioning in society, a duty to whatever power grants you magic, and so on.

Of course, I have seen games with D&D power levels, but even if their warriors are suplexing dragons supernatural characters still tend to have drawbacks due to being able to do things warriors cannot do.

Arbane
2019-07-28, 08:48 PM
At which point we have run into the actual problem: magic gives options, and generally a much wider variety than mundane characters can really hope to achieve.

You might want to take a look at the modern-day fantasy game Unknown Armies, where being a non-magician grants amazing powers like 'being a functional human being' and 'holding down a day job'.


Anyway, the problem isn't Vancian Magic, it's the power levels of wizards. Very few games allow you to reach the power levels of a 20th level D&D wizard, most of the ones that I know of are superhero games.

Yup. Good luck coming up with anything a 20th level D&D Fighter can do that's as potentially story-wrecking as a 6th-level spell slot, let alone a 9th.

Exalted springs to mind, but all the people who matter are using magic. While sorcery is 'plot device'-level powerful in that game, it's also slow, obvious, and massively tiring - and in older editions, getting hit in mid-spell could make you explode.

Max_Killjoy
2019-07-28, 09:11 PM
One thing almost no edition of D&D has done is point out that past roughly level 12 your characters are just beyond the scale of Mythic Mortals, especially the spellcasters. At that point I struggle to think pre-D&D stories which have martials at that power level, and literally can't think of any for magic users.


I've been a big proponent of establishing hard caps on magic and magic use for the past few years, ever since I played an Authentic Thaumaturge in Unknown Armies and had a lot more fun than with any of my D&D wizards, especially at higher levels.

I've seen some people claiming that wizards don't feel magical unless they're always casting spells, and I've come to think 'what's the problem with that?' If I wanted a character who used magic all the time I'd play a demon or a Djinni. If I'm a wizard I probably want my wise person's knowledge to count as much as their spellcasting.


Sadly, we've seen character knowledge and sagacity poo-pooed as evidently meaningless in some recent threads, so I don't think that the higher likelihood of the wizard, or even the druid or warlock, also being the most educated character in the group, crosses some people's minds (never mind that in 5e, this is for some reason likely to be the entertainer or the burgler)... plus knowledge and sagacity aren't always directly weaponizeable in the form of "I can optimize this" rules, so again for some players they just don't count.

Mechalich
2019-07-28, 10:53 PM
Of course, I have seen games with D&D power levels, but even if their warriors are suplexing dragons supernatural characters still tend to have drawbacks due to being able to do things warriors cannot do.

I think there's also an aspect of 'warrior-type' powers like super strength gradually becoming kind of inherently ridiculous at really high levels of power. The ability to punch a planet and cause it to break in half is absurd enough that it pretty much has to be played at least partly for laughs - and settings where this is possible like Dragonball or One Punch Man are very much in the 'for laughs' camp. Meanwhile a necromancer casting a spell to drain the life of everyone on a planet so they can fuel their eternal existence is somehow much less comical, and when Darth Vitiate does this in SWTOR it plays out as a moment of tragic cosmic horror. Exactly why this is so if unclear, I suspect scale and the difficult of the human mind to grapple with 'unseen' forces play a significant role, but regardless, it always serves to work out this way. Ultimately there are just some things that work just fine when the justification is 'mystic mumbo-jumbo' but that break suspension of disbelief when the justification is 'Hulk smash!' even though both are utilizing equal amounts of BS.

Anonymouswizard
2019-07-29, 09:15 AM
You might want to take a look at the modern-day fantasy game Unknown Armies, where being a non-magician grants amazing powers like 'being a functional human being' and 'holding down a day job'.

Got it, running it. Although my groups tend to let Adepts hold down a day job if it's related to their school directly (going by the canonical examples of Camerturges being wedding photogaphers and the like), the fact that Adepthood grants minuses to social interaction, having long term goals outside of a narrow field, and being willing to do stupid things for a major charge is one of the reasons I like it.

In fact Unknown Armies is exactly what I was thinking of when I mentioned drawbacks. Adepts are crazy and obsessed, and this can cause major problems for the character (my last UA game had several illegal acts performed for quick charges), while Avatars have to actually remain functional human beings in order to keep their powers. Although magick is also rather weak until you hit the top levels, and Avatars have to deal with having an extremely limited (if usually useful) set of powers.

And now I want to play an Unsung Champion, or a Cinemancer. Why can't the people I know ever run UA, why is it alway D&D?


Exalted springs to mind, but all the people who matter are using magic. While sorcery is 'plot device'-level powerful in that game, it's also slow, obvious, and massively tiring - and in older editions, getting hit in mid-spell could make you explode.

Yeah, Exalted and Anima: Beyond Fantasy were the ones I was thinking of, both with mages having to deal with casting times and, in the case of Anima, cripplingly low mana pools.


Sadly, we've seen character knowledge and sagacity poo-pooed as evidently meaningless in some recent threads, so I don't think that the higher likelihood of the wizard, or even the druid or warlock, also being the most educated character in the group, crosses some people's minds (never mind that in 5e, this is for some reason likely to be the entertainer or the burgler)... plus knowledge and sagacity aren't always directly weaponizeable in the form of "I can optimize this" rules, so again for some players they just don't count.

It annoys me, because I've been in a lot of games where IQ-based skills were useful (okay, they were mainly GURPS-based games, but still). To the point where being a spellcaster was questionably useful because you couldn't put skill points towards those powerful knowledge and social skills.

Although admittedly skill levels were also used as a limit to stop us just engineering our way out of trouble (four engineers and a scientist in settings with modern technology if 'talk at it' didn't work our second plan generally involved some form of machine). High character knowledge meant a lot with an explicit player/character seperation rule.

But anyway, having a high INT should impact gameplay for people other than the wizard. But apparently the barbarian having an 8 INT doesn't stop him from spewing nuclear physics, even if his player can't lift 150lbs without losing mobility.

Kaptin Keen
2019-07-30, 05:50 AM
Take a look at The Fantasy Trip. Both damage and spellcasting reduces a character's Strength (kind of, it's not clear if it affects rolls against it, and it definitely doesn't impact weapon use). Because stats are roughly in the 8-12 range for starting characters and strong spells can take four points of Strength to cast it means that wizards will either lag behind a warrior-build in damage terms or only be able to cast a couple of spells before needing to rest (15 minutes per point of Strength regained). In addition damage recovers relatively slowly and healing (in the corebook at least) is rather limited, giving wizards another reason to avoid melee.

Anyway, the problem isn't Vancian Magic, it's the power levels of wizards. Very few games allow you to reach the power levels of a 20th level D&D wizard, most of the ones that I know of are superhero games.

Lots of games also have relatively balanced magic and mundane characters, generally through magic having severe limits, problematic drawbacks, or both. Limitations generally come from time requirements, strictly limited mana pools, slow mana recharge rates, enforced specialisation, ways to shut down a character's magic, or any combination of the above. Drawbacks are things unrelated to the use of magic itself, but things that still come alongside it, such as reduced physical abilities, problems functioning in society, a duty to whatever power grants you magic, and so on.

Of course, I have seen games with D&D power levels, but even if their warriors are suplexing dragons supernatural characters still tend to have drawbacks due to being able to do things warriors cannot do.

I've always felt the real problem is this: A 'warrior' is basically able to cut a 'wizard' in twain without breaking a sweat. Only he never get's to do that, because the caster class will have disabled the 'warrior' class long before that happens. I've seen pvp threads where massive damage melee types had a chance if they could win initiative, and somehow deliver lethal damage, react to a contingency, and deliver lethal damage again. Or something along those lines.

The real solution is to have an actual stone/scissor/paper solution. Personally, I'd make 'warriors' much, much better at resisting magic - better saves, and ways to break disables like Hold Person.

My original post was to point out that Vancian magic isn't what makes 'wizards' strong. I'd say ... the game (DnD, that is) has been designed to avoid long chains of rolls and counter rolls, and the most basic result of that is that if you fail a save vs a caster, you're out of the fight. And since casters can buff themselves to the eyeballs before a fight, generally speaking you always lose initiative - or fail your save - and you lose.

Willie the Duck
2019-07-30, 09:09 AM
If you want no-mag's to participate in high-level DnD, they NEED a way to influence the outcome of the magical chicanery that happens at that level. Whether it's through legendary feats of courage and strength, or by being able to straight up say "no" to enemy spellcasters. Or a third thing that I probably haven't thought of.

Well, one third thing is the treasure table. Somewhere along the way gamers (or at least forum-goers) decided that 'but fighters can use magic swords, which often have as much power as wizards' was not an acceptable answer to the fighter-mu split, but there's no specific reason it can't be. Of course, that depends on whether you are trying to balance magic with non-magic (which I think is genuinely futile, as 'gets to break the rules' is going to almost inherently be more powerful than 'has to work within the rules'), or just casters with non-casters (which is doable, and plenty of systems have).


There's also the issue that many non-magical classes are just oddly weak. Like, if you look at Fighters' flavour text and then their skill list, they actually straight up fail at living up to the fantasy the class is meant to sell even within the basic systems of the game, let alone special mechanics.

Agreed. There are plenty of games (most of the point-buy) and literature (Conan, as an example) where spellcasting is sufficiently burdensome, and mortal, non-magical excellence sufficiently useful that casters and non-casters can exist together on a fairly equal-opportunity level.


if we are talking about comparison with stories (I'm thinking for example the wheel of time saga) then a sort of balance is not achieved in making warriors more powerful but in making casters more vulnerable

Early D&D used this as a primary balance. Magic users were supremely vulnerable. Sure you could have two rows of 3 henchmen block up the convenient 10' wide corridors of the dungeon, but once you got outside to do some hexcrawling (or playstyle shifted away from being squad leader), it was phenomenally hard to keep your magic user from being chomped. So the answer to 'is a high level caster more powerful than a high level fighter?' was, 'undoubtedly, but by the time you got a caster to that level (you do start over at level 1 every time you die, right? Riiiight?), the guy who likes playing fighters has gotten three of them up to retirement level, and had a heck of a lot of fun doing so.' And that was a serious problem -- playing a magic user with all the constraints (that existed to make them balanced with everyone else) turned on was often seen as systematically unfun. That's the why for it moving away from that model in subsequent editions, but they never really constrained the power at the same rate as they eliminated constraints.
*one of many, another being not being able to choose what spells you got, and a tasty spell was as likely to come along for you as the fancy sword was for the fighter



With fewer 3x D&D (non-Pathfinder) dedicated players and lots more 5e players, I have been converting some of the 3x Classes (some better balanced than others - Factotum = ARG!!) into 5e, most as Subclasses.

Can you expand upon this? What's the problem with Factotums? They are one of my favorite late-3e classes (for playing in the tier 3-4 power balance that they clearly were trying to normalize at that point). What problems are you having?

Great Dragon
2019-07-30, 01:26 PM
<snip> And that was a serious problem -- playing a magic user with all the constraints (that existed to make them balanced with everyone else) turned on was often seen as systematically unfun. That's the why for it moving away from that model in subsequent editions, but they never really constrained the power at the same rate as they eliminated constraints.

IDK, 5e seems a lot more "Balanced" than all the other versions of D&D.

As I mentioned somewhere: Fewer Spell Slots per Spell Level, plus breaking up Known Spells between all Spell Levels (or a set value for maximum): plus Concentration on a lot of really useful/powerful spells.

Still want to add a little more OSR?
All spell components are consumed, and the DM determines what spells can be cast with a Focus.
Mostly an Accounting Tax, but not having the correct component for the spell you want when you need it is a great drawback, for 'balencing'.


****
I rarely have very many problems with Casters in my games, regardless of System/Edition.

First, foes aren't stupid.
Even basic Animals show amazing adaptability IRL.
Good Wis means that they learn fast, after a mistake is made. Int 6+ means maybe before the mistake is even made.

Next, sentient Races (usually Humanoid, but exceptions do exist) can just as easily be Classed as the PCs. (Figuring out 5e CR for some of these sometimes frustrates me)
(both Volo's and Mord's have some of these, now)

Finally, put more Spellcasters and magic-using foes in Encountered Groups.
(For PC groups without any spellcasters, maybe cut them a break, and either remove these foes, or at least lower the Caster level of them. A challenge is quite fine, but overwhelming firepower is just - to me - a killjoy.)

Also, I tend to use more items with non-renewing Charges.
Especially Wands and Staves.
For those items that do recharge daily, increase the Rarity by one level.
Remember that Legendary Items are not casual treasure, and are not for sale.

Note: I also predetermine Treasure (especially magical) and have smart foes use these against the PCs.
Earn that +2 flaming sword!
Or Wand of Fireballs (8d6 damage, DC 15) with 20 charges!!
Especially when used against you! Much shenanigans!


*one of many, another being not being able to choose what spells you got, and a tasty spell was as likely to come along for you as the fancy sword was for the fighter

Yep, those scrolls (spellbooks were always in the Rare+ category) were indeed randomly determined.


Well, one third thing is the treasure table. Somewhere along the way gamers (or at least forum-goers) decided that 'but fighters can use magic swords, which often have as much power as wizards' was not an acceptable answer to the fighter-mu split, but there's no specific reason it can't be. Of course, that depends on whether you are trying to balance magic with non-magic (which I think is genuinely futile, as 'gets to break the rules' is going to almost inherently be more powerful than 'has to work within the rules'), or just casters with non-casters (which is doable, and plenty of systems have).

Lots of those anti-mage players didn't like magical weapons (or other items) because they were made by some Caster, which made them think that this caused said casters to have more power over their characters, or get additional bonuses. See Crafters, below.


<snip> (you do start over at level 1 every time you die, right? Riiiight?)

So, anyone got your back with a (pre)Paid-For Rez type spell (scroll)?

If not: While I won't make you start over at 1st level, I might say that the replacement PC is one level less than the Party. (Heh)

Frankly, I find Magic Item Creation Casters incredibly boring.
(Non-magic, too. I came to play a tRPG, not a version of Minecraft!!)

Sure, the quick one-time-use useful item (Common, or Uncommon) - or a +1 weapon that lasts maybe a month - for maybe a week of downtime and some gold spent, and a roll on the random “Mishaps” chart in XgE. Done.

But, seriously, anything magical that either lasts longer - or is more potent - really takes too long; and an Adventuring Caster is not going to like sitting on their tush for really Long Periods of Time making magical stuff while everyone else is out having fun (and gaining Levels and lots more Loot) without them.

Really, the only time that you would want to play a Crafter, is in a Low Magic World.
In which case - Accept the loss of EXP and GP, and play another PC so your not sitting there bored during the game.


Can you expand upon this? What's the problem with Factotums? They are one of my favorite late-3e classes (for playing in the tier 3-4 power balance that they clearly were trying to normalize at that point). What problems are you having?

Sadly, when I tried doing this Class, like at least two other members decided to make their own versions, and mine simply got ignored.

Now, no one ever tried to play this Class in any of my 3x gaming days.

And in fact, I was unaware of its existence until asked by one of my 5e players.

Looking it up, and reading it over; this class seemed to out-do all the Jack of All Trades Skill Monkeys. Literally able to use Rogue Skills and Divine Powers plus Arcane spell-like abilities, and in a way that the Bard (even in 5e) couldn't really match.

My attempt was Here (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?581351-Converting-3-5-Factotum-to-5e)

It was basically it's own Class - with two Subclasses, gaining and casting spells like a Warlock.

The player that was testing that, said that this just didn't feel like the "Versatile" character to him.

Said he should be able to change spells daily, like a Wizard, to demonstrate that versatility.
(On top of all the other 'versatile' stuff I had for Factotum)

So I basically had to rewrite it, as a Wizard-type Half Caster, with half level + Int in Spells Known up to 5th level, and that still gets Spell Secrets like a Warlock for spells over 5th; Taking away Bard Spell choices (too many healing options) and also not allowing 9th level spells. Secrets unlocks some Bard spells, but no Cleric-specific spells.
Mostly Healing, Restoration, Resurrection, and similar.

One thing he might not have realized (yet) is that the Factotum starts out with only 2 + Int Spells known, and while they do gain Slots for higher Level spells, they are required to find these on their own.
This means that his spellbook has very few spells to choose from.

We haven't returned to the game where this Class was being tested (they wanted to make Characters to take on Xanathar, so we're doing that for a bit - and now doing my Star Wars (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?594051-Star-Wars-Races) game towards the end of each Month, with one other GM running another tRPG on the first week of each Month) so not sure how soon playtesting will resume.

If anyone is interested in trying to help me figure out how to finish this idea, please let me know - and I'll (legally) Necro the thread. I'd have to find where I made the notes on the changes, again.

Thanks for responding to me, Willie the Duck !

OMG! Took over a dozen Edits to get correct

Ignimortis
2019-07-30, 10:15 PM
IDK, 5e seems a lot more "Balanced" than all the other versions of D&D.

As I mentioned somewhere: Fewer Spell Slots per Spell Level, plus breaking up Known Spells between all Spell Levels (or a set value for maximum): plus Concentration on a lot of really useful/powerful spells.

Still want to add a little more OSR?
All spell components are consumed, and the DM determines what spells can be cast with a Focus.
Mostly an Accounting Tax, but not having the correct component for the spell you want when you need it is a great drawback, for 'balencing'.


I find that 5e balanced the casters in the worst of two possible ways, causing them to be less fun, but not exactly balanced still.

Wizard as a class is cancerous to the game. No game with magic should have a type of mage who gets access to 80% of magic in the game while progressing at the same rate as other major spellcasters.

It would be much more fun to have spellcasters actually cast a lot of spells, maybe twice as much, but be limited to very specific areas of expertise. You want to be a fireball mage? Great, you get Evocation and Abjuration, you're a battlemage or a warmage or w/e. Necromancers only get Conjuring and Necromancy. Enchanters only get Illusion and Enchantment, ot Enchantment and Transmutation. Diviners get the rest of whatever isn't taken.

Same with Clerics, Druids - they need significantly lesser spell lists derived from their gods, instead of every cleric having access to all cleric spells (which is still like 50%) and then some other ones depending on gods.

Those three classes still embody the problems of D&D casters, which is "I can do everything", even if 5e nerfed that "everything" to being "not always better than what nonmages can do, but usually better still" instead of 3.5'e "why would I need a Fighter anyway".

OldTrees1
2019-07-30, 11:45 PM
Quick question: Why 7 actions per round? Or am I misunderstanding something?

I chose 7 because that is more than they start with. Higher level spells tend to do more things per action than lower level spells. So it helps to imagine higher level non-casters as getting more actions per turn. Break each artificial barrier until you find a solution.

Great Dragon
2019-07-31, 02:38 AM
Hi OldTrees1 !!!

I like a good Debate.
Helps me see and understand other views, as well as share mine.

@Ignimortis
Um…. Wow.

I want to check to make sure I'm getting the picture your setting up.

Wizard spells in book for 5e:
Knows maximum of 5 Cantrips;
4d10 max damage at +11 to hit or DC 19 save.

(01) 6 first Level spells
(02) +2 first level spells = 8 first Level spells
(03) 2 second Level spells
(04) +2 second Lv spells
(05) 2 third Level spells
(06) +2 third Level spells
(07) 2 fourth Level spells
(08) +2 fourth Level spells
(09) 2 fifth Level spells
(10) +2 fifth Level spells
(11) 2 sixth Level spells
(12) +2 sixth Level spells
(13) 2 seventh Level spells
(14) +2 seventh Level spells
(15) 2 eighth Level spells
(16) +2 eighth Level spells
(17) 2 ninth Level spells
(18) +2 ninth Level spells
(19) +2 any Level spells
(20) +2 any Level spells

So, at 20th rank Wizard, this break down to 8 spells of first Tier and Four spells per spell Tier (Level), plus 4 extra spells (any Tier) in their Spellbook. Costing 2,000+ gold.

Unless the DM is nice and gives Intelligence modifier to Spellbook per tier, in found spells:
9 spells per tier, with 9 random spells.
Like at least a 10,000 gold investment.


5e - All full casters have this Max slots per day:
Cantrips/ 4 first/ 3 second/ 3 third/ 3 fourth
3 fifth/ 2 sixth/ 2 seventh/ 1 eighth/ 1 ninth.

The Wizard/Cleric/Druid then picks what they know for that day. So 20+5 = 25.
Ok, assuming an even-split, that's 2 spells per spell tier with 7 random tier spells known daily.

The 20th Rank Wizard can add up to 10 tiers of spells per day, on a short rest. So, one extra 6th and 1 extra 4th - or anything of that value.

Now, that's Top Tier, and each Tier is less powerful than what's listed here.
I can work on my tablet Friday to figure out per Game Tier, and edit that in….


***
What you suggested seems:

Like maybe only three spells known per spell level, but usable up to 5-10 times a day for spell levels 1-5th, spells of 6th & 7th usable 3 times a day, and 8th & 9th still 1x daily?

But, what I'm thinking in my head is:
So, effectively, in order to be more "balanced" with Martial classes; there should not be any full caster classes.

So, basically, ditch the Wizard, and every Mage is a Sorcerer, Specialized in only two schools of magic? And go back to 3x D&D's level-based damage caps, especially for AoE: 1d6/Lv with 10d6 (energy type) damage Maximum at 10th Rank, and use Greater version (6th tier) to get 20d6 maximum, ever. Or, for a little 5e-ism "2d6 per spell level slot used".

Mages don't get Radiant damage and only "Necromancers" get (limited) Necrotic.

Warlock would be the closest thing to a Wizard, but (most likely) just as restricted to what spells are accessible by Patron? Smaller "general Warlock spell" pool?

Hyper-focused Clerics even more dependant on playing "Deity May I?". Also, Smaller "general Cleric spell" pool?

Druids limited to being able to only cast spells within their Favored Terrain? Or at "half power" outside that Region?
*********************

Am I anywhere near what you had in mind?

*********************
What I'm thinking is that it's not the spell slots that upset people, as always - it's the spells themselves.

People playing Mundane Martials don't like the fact that Casters can do about the same amount of damage they do to a single foe, but to a Group of foes. Never mind that successful Saves can reduce that even more, plus having damage type Resistant and even Immune Monsters.

Also, without those AoEs - the party would quickly be overwhelmed and end in a TPK.

do these people hate using Magical Items to grant them access to the things they are complaining about? Fly, Invisibility, etc?

Heck, there are now lots more Half-caster Subclasses available to Martials.
Even the Barbarian has a couple Subclasses with some really cool magical Abilities, if used correctly.

Ok, sure, maybe being able to Climb the 50 foot Wall at 20th Rank, without Spider Climb, should be allowed. But not freely moving about on the ceiling.

If they really want real-life combat simulations, especially without Magic - they should just play World War 1 & 2 and similar Military Wargames or maybe Cyberpunk - or Spymaster (etc), instead of Fantasy/D&D.

Another thing that is usually overlooked during those "Martial vs Mage" debates, is that in each situation, the Player must choose if they need to spend a limited resource on 'insta-solving' it.

Because: Once out of Spell Slots, all Mages are very much screwed. Clerics just don't rely on magical armor to be protected, and can still hit as good as a Martial. Bards have a few things that can be done, once out of Slots, but very limited.

Ignimortis
2019-07-31, 03:09 AM
But, what I'm thinking in my head is:
So, effectively, in order to be more "balanced" with Martial classes; there should not be any full caster classes.

So, basically, ditch the Wizard, and every Mage is a Sorcerer, Specialized in only two schools of magic? And go back to 3x D&D's level-based damage caps, especially for AoE: 1d6/Lv with 10d6 (energy type) damage Maximum at 10th Rank, and use Greater version (6th tier) to get 20d6 maximum, ever. Or, for a little 5e-ism "2d6 per spell level slot used".

Mages don't get Radiant damage and only "Necromancers" get (limited) Necrotic.

Warlock would be the closest thing to a Wizard, but (most likely) just as restricted to what spells are accessible by Patron? Smaller "general Warlock spell" pool?

Hyper-focused Clerics even more dependant on playing "Deity May I?". Also, Smaller "general Cleric spell" pool?

Druids limited to being able to only cast spells within their Favored Terrain? Or at "half power" outside that Region?
*********************

Am I anywhere near what you had in mind?


Somewhat close, yes. If all casters were sorcerers with at best 20 spells known or so, that's be fine enough. Damage spells are generally fine.

Warlocks already have a pretty pool spell selection and casting ability, so I don't think they'll be able to replace Wizards.

Clerics aren't really supposed to be playing "Deity may I", IMO. But the "generic" cleric spell list should probably go completely, and each domain should get a list of 5-7 spells per spell level that they can cast.

Druids would be much better suited to being either shapeshifter primary and 1/2 casting (Moon) or casting primary (1/1) and shapeshifting secondary (Land).



What I'm thinking is that it's not the spell slots that upset people, as always - it's the spells themselves.

People playing Mundane Martials don't like the fact that Casters can do about the same amount of damage they do to a single foe, but to a Group of foes. Never mind that successful Saves can reduce that even more, plus having damage type Resistant and even Immune Monsters.

Also, without those AoEs - the party would quickly be overwhelmed and end in a TPK.

do these people hate using Magical Items to grant them access to the things they are complaining about? Fly, Invisibility, etc?

Heck, there are now lots more Half-caster Subclasses available to Martials.
Even the Barbarian has a couple Subclasses with some really cool magical Abilities, if used correctly.

Ok, sure, maybe being able to Climb the 50 foot Wall at 20th Rank, without Spider Climb, should be allowed. But not freely moving about on the ceiling.

If they really want real-life combat simulations, especially without Magic - they should just play World War 1 & 2 and similar Military Wargames or maybe Cyberpunk - or Spymaster (etc), instead of Fantasy/D&D.

Another thing that is usually overlooked during those "Martial vs Mage" debates, is that in each situation, the Player must choose if they need to spend a limited resource on 'insta-solving' it.

Because: Once out of Spell Slots, all Mages are very much screwed. Clerics just don't rely on magical armor to be protected, and can still hit as good as a Martial. Bards have a few things that can be done, once out of Slots, but very limited.

It is pretty much about spells themselves. Spells are, from level 1 onwards, more fantastical than martials get at level 20. Feather Fall is superior to Monk's Slow Fall. Charm Person was superior to diplomacy, before the "and then becomes hostile" clause. I'm still cursing whoever decided to put Steel Wind Strike into 5e and made it a level 5 spell for Wizards/Rangers only, despite it being perfectly fine, in effect, to be a martial ability at level 12 or so, maybe with less damage, but the basic effect could stay the same.

Magic items are disliked as a source of powers, because they are inherently separable and impersonal. If three of your coolest moves only work when you have this one specific item, it kinda sucks. And why should a level 20 rogue even need a cloak of invisibility? A level 20 rogue should be able to hide in bright daylight in plain sight, steal luck or souls, etc.

Morty
2019-07-31, 05:07 AM
Spell slots don't work as a limiting mechanic and wouldn't even if spells themselves weren't so strong. They're entirely reliant on the GM being willing and able to enforce a number of "encounters" every day. This gets harder as you leave a traditional dungeon crawl. Furthermore, if casters have their per-day spells and non-casters don't, the whole party still operates on the casters' schedule. Which only contributes to the feeling that casters are the more important party members.

Furthermore, casters being screwed once they run out of spells or components is not a good thing. It only enforces a binary - either they do have the right spell and solve a problem/encounter handily or they don't and they're neutralized. Same thing happens with anti-magic fields, zones and whatnot.

Kardwill
2019-07-31, 08:26 AM
do these people hate using Magical Items to grant them access to the things they are complaining about? Fly, Invisibility, etc?

Yes, I do. Also goes for supertech in scifi games.

In a Talislanta game I'm in, I dropped a significant amount of skill point in acrobat, jumping and climbing skills with the idea that my ranger would be the party ninja. It lasted one game, before everyone got bracers of levitation.

Problem with magic items is the same as the problem with magic : It renders your character's abilities irrelevant because it allows the caster/user to do the same thing, but better. :/

Max_Killjoy
2019-07-31, 10:04 AM
It annoys me, because I've been in a lot of games where IQ-based skills were useful (okay, they were mainly GURPS-based games, but still). To the point where being a spellcaster was questionably useful because you couldn't put skill points towards those powerful knowledge and social skills.

Although admittedly skill levels were also used as a limit to stop us just engineering our way out of trouble (four engineers and a scientist in settings with modern technology if 'talk at it' didn't work our second plan generally involved some form of machine). High character knowledge meant a lot with an explicit player/character seperation rule.

But anyway, having a high INT should impact gameplay for people other than the wizard. But apparently the barbarian having an 8 INT doesn't stop him from spewing nuclear physics, even if his player can't lift 150lbs without losing mobility.


Yeah, that's pretty much where I stand on the matter, and where most people I've gamed with have stood on it. Running into the contingents of players online who either say "INT is the spellcasting stat for Wizards, and tells you nothing else about your character beyond the mechanical effects" or "don't tell me how to play my character!" was a bit of a shock to me. Of course, on the latter, my response is an unyielding "I'm not telling you how to play your character -- you told yourself how to play your character when you gave him a 6 INT."

Rhedyn
2019-07-31, 10:23 AM
Martials would need demigod like powers.

Great Dragon
2019-07-31, 11:00 AM
As always, I like a good Debate, and see Sig.
Be convincing, and you can change my Opinion.
No offense is ever intended.

@Ignimortis:
Well, I suppose that is why I see so many Retro-clones and E6-10 games. Usually without Magical Items.

(I guess if that's what you want, fine.
Just don't expect (me) to change (my) game style to match that.
I wish you the best of luck finding a group for that)

If being limited to using magic to only solving four problems at most a day isn't enough of a limit - where non-casters have no limits to their Abilities, I can only ask "why keep playing D&D?"

Sure, feather fall is better than a Monk's Slow fall, but the caster can only do that a few times a day. And there is no limit on how often the Monk can do that trick. It doesn't even require Ki to use.


*******
Now, if your wanting some help on making a D&D World that's a little more difficult for Casters to break, I'm willing to give that a try.
If so, make a thread in the World Building forum and either Post a link or PM me.


And why should a level 20 rogue even need a cloak of invisibility? A level 20 rogue should be able to hide in bright daylight in plain sight, steal luck or souls, etc.
That's totally possible in Epic gaming.
Boons can give whatever the DM wants.

Um, how would you incorporate that into the Rogue class? Arcane Trickster does most of that.

However, I loved the Hide in Plane Sight from 3x Shadowdancer (I kinda don't like them making it a Monk) and didn't even mind the requirement of needing to be within 10 feet of a shadow.
As a Rogue Subclass, I could even accept the loss of a Shadow Companion.

Or just added as an Ability to the Base Rogue Class at 16th level?


*****
Spells access based on Domain is essentially playing "Deity May I". Or, worse, Pantheon Politics. Especially if the Cleric has to ask for a spell from another Deity in the same Pantheon.

This is actually the way Greek Deities (and to a lesser degree, Norse Deities) are supposed to work; which is rarely used, much less enforced.

All Resurrection spells had to be approved by Hades (even Zues has to ask), sooo…. What kind of Deal are you willing to make?

Are you a Viking in the Middle of Winter?
Better make the correct sacrifice and pay homage to Loki (even if you hate him), just to keep your fire lit.

But, hey, that's just Fluff
- right?


*****

@Morty:
Casters Being Binary is actually meant to be a real limit. Spells are not like skills. They do one thing, and it either works, or not.

All things you listed are situations where the Player is as Challenged as the Character. Knowing how to use/do stuff without magic can be just as fun as Nuking the Hobgoblin Army.

@Kardwill
Then your GM was either giving away too many Magical Items, or not including more situations where they don't instantly solve the problems presented: and your non-magical skills did.


*****

See my Clash of the Classes in Ancient Realms.

I usually run a High Magic Living World, so I do have ways to deal with the various Classes, even into Epic Levels. I'm not going to say that I can't be surprised, though.

Although I haven't had a Group get past 12th level, yet….

Maybe the 10th level PCs in Hunting Xanathar will get past that?

Morty
2019-07-31, 11:04 AM
@Morty:
Casters Being Binary is actually meant to be a real limit. Spells are not like skills. They do one thing, and it either works, or not.

All things listed are situations where the Player is as Challenged as the Character. Knowing how to use/do stuff without magic can be just as fun as Nuking the Hobgoblin Army.


Yes, and it's a bad limit that doesn't work. As I have explained. It's a root cause of many of the problems people debate about endlessly.

Great Dragon
2019-07-31, 11:44 AM
Yes, and it's a bad limit that doesn't work. As I have explained. It's a root cause of many of the problems people debate about endlessly.

Um ... I'm not sure what you actually want.

If even a super limited Specization Sorcerer is still too powerful for you.

Either you want magic to suck to the point no one ever wants to play a caster
Or
absolutely no magic at all.
Which isn't D&D anymore.

But, I will admit that I'm most likely not going to really "solve" this problem, and so will politely bow out.

I will still read the thread, since there are interesting posts, and I'll respond to anyone posting to me.

Anonymouswizard
2019-07-31, 11:51 AM
IDK, 5e seems a lot more "Balanced" than all the other versions of D&D.

Did we all forget about 4e just because an edition that ressurected the sacred cows came out?

You know, the edition made with balance as an explicit goal, and that was actually balanced.


As I mentioned somewhere: Fewer Spell Slots per Spell Level, plus breaking up Known Spells between all Spell Levels (or a set value for maximum): plus Concentration on a lot of really useful/powerful spells.

Concentration is a good mechanic, but I still find wizards are casting too many spells (or not enough, it varies based on circumstances, I'll try to explain better).


I find that 5e balanced the casters in the worst of two possible ways, causing them to be less fun, but not exactly balanced still.

Wizard as a class is cancerous to the game. No game with magic should have a type of mage who gets access to 80% of magic in the game while progressing at the same rate as other major spellcasters.

I agree and disagree. I agree that the D&D wizard is problematic, but a character with theoretical access to such a broad range of spells isn't a problem. The problem is that the wizard gets practical access to the largest variety of magic in the game.

If the Sorcerer or Bard was pulling from the wizard list I'd have no problem. They have a small enough number of Spells Known that they will never have access to the entire list. They have theoretical access to 80% of the magic, but practical access to, say, 5%.

On the other hand, I feel like the smaller number of spell slots did work for one class: the Warlock. Warlocks are, for ten levels, kept incredibly lean on the spell slots but get them back relatively easily, while at the same time getting a bunch of passive or at-will abilities to fill in the gaps between occasional spells.


Spell slots don't work as a limiting mechanics and wouldn't even if spells themselves weren't so strong. They're entirely reliant on the GM being willing and able to enforce a number of "encounters" every day. This gets harder as you leave a traditional dungeon crawl. Furthermore, if casters have their per-day spells and non-casters don't, the whole party still operates on the casters' schedule. Which only contributes to the feeling that casters are the more important party members.

Furthermore, casters being screwed once they run out of spells or components is not a good thing. It only enforces a binary - either they do have the right spell and solve a problem/encounter handily or they don't and they're neutralized. Same thing happens with anti-magic fields, zones and whatnot.

I think we could come up with much more fun ways to limit spellcasters.

Having them roll to gather energy before they cast a spell. During slower periods they don't have to worry, but when things get tense you might not have the time to gather the energy.

Or having a small and quickly recharging mana pool. We're limiting how much magic can be cast in a row, but we're not completely cutting mages out for long periods.

Or maybe we could stop this idea that using magic means you have no mundane skills. Heck, let's have wizards picking up swords and bows because their magic isn't combat focused, or having the mundane skills that synergise with the buff spells they learnt.


Yeah, that's pretty much where I stand on the matter, and where most people I've gamed with have stood on it. Running into the contingents of players online who either say "INT is the spellcasting stat for Wizards, and tells you nothing else about your character beyond the mechanical effects" or "don't tell me how to play my character!" was a bit of a shock to me. Of course, on the latter, my response is an unyielding "I'm not telling you how to play your character -- you told yourself how to play your character when you gave him a 6 INT."

I've come to the realisation that people don't want to play a stupid character, but don't want to play a 'suboptimal' character. So they dump INT and claim it's just the wizardy casting stat.

One of my favourite things to do there is run a high tech game, ideally in GURPS (although something like the new edition of Alternity works wonders). Suddenly IQ-based skills aren't just something you can dump because they're knowledges, if you want to interact with technology at all you'll want a high IQ. Which is a real problem when you're stuck in a nuclear reactor that failed to SCRAM and you need to find some way to shut it down while keeping the alien baddie restrained, but nobody put any points into Nuclear Physics or Reactor Engineering*.

It's like the player who takes a ton of mental drawbacks and compulsions and is annoyed when they come up in play. Look, you got more CP for playing a lower INT character, if you've decided you don't want to we can lower some of your other stats, or you can spend XP paying off that point debt :smallamused:

There's a reason my characters tend to be pretty heavy on the physical disads. It can be hard to know how much a gambling compulsion should come up in game, a missing hand is much easier to adjudicate (you can't perform actions that require that hand).

* Bit of an extreme example, but 'the reactor failed to shut down and is going to blow' did come up once.

Willie the Duck
2019-07-31, 12:28 PM
Yeah, that's pretty much where I stand on the matter, and where most people I've gamed with have stood on it. Running into the contingents of players online who either say "INT is the spellcasting stat for Wizards, and tells you nothing else about your character beyond the mechanical effects" or "don't tell me how to play my character!" was a bit of a shock to me. Of course, on the latter, my response is an unyielding "I'm not telling you how to play your character -- you told yourself how to play your character when you gave him a 6 INT."

I want to point out that you are talking about a small subset of people online who feel that way. Regardless, you know how verisimilitude is kind of a passion-project/#1 priority for you? There are a lot of people for whom autonomy over their character is something that they feel equally as passionate about. Something like, 'The DM gets to set up the world, the dice decide how things end up, my character can conceivably be placed in an absolutely unwinnable position, but you do not get to tell me what decisions they make (unless they are mind-controlled or something, which had better follow some very well-defined rules).' I can understand having a strong position on either.


Spell slots don't work as a limiting mechanic and wouldn't even if spells themselves weren't so strong. They're entirely reliant on the GM being willing and able to enforce a number of "encounters" every day. This gets harder as you leave a traditional dungeon crawl. Furthermore, if casters have their per-day spells and non-casters don't, the whole party still operates on the casters' schedule. Which only contributes to the feeling that casters are the more important party members.

I am going to go to bat for OSR gaming (which I sometimes, but don't always, favor). Many of us who started with TSR-era D&D absolutely did get the system to work. Mind you, it took some constraint on playstyle -- it does, in fact, get harder as you leave traditional dungeon crawling, plus hexcrawling after ~level 3 (when it actually starts to really suck to be a magic user), plus the keep & castle portion (where 'can summon meteors' and 'can summon armies' tends to be a toss-up)-- but that the playstyle at which the game was aimed.

Max_Killjoy
2019-07-31, 12:47 PM
I want to point out that you are talking about a small subset of people online who feel that way. Regardless, you know how verisimilitude is kind of a passion-project/#1 priority for you? There are a lot of people for whom autonomy over their character is something that they feel equally as passionate about. Something like, 'The DM gets to set up the world, the dice decide how things end up, my character can conceivably be placed in an absolutely unwinnable position, but you do not get to tell me what decisions they make (unless they are mind-controlled or something, which had better follow some very well-defined rules).' I can understand having a strong position on either.


And as I said above, as far as I'm concerned, no one is taking away autonomy over their character, they had 100% control and they limited their own future valid decision space when they made their character building decisions. A player who slaps a 6 INT on their character today has no more business griping about "restricted choices" tomorrow, than someone who spent all their money at the bar last has any business griping that he can't afford lunch today.

As Anonymouswizard pointed out, this loops back to balance in that in systems designed on, or campaigns dominated by, the attitude that character intellect, knowledge, and sagacity is meaningless, remove that aspect of the character as a balance-point -- the wizard, the educated noble, the clever rogue, all lose that as part of their capability, because the player gets to ignore it and make the character as smart as they can be made via the player's own brain. So the wizard's abilities are all in their spellcasting, they can't be the sage advisor to the party as well.

Great Dragon
2019-07-31, 12:56 PM
@Anonymouswizard:
4e? This might be something to check out, if I ever find a Group for it, where I'm not the DM.

4e looked a bit too much of a MMO, and the Diablo RPG was decent enough for that: but maybe some of the underpinning 4e Mechanics can be salvaged and converted….

Perhaps a separate thread for this?
*********
I really don't know why the Devs didn't leave Sorcerer and Wizard spells as one list.
There isn't that much of a difference to really matter, IMO.

Bards mix some Cleric in, so a separate list is fine by me.

I actually really like how the new Warlock works, except some Subclass options, but that's separate.


Or maybe we could stop this idea that using magic means you have no mundane skills. Heck, let's have wizards picking up swords and bows because their magic isn't combat focused, or having the mundane skills that synergise with the buff spells they learnt.

This would actually be interesting.
Especially since if weapon and armor is wanted, they either choose Elf or Dwarf or Multiclass.

Maybe split the difference, where there are Blaster Mages, Control Mages, and Support Mages, which used to be a thing.

Clerics being more than Buff and Heal bots is also nice.

@Willie: yep.
Murder-Hobos were usually the first to die in the Dungeon.... Munchkins were expected, since everyone was doing it.

Morty
2019-07-31, 01:13 PM
Um ... I'm not sure what you actually want.

If even a super limited Specization Sorcerer is still too powerful for you.

Either you want magic to suck to the point no one ever wants to play a caster
Or
absolutely no magic at all.
Which isn't D&D anymore.


...what? No. In what possible way could you infer that from my argument?



I think we could come up with much more fun ways to limit spellcasters.

Having them roll to gather energy before they cast a spell. During slower periods they don't have to worry, but when things get tense you might not have the time to gather the energy.

Or having a small and quickly recharging mana pool. We're limiting how much magic can be cast in a row, but we're not completely cutting mages out for long periods.

Or maybe we could stop this idea that using magic means you have no mundane skills. Heck, let's have wizards picking up swords and bows because their magic isn't combat focused, or having the mundane skills that synergise with the buff spells they learnt.

Any of this could possibly work. The last one is probably a requirement no matter what else is done; the strict "martial/caster" divide is kind of untenable.



I am going to go to bat for OSR gaming (which I sometimes, but don't always, favor). Many of us who started with TSR-era D&D absolutely did get the system to work. Mind you, it took some constraint on playstyle -- it does, in fact, get harder as you leave traditional dungeon crawling, plus hexcrawling after ~level 3 (when it actually starts to really suck to be a magic user), plus the keep & castle portion (where 'can summon meteors' and 'can summon armies' tends to be a toss-up)-- but that the playstyle at which the game was aimed.

The system may well have worked to limit casters in the old-school games, strictly speaking. I just don't think the way in which it did so was fun or desirable. And while the game may have originally been aimed at dungeon-crawling, people who played it eventually took it beyond that. Whether we like it or not, it needs to be addressed. Then again, OSR games have no appeal to me at all, so I just have an entirely different perspective.

Great Dragon
2019-07-31, 02:04 PM
...what? No. In what possible way could you infer that from my argument?

Pardon my tendencies to go to extremes.

But, I was actually confused by what you were aiming for, by your comment of "almost" on my reduced mage idea.

Spell points are just a more exploitable slot system to me. One of the reasons why I'm not going to try converting Psionics into 5e.

Too much work, and I'd most likely be heckled into silence, like my Factotum.


Any of this could possibly work. The last one is probably a requirement no matter what else is done; the strict "martial/caster" divide is kind of untenable.

I actually did not have a problem with limited weapon choices for either Wizard or Sorcerer.
Not everyone that picks up a sword is as effective with it as the person trained (fighter) to use it. Please don't point at Gandolf, he's not really a wizard.


The system may well have worked to limit casters in the old-school games, strictly speaking. I just don't think the way in which it did so was fun or desirable. And while the game may have originally been aimed at dungeon-crawling, people who played it eventually took it beyond that. Whether we like it or not, it needs to be addressed. Then again, OSR games have no appeal to me at all, so I just have an entirely different perspective

I like that there are more things to do Outside a dungeon. I agree that just Delving gets tedious after a while.

Honestly, I don't do true OSR games very often.
While low level quirks and Character development can be fun, I liked being able to change the outcome of a Battle between armies as a 20th level mage.

I do use the OSR style in my games.
"Play smart, be creative, and work as a team."

Ignimortis
2019-07-31, 10:14 PM
Sure, feather fall is better than a Monk's Slow fall, but the caster can only do that a few times a day. And there is no limit on how often the Monk can do that trick. It doesn't even require Ki to use.


The thing is, how often do you need to do that? Usually people don't have to deal with falling more often than once or twice per day. Sure, you could make a niche situation in which you have a lot of falling hazards, but it's still demonstrative of why spell slots don't really work as a good limiter — it's just that casting a spell to solve a problem which arises once per day or less often works too well.

Besides, most narratives just don't deal with the adventuring day as envisaged by WotC or TSR. Having "medium-difficulty" battles designed to just sap resources but not be immediately threatening is boring. They don't go down fast enough for you to feel powerful, and they don't threaten you enough to be challenging. A lot of GMs prefer doing 1-2 combats per day, because it's far easier narratively and also far quicker to think of something interesting for those battles, but in that case all that "resource expenditure" gameplay breaks down.

Max_Killjoy
2019-07-31, 10:20 PM
The thing is, how often do you need to do that? Usually people don't have to deal with falling more often than once or twice per day. Sure, you could make a niche situation in which you have a lot of falling hazards, but it's still demonstrative of why spell slots don't really work as a good limiter — it's just that casting a spell to solve a problem which arises once per day or less often works too well.

Besides, most narratives just don't deal with the adventuring day as envisaged by WotC or TSR. Having "medium-difficulty" battles designed to just sap resources but not be immediately threatening is boring. They don't go down fast enough for you to feel powerful, and they don't threaten you enough to be challenging. A lot of GMs prefer doing 1-2 combats per day, because it's far easier narratively and also far quicker to think of something interesting for those battles, but in that case all that "resource expenditure" gameplay breaks down.

I know it's not a popular opinion in these parts, but, this really starts to get into why I consider the whole "adventuring day" and "resource expenditure" and "x/day" setup... something that's time has come and gone. There are other, better, more fluid and adaptable ways to handle things, and D&D just seems to refuse to consider them outside of optional rules that frankly fans of the game seem to hate.

Great Dragon
2019-07-31, 11:21 PM
@Ignimortis:
See, now we're heading towards the Shrodigers Wizard and/or Metagaming problem. Those spell choices are Level Dependent, and requires knowing what's likely to be Encountered in the Area/Session.

Sure, situations where Feather Fall are even needed aren't common, but then the Wizard is most likely not going to memorize that spell, unless there's enough information saying that it's needed in this area. Like maybe climbing a mountain or a bridge over a deep gorge or 50+ foot deep pit traps big enough to catch at least half the party are known to be Scattered around this level of the Dungeon. Pits of less than 30 shouldn't really justify that (unless the Party is 1st level, and 3d6 damage can kill someone), unless known to have poisoned spikes. (Which if the Party is at least 5th level, Fly is usually a better choice).

Something that uses a Reaction, and burns a spell slot and is far more likely to be memorized? Shield.

Wizards really are the Classic Batman of Fantasy.
Know what's going on? Pown it.
Not prepared for that Encounter? Get Pwned.

It's DMs (and some Players) with a 'magic always solves the problem' mentality, that cause most of the complaints I see listed on the forums.

In my games, sure magic can solve a problem, but magic also creates its own problems, and actually being a Smarty-pants Wiseperson is a good thing.

And sometimes your Barbarian/Fighter/Ranger\Rogue friend/s is the solution!


*****

The x/day Monsters Encountered suggested by WotC is IME/O garbage.

And I agree having medium Encounters that just drain resources is tedious, unless there is some actual reason for those to be there. Like directed Minions of a BBEG, deliberately sent to try and drain said resources.

Sure, if I have the time, I'll roll Random Encounters for the area the party is in, and note locations for each. But, I don't just say: "Oh! A random encounter just happened! Let's see what pops up!" Unless it's literally an unplanned game session.

I'm doing D&D - not running a tabletop version of Diabo or Dungeon Crawl Classics, where that's expected by everyone in the Group.

Ignimortis
2019-07-31, 11:31 PM
I know it's not a popular opinion in these parts, but, this really starts to get into why I consider the whole "adventuring day" and "resource expenditure" and "x/day" setup... something that's time has come and gone. There are other, better, more fluid and adaptable ways to handle things, and D&D just seems to refuse to consider them outside of optional rules that frankly fans of the game seem to hate.

Yeah. I prefer to work with action economy, which is why I love martial adepts and other classes that are less X/day and more "I have these types of actions and 2-4 options for most of them".


@Ignimortis:
See, now we're heading towards the Shrodigers Wizard and/or Metagaming problem. Those spell choices are Level Dependent, and requires knowing what's likely to be Encountered in the Area/Session.

Sure, situations where Feather Fall are even needed aren't common, but then the Wizard is most likely not going to memorize that spell, unless there's enough information saying that it's needed in this area. Like maybe climbing a mountain or a bridge over a deep gorge or 50+ foot deep pit traps big enough to catch at least half the party are known to be Scattered around this level of the Dungeon. Pits of less than 30 shouldn't really justify that (unless the Party is 1st level, and 3d6 damage can kill someone), unless known to have poisoned spikes. (Which if the Party is at least 5th level, Fly is usually a better choice).

Something that uses a Reaction, and burns a spell slot and is far more likely to be memorized? Shield.

Wizards really are the Classic Batman of Fantasy.
Know what's going on? Pown it.
Not prepared for that Encounter? Get Pwned.

The thing is...a typical level 6 Wizard in 5e can prepare 10 spells. That means they've got maybe 3-4 mainstay spells that they expect to use often (Fireball, Shield, Hold Person, Haste?), and 6-7 slots for other things. Slotting both Feather Fall and Shield isn't that hard, really. Subbing in Fly is also an option, though an expensive one. So they are Batmen of fantasy - in the sense that Batman is usually capable of being prepared for everything.

By level 10 that's 15 spells, and you drop some of the old mainstays to replace them with new ones. Fly is no longer cast out of "the best slot", too. Those things scale non-linearly, with more levels = both better spells, more spells and more capability to use whatever spells you want.

Great Dragon
2019-08-01, 02:27 AM
So they are Batmen of fantasy - in the sense that Batman is usually capable of being prepared for everything.

See, I figure the reverse, where Batman can't know and prepare for everything.

But, this isn't about Batman. Besides - he's someone else's "I can solve every problem" MAD Multiclassed-to-the-hilt character, anyway.


Unlike Modern Batman, Classic Batman doesn't have access to things that allow him to instantly know what is going on.

The Batsignal lets him know that something is happening, but has to go ask Gordon what it is.

He only has what he brought with him, or put in the batmobile.

Once knowing which Villain he's dealing with, he immediately takes off.

He wins by being smart, more than whatever gadgets he brought.

I actually like playing Mages, so I'll see what I can come up with.


So, level 10. No school.
Figure Point Buy start.
15 Int, 15 Con, 11 Dex, 10 Str, 10 Wis, 10 Cha.

Let's say High Elf to get +2 Dex and+1 Int.
16 Int 13 Dex
Both ASIs into Int = 20. (Can't exceed)

+4 Proficiency
Skills: Elf: Perception.
Sage (Apprentice) Background: Arcana, History.
Two bonus Languages.
Class: Insight, Religion.

5 Cantrips. 4/3/3/3/2

My Typical Adventuring spell list:

Cantrips: Fire Bolt, Light, Message,
Poison Spray, and Acid Splash.

(4 slots) First Level
Shield, Mage Armor

(3 slots) Second Level
Misty Step, Mirror Image.

(3 slots) Third Level
Counterspell, Fireball.

(3 slots) Fourth Level
Greater Invisibility, Phantasmal Killer.

(2 slots) Fifth Level
Hold Monster, Rary's Telepathic Bond.

5 bonus spells:
(1st) Chromatic Orb
(2nd) Hold Person
(3rd) Haste
(4th) Arcane Eye
(5th) Passwall

Now, the real question is what is in the


First level spells: Shield, Thunderwave, Detect Magic, Identify, Mage Armor, Chromatic Orb

(2nd class lv) Feather Fall, Fog Cloud.

Second Level spells: Misty Step, Mirror Image,
(4th class lv) Hold Person, Detect Thoughts

Third level spells: Counterspell, Fireball.
(6th class Level) Haste, Fly.


Suggested Stop?

Fourth level spells:
Greater Invisibility, Phantasmal Killer.
(8th class level)
Arcane Eye, Mord's Private Sanctum

Fifth level spells:
Hold Monster, Rary's Telepathic Bond.
(10th class level)
Passwall, Teleportation Circle.

Currently not giving any extra spells from treasure.

As can be expected, Wiz has some options, but not every spell available can be prepared.

Again, switching out spells Requires knowing what is needed ahead of time, and the Baddies should not allow an 8 hour break to change things. Heck even a Short Rest might be tricky getting.



So, sacrifice a 1st level slot for 8 hours of Mage Armor, keep at least one slot in reserve for Shield. Leaving two slots for Orb.

Three slots for 2nd Level: At least one use of Mirror Image during a fight. Save one for Misty Step, leaves only one left.

Three slots for 3rd Level:
One slot for Haste, one slot reserved for Counterspell, only one slot left.

Three slots for Fourth Level:
One slot for Phantasmal Killer, one reserved for Greater Invisibility, and most likely one Arcane Eye used to help Party Scout/Rogue

Two slots for Fifth Level:
One slot for Rary's Telepathic Bond, one slot reserved for Hold Monster.

Short Rest: Even if getting 5 levels of slots back, still limited to what is already memorized, so up to player to decide what might be useful.
Teleportation Circle escape?

Once out of all spell slots, must spam Cantrips.

Figure some Random (1d6) moderate, at least two Hard and maybe one Deadly - Encounters per "Adventuring day".

Fireball is needed for large groups.
Competes with Counterspell against enemy casters.

Invisibility requires Concentration, and there are still ways to detect, and attackers only have Disadvantage to hit while active.

Mirror Image only possibly prevents three hits during a fight. (Actually less effective than Dodge Action)

No listed magical items: DM dependant.

Oh, and for non-combat comparisons:
No Spider Climb, or Knock (etc) spells available.

Fly has limited speed and duration, and requires Concentration; maximum four times a day, if willing to not have any other third level spells available. Upcasting it isn't really worth doing, unless doing Party Travel.

Creative Players and DMs that actually care, can do these - with, or without, magic.


*****
So, please point out how that Wizard still outclasses the "I don't need magic" PCs?

Kardwill
2019-08-01, 02:43 AM
While low level quirks and Character development can be fun, I liked being able to change the outcome of a Battle between armies as a 20th level mage.


Which is not a problem, as long as the fighter and the rogue have just as much opportunities to do so as the wizard. Which they should have, honestly, since 20th level fighter and rogues are supposed to be death incarnate

comk59
2019-08-01, 03:38 AM
See, this is why I believe that spells SHOULD be skills, for non-combat stuff. Stuff like fireball, firebolt, cone of cold, whatever are fine for the most part. But the binary "either be magical or get lost" aspect of forcecage, certain wall spells, or really the vast majority of the wizards library are pretty bad design imo. I would much rather stuff like that be a use of a skill-check, and one that another mage could oppose.

But that gets into the root of the problem, that Vancian magic has fundamental flaws and is something that I would love to get rid of. But since Vancian magic is the topic of this thread, that's unfortunately out of the question.



However, of we can't use magic as skills, we could steal something else from 13th age, mainly the rest system. For those whose are unfamiliar, 13th age has a pretty strict "two encounters per rest". It doesn't matter how long you sleep or meditate, you can only get the mechanical benefits of a rest after two encounters or the equivalent. Similarly, you can only take a long rest every two short rests.

While this isn't especially realistic (Apologies in advance, Max), it does create a system where the spellcaster is physically incapable of forcing a five-minute work day. It also allows fights to happen at a reasonable pace while still draining the party resources. Because let's be honest, four to six combats a day is a bit insane for a game that's not set in a warzone.

Jakinbandw
2019-08-01, 02:00 PM
So here's a question, how would Saitama, of one punch man fame, fair against a high level wizard in dnd?

He's not a god, and purely martial, so I'm curious where he would rank.

Max_Killjoy
2019-08-01, 02:06 PM
So here's a question, how would Saitama, of one punch man fame, fair against a high level wizard in dnd?

He's not a god, and purely martial, so I'm curious where he would rank.


In the typical D&D setting... where does Saitama get his powers?

Jakinbandw
2019-08-01, 02:08 PM
In the typical D&D setting... where does Saitama get his powers?

Same way he gets them in the anime: 100 situps, 100 pushups and a long run each day. Outside of that (which obviously doesn't work for everyone) noone knows. It's unexplained and unexplainable.

Max_Killjoy
2019-08-01, 02:22 PM
Same way he gets them in the anime: 100 situps, 100 pushups and a long run each day. Outside of that (which obviously doesn't work for everyone) noone knows. It's unexplained and unexplainable.


Makes it harder to say. Does he ever have to deal with, resist, etc, magic in the series?

Arbane
2019-08-01, 02:43 PM
Makes it harder to say. Does he ever have to deal with, resist, etc, magic in the series?

He can keep telekinetics from throwing him around, and monster powers generally don't do anything to him.

Jakinbandw
2019-08-01, 02:46 PM
Makes it harder to say. Does he ever have to deal with, resist, etc, magic in the series?

After a quick search but he resisted mind control because his willpower is as strong as his ability to physically withstand attacks. Other than that, he also fought an opponent that was immune to physical interactions and still killed them with a single punch, so he definitely can punch hard enough to break magic. He is also shown to survive the vacuum of space just by holding his breathe without taking any real damage from it but that's as far as I know his only feat vrs something like poison.

The point I was trying to get at here wasn't could a specific character work for martials in such a setting, but could characters like that keep up with mages. If we have to tweak it a bit so that they always succeed on all saving throws and never suffer any ill effects from saving throws they make, it wouldn't be too far off of what we see of Saitama for example. I'm asking a more general: Could this be a good template for martials in a world where mages aren't bound by normal dnd casting.

OldTrees1
2019-08-01, 05:25 PM
So here's a question, how would Saitama, of one punch man fame, fair against a high level wizard in dnd?

He's not a god, and purely martial, so I'm curious where he would rank.

This depends on what you allow Saitama to do with his strength.
How many times do you let Saitama act on their turn?
How flexible do you allow those actions to be?
Low: It is an attack that hits and kills its target
Medium: It allows them to impart an unstoppable force or act as an immovable object
High: What else can the fist do besides everything enabled by the Medium option? Name 5+


If you base martials off of Saitama but only allow them 1 unerringly accurate and infinitely damaging attack per round, then they would be strong but worse off than the current martials. You realized martials don't need to be limited by resources but you didn't imagine their potential flexibility.

If you base martials off of Saitama but only allow them to impart an unstoppable force or act as an immovable object then they would be strong, and more importantly, better off than some of the current martials. You realized there is potential for flexibility without a resource limitation. At this point your design, when evaluated as a solution, would rank around the Tome of Battle classes. They are more flexible but their design is not a perfect fit (let's leave it at that).

However the 5E Wizard has 5th level spells and the 5E Ancients Paladin has some really nice Auras. If you want the non-magic non-casting at-will martials to be as fleshed out as their counterparts, then you will want to do even more. Can you imagine more?

Afterall, this is not a rating of raw numbers. So despite Saitama being possibly stronger than a Wizard, it is likely to be less suited as a high level character class.

Jakinbandw
2019-08-01, 06:15 PM
This depends on what you allow Saitama to do with his strength.
How many times do you let Saitama act on their turn?
How flexible do you allow those actions to be?
Low: It is an attack that hits and kills its target
Medium: It allows them to impart an unstoppable force or act as an immovable object
High: What else can the fist do besides everything enabled by the Medium option? Name 5+


If you base martials off of Saitama but only allow them 1 unerringly accurate and infinitely damaging attack per round, then they would be strong but worse off than the current martials. You realized martials don't need to be limited by resources but you didn't imagine their potential flexibility.

If you base martials off of Saitama but only allow them to impart an unstoppable force or act as an immovable object then they would be strong, and more importantly, better off than some of the current martials. You realized there is potential for flexibility without a resource limitation. At this point your design, when evaluated as a solution, would rank around the Tome of Battle classes. They are more flexible but their design is not a perfect fit (let's leave it at that).

However the 5E Wizard has 5th level spells and the 5E Ancients Paladin has some really nice Auras. If you want the non-magic non-casting at-will martials to be as fleshed out as their counterparts, then you will want to do even more. Can you imagine more?

Afterall, this is not a rating of raw numbers. So despite Saitama being possibly stronger than a Wizard, it is likely to be less suited as a high level character class.

Key parts of Saitama if I was to build him as a class:
1: Movement speed - Saitama has the ability to jump from the moon to the earth in a single action. This means his movement speed must be around 250 000 a round. Maybe half that or a quarter that depending on what move action he used. We might limit him by requiring his movement to be made in a straight line, but I don't think that's fair to the source material because we often see him able to move behind people before they can spot him.

2: Off turn actions - Saitama doesn't do it often, but occasionally he obviously takes actions in the middle of someone elses turn, either to move, or to attack. Maybe a limited resource of how many times he can do it, say it costs his reaction, or an attack of opportunity or something?

3: AoE Attacks that deform the terrain - Saitama each of saitma's attacks scales from light hit, to being able to blow mountains away. Any build of saitama should be able to deform the terrain for miles around with a single attack

4: Multiple Attacks - Saitama can hit multiple foes, or a single foe multiple times a round. This is also shown to be used in conjunction with his AoE attacks.

5: Resistance - Nothing can really hurt Saitama, so he should be able to shrug of pretty much any foe that is not on his level.

6: Damage - He does enough damage to kill anything that doesn't have a way to immediately resurrect from death. Anything he wants to kill should die.

7: Lack of other options - Everything under brute force is his domain, but that doesn't give him access to wish and such. In such a scenario, a mage can be useful to help ferry saitama around, track down targets, and use wish and stuff to do non combat things. A Saitama class of course makes mages completely pointless in combat, but to be fair, they also mean combat would no longer be the focus of the game. If a god needs to die, the saitama class can kill it. the game then becomes more focused around should the god be killed, and what to do after it dies.

OldTrees1
2019-08-02, 12:03 AM
Key parts of Saitama if I was to build him as a class:

So it ends up at Medium flexibility. While this Saitama is stronger than the ToB classes, its flexibility hovers in that vicinity.

Also serves as a good example to help wake up our imagination for if we tried to do a High level High flexibility martial class. For example we saw this Medium flexibility make the most out of the one power.

The fast movement is a result of the irresistible force, but we can imagine the movement speed being used for creative ends.
The resistance is a result of the immovable object, but we can imagine creative uses for that beyond just surviving combats.
The AOEs causing terrain alterations is a result of the irresistible force, but we can imagine creative uses for that beyond just combat movement control.

Doing this for other exaggerated martial powers can see more options. All of that can be preparation for the challenge of imagining how to take it further (and rebalance too if needed).

Jakinbandw
2019-08-02, 12:27 AM
So it ends up at Medium flexibility. While this Saitama is stronger than the ToB classes, its flexibility hovers in that vicinity.

I suppose. But I still think it would be at an appropriate power level if mages were using MP instead of spell slots to cast spells.

Like with his speed, he can do a line search over the entire forgotten realms (at distances of less than 100 feet between each line he searches) in under 5 minutes. Now sure, that's longer than a spell, but it is also means that he can pull off scry and fry tactics, because if he finds a foe, they are dead, and he can run from one side of the forgotten realms to the other in less than a single move action. He can pick up things (arbitrarily strong) and move them to the other side of the setting. If there are any natural healing springs anywhere he can pick up people in need of healing and take them there in a round, and then take them back to the fight. So on and so on. Now I know that being able to do this doesn't necessary make him as flexible as a wizard, but considering that nothing in the setting can hurt him, and he can kill anything he is on the same plane as would make him worthy of sitting with high level wizards in my opinion. Or put it another way, I would be happy to play such a character. Being able to move cities around, build anything I wanted just by punching the terrain and then using the pieces to build whatever.

Sure I couldn't use wish, but I could kill anything that needed to be dead faster and easier than any mage, and my mode of transportation is faster or more versatile than teleports (either teleports are an action, or they are a contingency. Saitama can move as a reaction and move anywhere in the setting I want).

Anyway, if such a class is just tier 2, I wish someone would write it up. It would be cool to have that level of problem solving ability as a martial!

Great Dragon
2019-08-02, 10:52 AM
IDK, doing that (unavoidable strikes and instant kill damage) either causes combat to become pointless, or foes/monsters doing similar, where only Initiative matters, for who wins.


I'm asking a more general: Could this be a good template for martials in a world where mages aren't bound by normal dnd casting.

Am I the only one that sees how much more 5e does than any other Edition?

Despite not having everything figured out, much less memorized?

5e Barbarians doubling there HP against Physical Attacks are miles ahead of their 3x versions, with Bear Totem being leagues.
(And people homebrewing feats to resist the only energy that hurts them. And now "official" races that grant that.)

For raw effectiveness comparison, you'd have to go back to when the Barbarian was first introduced. When it was considered game breaking, along with Cavalier, and Monk.

Fighter get the best Armor options, and Indomable for more ways to break free of magical control/restraining effects.

Mages are more worried about maxing out their Casting stat, with a maximum of DC 19 and +11 to hit. (without a Wand of the Warmage: which adds +3 at most)

That's a 50/50 bet against Warriors with Plate, shield, and Defense style. Magic added to AC means that the Mages need to roll a 16+ to hit. (Also against Monsters with AC 27)

Fighters can sac 4 (of 7) feats for Resistance, to get Proficiency in all saves. Which is a roll of 8+ on a d20.

Other Martials could also get all saves, and have one feat to spare, with vHumans having another.

Maybe I just think in ways that don't always seem right to others?


To me
Mana/Psionic Points? Too much Math, and extremely exploitable. Especially in 5e.

Psychic Warriors are just variant Eldritch Knights.

Soulknife might be a Rogue Subclass.
It's just a weapon that can't be easily lost, with maybe a few tricks added?
Really, wouldn't be any more OP than, say, a Swashbuckler.

Psion is just a Sorcerer type.

Forget Wilder, seems to me that overchannel breaks Bounded Accuracy.


*****
Tome of Battle classes are just six different versions of either Battlemaster Fighter (something other than Superiority Dice needed), or Six new Monk Subclasses with level based # known and x/day Discipline powers (which might fit the theme better)
(which is just a limited Slot system, to me)

Where Stances might be a Bonus Action to activate, last no longer than a minute, and requires Concentration.

Max_Killjoy
2019-08-02, 10:57 AM
If I pick up a book or PDF for a new system, and start seeing unavoidable attacks and instant kills, I generally put it down.

Jakinbandw
2019-08-02, 11:00 AM
If I pick up a book or PDF for a new system, and start seeing unavoidable attacks and instant kills, I generally put it down.

Ah, so you don't play 3.5 or pathfinder eh? :p

(just teasing, in on phone so I can't use blue text)

jjordan
2019-08-02, 11:28 AM
Casters who can cast from all their spells known using mana with 1 mana for 1st tier spells and 9 mana for 9th tier spells, each spell slot would give max mana based on it's tier. So a lvl 20 wizard would get to cast all their spells as long as they have enough mana of their for example 185+bonus mana based on modifier. That would make spell casters overwhelmingly powerful and thus the question, how strong melee/ranged physical classes would need to be to not fall short.
Well, balance doesn't mean you have to make non-spellcasters as powerful as spellcasters. You can put some limits on magic that make it less powerful. Start by really enforcing the material component rules. Spell casters end up spending a bunch of their time looking for the material they need and they tend to be less likely to toss spells around if they only have enough materials for two more applications of the spell. That's a simple RAW fix right there. If you want to move away from the rules then a whole world of possibility opens up before you.

I like (but am not using) a system where casting magic is difficult. The simplest way to do this is to give every spell a base 15 DC to be successfully cast. Add the level of the spell (cantrips are level 0) to get the target DC for successfully casting. Allow the caster to add their proficiency and spell-casting-ability modifier to their roll. Beyond that you can gain additional modifiers. Using a spell focus, using material components, casting as a ritual, taking additional time, getting assistance from another magic user, having the spell prepared ahead of time, and so on can provide bonuses to the caster's roll. If the roll fails then wild magic surges can happen and the severity of the effect is modified by how badly the caster failed their roll. At lower levels you can get a severe, debilitating migraine. Higher level spell failures might cause your brain to squirt out your ears and splatter on the walls. That makes a difference when spellcasters are deciding what to do.

Willie the Duck
2019-08-02, 12:02 PM
Fighters can sac 4 (of 7) feats for Resistance, to get Proficiency in all saves. Which is a roll of 8+ on a d20.

You cannot take the resistance feat more than once. Regardless, where is this 8+ coming from? Saves are target-number based in 5e, not roll over a fixed number.

Great Dragon
2019-08-02, 12:20 PM
You cannot take the resistance feat more than once.

ARG! Some things in 5e just don't make sense.

So, I suppose that this will just become part of my Homebrew.
Should make it more 'balanced' for martials.


Regardless, where is this 8+ coming from? Saves are target-number based in 5e, not roll over a fixed number.

I'm sorry I did't show my calculations, teacher.
Proficiency 6 +5 ability = 11 + Roll of 8 on d20 = 19 to save.

Don't have a +5 modifier? Ok, might need to roll a 13 on d20.

It's only really a problem when the PC has no Proficiency and no Ability Modifier.
That's when you can only save with a natural roll of 19 or 20.

What's that, I targeted your Dump stat? Most likely a lucky thing, on my part.
(I agree that DMs constantly doing this isn't cool, really)

I'd suggest maybe Magical Books to boost your stats (sacrificed all your ASIs for feats?)
but hey - magic items were disliked/banned, right?

Anonymouswizard
2019-08-02, 04:09 PM
Am I the only one that sees how much more 5e does than any other Edition?

Did 4e get retconned out of the universe or something? I remember those martials doing Cool ThingsTM


Mana/Psionic Points? Too much Math, and extremely exploitable. Especially in 5e.

Okay, I've played enough RPGs to know one thing: tracking nine resources to do the same thing is annoying. (As a side note 5e's spell point system is bad due to not realising that a caster using spell points should have less 'juice' to make up for having more flexibility.) The most I've found worthwhile is 2 in Unknown Armies, and there you have to put effort into gsthering Charges.

D&D's problems with magic are deep, and are related to it having magic that is powerful and flexible, while denying both to Martials. 5e cranked the dials down to 9 for spellcasters in most cases, but needed to turn them further,to potentially 6 or less.

Great Dragon
2019-08-02, 05:37 PM
Did 4e get retconned out of the universe or something? I remember those martials doing Cool ThingsTM
No offense, but I can only compare to things I'm familiar with, and I don't have any experience with 4e.

First, I didn't have anyone interested in playing or running it with me.

Second: As stated, it looked too much like an attempt to do an TtMMO, and required lots of maps and minis.

Third, I'm not going to drop loads of money for something to sit on my self, gathering dust.

As I offered, I'm willing to give it a try, if someone (yourself?) is interested in showing me the "coolness" of 4e, that goes beyond the Boring "At Will", the easily burned up "Encounter" and not impressive "Daily" powers that I saw.

But again, my exp is limited with 4e.

Ill be honest. I don't even know all that much about Pathfinder either.
And the Second Edition (which looks suspiciously like 5e D&D at first glance) - and no one to play it with - means that I'm skipping this as well.

PF2 Rulebook 60, Beastary 50, Screen 20, Cards 23 = $153 !! Without taxes.

If I ever find people near me that want to play these, I'll consider getting them.


Okay, I've played enough RPGs to know one thing: tracking nine resources to do the same thing is annoying. (As a side note 5e's spell point system is bad due to not realising that a caster using spell points should have less 'juice' to make up for having more flexibility.)
So, let me see.
At 1 point per spell level, for a 20th level Wizard that works out to mana points:
4/3/3/3/3/2/2/1/1 is 4+6+9+12+15+12+14+8+9 = 89 points.
Plus 10 bonus points per day.


D&D's problems with magic are deep, and are related to it having magic that is powerful and flexible, while denying both to Martials. 5e cranked the dials down to 9 for spellcasters in most cases, but needed to turn them further,to potentially 6 or less.

Now, to take in your desired lowering of Power, your saying that they should only have maybe 75 points and no daily bonus?

In which case it would just be easier to say that the Wizard can't ever go past (about) 12th level.

Or, if higher spells are allowed, then all the points needed to cast 1st-4th level spells would go into casting them, once*. Since you'd have to increase the cost of higher level spells to prevent 'munchkin' casters from dumping low level mana points for more powerful higher level spells.

Maybe just taking away damaging spells? Leave the DPR to the Martials.

(* I'm running out of time, and I'm too tired to calculate points gained versus used.
I'll try next time. Sorry)


The most I've found worthwhile is 2 in Unknown Armies, and there you have to put effort into gsthering Charges.

So, although the caster has spent just as much time 'mastering' his power as the Fighter did honing his weapon skills, they must still take a chance that they fail each time they cast anything? Oh, and weird things happen when they do fail.

All because the (insert favorite Martial type) can't Fly for 10 minutes 4 times a day.
(Which if the caster did, would mean no Fireballs, Counterspells, ect. Without Upcasting: which costs spell options out of those levels)

But the 20th level Wizard that is out of spells, is only a little more effective than the average Commoner.

MeimuHakurei
2019-08-02, 05:51 PM
Well, balance doesn't mean you have to make non-spellcasters as powerful as spellcasters. You can put some limits on magic that make it less powerful. Start by really enforcing the material component rules. Spell casters end up spending a bunch of their time looking for the material they need and they tend to be less likely to toss spells around if they only have enough materials for two more applications of the spell. That's a simple RAW fix right there. If you want to move away from the rules then a whole world of possibility opens up before you.

If you enforce tracking accurately how many material components each Wizard is carrying I want the rogue to track exactly how many ball bearings they have on their person.

Great Dragon
2019-08-02, 06:00 PM
If you enforce tracking accurately how many material components each Wizard is carrying I want the rogue to track exactly how many ball bearings they have on their person.

LOL !! Heck YEAH!!!

And the martial isn't allowed to pull out a weapon from thin air, if it's not on their PC sheet:
Tough!

Anonymouswizard
2019-08-02, 06:08 PM
No offense, but I can only compare to things I'm familiar with, and I don't have any experience with 4e.

You made the claim, so you back it up. For the record this is the reasoning we're using for why 4e is the most balanced:

'All classes use the same resource structure and their damage dealing abilities use the same mechanics, with status effects having standardised durations. Characters also have defined roles that explicitly call out their focus, making trap builds less likely.' (I could go a bit deeper, but it's ten to twelve as I'm typing it.)


Second: As stated, it looked too much like an attempt to do an TtMMO, and required lots of maps and minis.

No, it's not an attempt to do a tabletop MMO.

It is a skirmish-level miniature wargame, as well as an RPG, but it has very little in common with MMOs. Do people really not look past the Defender/Striker/Leader/Controller setup? Because that's the only bit I can see that's in common with MMOs (it's also in quite a few single player CRPGs, as well as quite a few RTS and TBS games).

Honestly, I have a small list of things I wish had been kept from 4e. Healing Surges are one, Defender/Striker/Leader/Controller is another (Racial Powers are the third). Most of the rest I can leave, they work in 4e but wouldn't in a game with different assumptions, but I've found myself using Healing Surges in my homebrew systems and would use a Defence/Damage/Support/Control setup if I was going something combat related (I haven't for a while).


So, let me see.
At 1 point per spell level, for a 20th level Wizard that works out to mana points:
4/3/3/3/3/2/2/1/1 is 4+6+9+12+15+12+14+8+9 = 89 points.
Plus 10 bonus points per day.

The problem is that spell scaling is not linear, a 4th level spell is more than twice as powerful as a 2nd level spell (most of the time). Now I can't remember how the official spell point scaling works (I remember it comes out to over 200 points a day at the highest levels), but the problem is that they don't lose anything for that additional versatility. I'd probably argue that if you're moving directly to spell points you have to cut 'mana capacities' to roughly 80% at higher levels, while keeping it equal at higher levels.


Now, to take in your desired lowering of Power, your saying that they should only have maybe 75 points and no daily bonus?

No, what I'm saying is that casters need to be taken down in terms of power and versatility. They need less spells (particularly at high levels, not so much at lower levels), and they need to have their power capped at a lower level (I like to suggest 6th level). They don't strictly need to do their spells less often, but they need to not:

Do more things than the mundanes can do.
Do it better than the mundanes.

So while we're on this topic, cards on the table, I hate D&D, and I hate it for exactly this reason. I love playing spellcasters, and D&D makes it feel like I have too much power. My favourite character pulled off about three rituals in the entire campaign (but had some passive abilities they could pull off), and the one I played just after him had three 'effects' he could call on but no more. I adore having to work around awkward rituals, strange components, limited mana, and all those limitations other systems give magicians. I hate that D&D magic is easy, because it ruins that feeling of all your preperation and sessions of setting up candles in various parts of the city finally paying off.

Max_Killjoy
2019-08-02, 06:38 PM
You made the claim, so you back it up. For the record this is the reasoning we're using for why 4e is the most balanced:

'All classes use the same resource structure and their damage dealing abilities use the same mechanics, with status effects having standardised durations. Characters also have defined roles that explicitly call out their focus, making trap builds less likely.' (I could go a bit deeper, but it's ten to twelve as I'm typing it.)



No, it's not an attempt to do a tabletop MMO.

It is a skirmish-level miniature wargame, as well as an RPG, but it has very little in common with MMOs. Do people really not look past the Defender/Striker/Leader/Controller setup? Because that's the only bit I can see that's in common with MMOs (it's also in quite a few single player CRPGs, as well as quite a few RTS and TBS games).

Honestly, I have a small list of things I wish had been kept from 4e. Healing Surges are one, Defender/Striker/Leader/Controller is another (Racial Powers are the third). Most of the rest I can leave, they work in 4e but wouldn't in a game with different assumptions, but I've found myself using Healing Surges in my homebrew systems and would use a Defence/Damage/Support/Control setup if I was going something combat related (I haven't for a while).


To me, though, it felt like an attempt at a TTMMO.

And partially because of things you list... all the mechanics felt close to the same, with differences mainly being in how those abilities were "skinned" and some sliding scales for balancing... which is very common to MMOs. The whole "strictly and specifically defined role" thing too.

Great Dragon
2019-08-02, 08:23 PM
You made the claim, so you back it up. For the record this is the reasoning we're using for why 4e is the most balanced

Challenge accepted.
Because this goes deep into 4e and there might be Members not wanting to have to read through details and compairisons, I made a thread:
Here (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?594390-Fun-Learning-4e&p=24067440#post24067440).

See you there.

PairO'Dice Lost
2019-08-02, 08:26 PM
No, it's not an attempt to do a tabletop MMO.

It is a skirmish-level miniature wargame, as well as an RPG, but it has very little in common with MMOs. Do people really not look past the Defender/Striker/Leader/Controller setup? Because that's the only bit I can see that's in common with MMOs (it's also in quite a few single player CRPGs, as well as quite a few RTS and TBS games).


To me, though, it felt like an attempt at a TTMMO.

And partially because of things you list... all the mechanics felt close to the same, with differences mainly being in how those abilities were "skinned" and some sliding scales for balancing... which is very common to MMOs.

A lot of the "4e is an MMO!" complaints come from the art style, the color-coded power cards making a "power bar," the ditching (or at least heavily nerfing and downplaying) of most non-combat magic, and so forth, but a lot of it also comes from the fact that the designers outright said in interviews that they were drawing on MMO conceits and/or trying to attract MMO players to the game, both in the "hype" articles before and during 4e and then reinforcing it when talking about what design goals or rules artifacts from 4e they were planning to keep in 5e.

At lot of the pre-4e stuff was lost in the Gleemax debacle, WotC site reorganization, and suchlike, but here's a bit from this Mike Mearls interview (http://www.enworld.org/forum/content.php?1866-30-Minute-With-D-D-5E-s-Mike-Mearls-Playtests-OSR-Piracy-PDFS-Settings) regarding overall design goals:


[H]ow did you find your experience with the whole design process, and what was it like to work on the project?

[...] I think what 4th Edition, looking back, what we were trying to do was to start predicting for D&D where we thought the game was heading...so that was a big part of it. So what we think, when people are coming to role-playing games, they’re going to have that MMO background or a video game background.

[...] [F]or 90% of the people this like the first time they encounter a choose-you-own-adventure style play, they’ve never seen this before. But they’ve probably played a role-playing game...they’ve played Skyrim or [World of] Warcraft or any of those game, so they probably actually know what a role-playing game is. We can probably just assume they know what a role-playing game is and they know they just need to make a character, and let’s just start explaining how this game works. So what I think, as opposed to what happened before was, we were trying to predict the future, and then trying to get a sense of the audience, ok?

And regarding at-will magic:


Was that a conscious choice, or was that a response to the reaction from the fans?

[I]t was definitely a combination. We knew that At Will magic did really well with the initial playtests, and we had playtests where we looked at types of fantasy magic. [...] So going in to this knowing At Will magic, I would have been surprised if people didn’t like it. It was popular in 4th Edition, and it just kind of makes sense. That’s the kind of thing too, coming from a computer game background, people who play Skyrim and [World of] Warcraft, well of course you have At Will magic, right? D&D’s kind of a weird outlier where you stick a Wizard with a crossbow once he’s out of spells. Those games have Firebolt or something the Wizard can always throw, so I think that people are just used to that. So it’s not weird that D&D is going that way [too].

So when even Mearls himself is saying they were looking to WoW for inspiration...yeah, people are going to say 4e turned out MMO-like.


Honestly, I have a small list of things I wish had been kept from 4e.[...] [I] would use a Defence/Damage/Support/Control setup if I was going something combat related (I haven't for a while).


The whole "strictly and specifically defined role" thing too.

A lot of people defending 4e claim that it just codified the roles that were already in D&D (Fighter/Wizard/Rogue/Cleric is iconic for a reason and MMOs got roles from somewhere, after all), but the problem was that combat roles were never sharply divided along class lines, only build lines.

Every martial class could fill at least one of two roles depending on gear, weapon proficiencies (AD&D) or feats (3e), and similar (generally Striker or Defender, but Controller [rogue with Ambush feats, monk focused on Stunning Fist, Shadow Hand swordsage] and Leader [marshal or dragon shaman with auras, Devoted Spirit crusader] were also options), caster hybrids could generally handle two roles at once out of three possible (paladins are two of Striker/Leader/Defender depending on spell choice and smite/LoH focus, bards are always Controller+Leader and can switch for or add on others with PrC choices, etc.), and full casters could handle any one role with ease and often do all four in a single combat if necessary.

People weren't complaining that 4e slapped labels on what they were already doing, they were complaining that they and their group had always played with e.g. Striker fighters, Defender clerics, Controller rogues, and Leader wizards and suddenly playing that party wasn't possible anymore without making a bunch of other concessions (making the Fighter a Ranger and forcing him to TWF or use a bow, waiting for the Bard to come out and then try to build it as Wizard-like as possible, and so on).

OldTrees1
2019-08-02, 09:28 PM
I suppose. But I still think it would be at an appropriate power level if mages were using MP instead of spell slots to cast spells.

Anyway, if such a class is just tier 2, I wish someone would write it up. It would be cool to have that level of problem solving ability as a martial!

Agreed on both counts. It think it is a huge stepping stone. Personally I would want a more flexible but weaker class that still followed the non-magic no-casting martial theme. So I will keep searching. However I do want to acknowledge the progress.

jjordan
2019-08-02, 10:04 PM
If you enforce tracking accurately how many material components each Wizard is carrying I want the rogue to track exactly how many ball bearings they have on their person.Easy enough in my campaign: Zero. Do you have any idea how hard it is to make ball-bearings by hand? :) But it's not a good comparison. Spell components enable fire-balls and chain-lightning. Ball-bearings make terrain difficult. One is worth tracking IF you're trying to reduce the power of magic. The other much less.

jjordan
2019-08-02, 10:08 PM
And the martial isn't allowed to pull out a weapon from thin air, if it's not on their PC sheet:
Tough!Who allows that to begin with?

Jakinbandw
2019-08-02, 10:50 PM
Agreed on both counts. It think it is a huge stepping stone. Personally I would want a more flexible but weaker class that still followed the non-magic no-casting martial theme. So I will keep searching. However I do want to acknowledge the progress.

Working on it, I promise! I'm going to write up this 'Saitama Class' in the homebrew section for fun I think though

Ignimortis
2019-08-02, 11:31 PM
Am I the only one that sees how much more 5e does than any other Edition?
*snip*

Getting all saves means you blow all of your ASIs on Resilient, even if your DM allows stacking it. Barbarians get a lot of EHP, but that doesn't do much for the narrative disparity between someone who can teleport and someone who's just tough to kill. A good 3.5 barbarian actually did the same things that a 5e totem barb does, except with more power. Bear level 7 doubles your lift/carry? Level 20 3.5 rage also does that due to +8 STR, but you have 30+ STR at this point and can lift literal tons. And maybe throw them at someone, too, if you have the right feats.

Psychic Warriors are MUCH better than Eldritch Knights if you compare their 3.5 versions. Psychic Warriors would have to be on par with Paladins, at least. Other psionics might fit into other classes, but probably not that well because of fluff (except Sorcerer/Psion, maybe).

Tome of Battle classes made into X/day classes breaks the entire point of them. They are the "do cool stuff, almost all the time" classes.

And therein lies the crux of the problem. 5e is a resource management game which touts bounded accuracy as a plus, despite it being a limit on how good characters can get. 5e is lower power than 3.5 or 4e were, despite pretending not to be. Extremely so. And if you take out resource management, it ceases to pose a lot of challenge, unlike 3.5, where even if you have at-will maneuvers, you aren't autowinning everything by throwing them at enemies.

Jakinbandw
2019-08-03, 02:36 AM
Here: The Overstriker (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?594409-Overstriker-(an-attempt-at-a-tier-2-martial)&p=24067776#post24067776)

That's a basis for what a character would need to look like in 3.5 dnd to keep up with mages that use mana instead of vancian casting. Probably tier 2? Not sure honestly, I just had fun with it.

Great Dragon
2019-08-03, 06:15 AM
Who allows that to begin with?
Heh. I've seen it a bit over the years.

With the statement that it wasn't magical, so Dispelling and Anti-magic had no effect on it.

I was a joking (I can't do Blue text easily on my phone) and making a reference to how many times I've seen someone use an Anime Character's Abilities of doing so, for their PC.

Highlander did that quite a bit of the time:
Walk around with no weapons visible, another Immortal shows up, and he pulls out a - what? - 3.5' blade from nowhere, and starts fighting. Not every episode, but often enough.

While I might not make you keep track of each ball bearing, I do ask how many bags of at least 20 are available.

Oh, and ball bearings are made by the Gnomes of Pytzborgg.

********

Found something to ponder
5e Mistakes (https://m.mythcreants.com/blog/5th-edition-dungeons-and-dragons-hasnt-learned-from-its-mistakes/)

Max_Killjoy
2019-08-03, 09:07 AM
Speaking of Mythcreants...

https://mythcreants.com/blog/how-to-create-a-rational-magic-system/

There's always the alternative of creating a constrained and rational magic system for your setting, and thus your game mechanics... instead of trying to push into "utterly not fantastic I swear, but can do blatantly fantastic things" territory.

Great Dragon
2019-08-03, 09:53 AM
@Max_Killjoy: Indeed.

While D&D tries to do hard magic, it doesn't get Rational a lot of the time.
Heck, Oriental Adventures and especially Rokugon (which is based on Legend of the Five Rings) is better at Rational system, while still being mostly hard magic (well defined rules for spells and magical effects) that didn't ignore soft magic.

Some things are consistent in D&D, like Fireball. But really, when was the last time you saw a Player describe rolling Sulfur and Guano into a ball of tar before casting it? Instead of (now) just using their Focus?
Don't get me wrong, I do like the fact that I don't need to have 10 pages of spell components for my Wizard PC sheet, but with the way that I see Foci being enforced; if it's taken away, I can't even use Material Components to cast anything that uses them.


******
Now, I have removed Wish from the Mage's list.

Put a limit on how many Simulacrum one Mage can have.

And Genesis (now called Demiplane) is an Epic level power, that is also available to Clerics.
(Druids can do it, but most prefer to just go to the Feywild)
Literally making your own Demi-Plane isn't something that should just be readily available to every Mage.

I have other 'solutions' to Mages being OP, as well.


******
So, are we full circle? - where even with lots of reductions in Power, people still think Martials are getting the short end of the Wand?

Max_Killjoy
2019-08-03, 10:28 AM
@Max_Killjoy: Indeed.

While D&D tries to do hard magic, it doesn't get Rational a lot of the time.
Heck, Oriental Adventures and especially Rokugon (which is based on Legend of the Five Rings) is better at Rational system, while still being mostly hard magic (well defined rules for spells and magical effects) that didn't ignore soft magic.

Some things are consistent in D&D, like Fireball. But really, when was the last time you saw a Player describe rolling Sulfur and Guano into a ball of tar before casting it? Instead of (now) just using their Focus?
Don't get me wrong, I do like the fact that I don't need to have 10 pages of spell components for my Wizard PC sheet, but with the way that I see Foci being enforced; if it's taken away, I can't even use Material Components to cast anything that uses them.



D&D doesn't do anything systematic or rational with its magic -- at the fiction level, I mean.

It just does kitchen sink, with giant lists of spells from wherever they could be grabbed from, it's the epitome of "design be 'that's awesome!'"

It mistakes tedium and the sell / no-sell (https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/NoSell) arms race for game balance, and where the List of Awesome leaves a hole, it falls back on a List of Symmetrical Completeness.

Anonymouswizard
2019-08-03, 10:47 AM
A lot of the "4e is an MMO!" complaints come from the art style, the color-coded power cards making a "power bar," the ditching (or at least heavily nerfing and downplaying) of most non-combat magic, and so forth, but a lot of it also comes from the fact that the designers outright said in interviews that they were drawing on MMO conceits and/or trying to attract MMO players to the game, both in the "hype" articles before and during 4e and then reinforcing it when talking about what design goals or rules artifacts from 4e they were planning to keep in 5e.

At lot of the pre-4e stuff was lost in the Gleemax debacle, WotC site reorganization, and suchlike, but here's a bit from this Mike Mearls interview (http://www.enworld.org/forum/content.php?1866-30-Minute-With-D-D-5E-s-Mike-Mearls-Playtests-OSR-Piracy-PDFS-Settings) regarding overall design goals:

Interesting, that explains it.


A lot of people defending 4e claim that it just codified the roles that were already in D&D (Fighter/Wizard/Rogue/Cleric is iconic for a reason and MMOs got roles from somewhere, after all), but the problem was that combat roles were never sharply divided along class lines, only build lines.

Every martial class could fill at least one of two roles depending on gear, weapon proficiencies (AD&D) or feats (3e), and similar (generally Striker or Defender, but Controller [rogue with Ambush feats, monk focused on Stunning Fist, Shadow Hand swordsage] and Leader [marshal or dragon shaman with auras, Devoted Spirit crusader] were also options), caster hybrids could generally handle two roles at once out of three possible (paladins are two of Striker/Leader/Defender depending on spell choice and smite/LoH focus, bards are always Controller+Leader and can switch for or add on others with PrC choices, etc.), and full casters could handle any one role with ease and often do all four in a single combat if necessary.

People weren't complaining that 4e slapped labels on what they were already doing, they were complaining that they and their group had always played with e.g. Striker fighters, Defender clerics, Controller rogues, and Leader wizards and suddenly playing that party wasn't possible anymore without making a bunch of other concessions (making the Fighter a Ranger and forcing him to TWF or use a bow, waiting for the Bard to come out and then try to build it as Wizard-like as possible, and so on).

Interesting. 4e made big mistakes (such as tying Role too strongly to Class), but it still feels like 5e threw out all of the good elements in order to bring back the worst of 3.X (hello overpowered casters).


Found something to ponder
5e Mistakes (https://m.mythcreants.com/blog/5th-edition-dungeons-and-dragons-hasnt-learned-from-its-mistakes/)

Interesting, but I already knew 80% of it. If you're not blinded by a D&D-focus a lot of 5e's flaws come to light, especially as it's a game that's somewhere between five to ten years behind the industry despite trying to jump on the big trends*.

These days if I want to play D&D style fantasy I'll run The Fantasy Trip or Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, both of which suffer from balance problems, but in one case are the unfortunate side effect of point build systems and in the other are both part of the world and somewhat mitigated (hello miscasts and speciesism).

* Mainly because it's implementation of things like 'roleplaying mechanics' is behind where they were in the late 90s.


Speaking of Mythcreants...

https://mythcreants.com/blog/how-to-create-a-rational-magic-system/

There's always the alternative of creating a constrained and rational magic system for your setting, and thus your game mechanics... instead of trying to push into "utterly not fantastic I swear, but can do blatantly fantastic things" territory.

Ah, rational magic, where 'anythimng goes' is tossed aside for something that actually makes sense. I wish more games would use it(the only ones that do, to my knowledge, are Unknown Armies and games like Ars Magica).

Great Dragon
2019-08-03, 10:51 AM
D&D doesn't do anything systematic or rational with its magic -- at the fiction level, I mean.

It just does kitchen sink, with giant lists of spells from wherever they could be grabbed from, it's the epitome of "design be 'that's awesome!'"

Oh, I absolutely agree that the D&D fiction/Novels did the 'made up to look awesome'.

RA Salvatore did the best at even writing FR, and he avoided magic (except the Gem) like the plague!

Greyhawk was a mess (But it was Gagax's baby, anyway) with more Dues ex Machina than real plots.

Darksun didn't limit magic, but killed the Planet doing so.
If you wanted to be the eco-friendly good guy, you were better off being a Psionic Class.
(D&D Psionics was it's own ball of WTF)

Magic could change depending on which Dimension you were in - with Planescape.
(Exact changes and other limitations were left up to the DM.)

And while I liked Spelljammer, it was bonkers with magic.


It mistakes tedium and the sell / no-sell arms race for game balance, and where the List of Awesome leaves a hole, it falls back on a List of Symmetrical Completeness.
I've kinda always believed that there should be more sell / no sell conditions for magic.

But, with actual reasons for why and usable rules for how they work.
5e Energy Resistance is better then 3x, and Immunity is a flat no sell to the energy type.

Sadly, I don't have anyone near me to work on figuring these things out, and doing it over the net usually doesn't work, without lots of trial and error - and most folks here have things they would rather do.
Like figure out how to better optimize their latest Broken Character idea...
Not everyone, but....
Let me see: Counting the People here, plus Tawmis, Man_Over_Game, Segev, PheonixPhyre and Grod_The_Giant.
I'd have to go though some of my old posts to find anymore.
(I'm at least trying)



Interesting, but I already knew 80% of it. If you're not blinded by a D&D-focus a lot of 5e's flaws come to light, especially as it's a game that's somewhere between five to ten years behind the industry despite trying to jump on the big trends*.

That's the biggest problem with D&D, it either chases after the latest trend (AD&D = complicated Math for basic results) (3x = Lots of exceptions to Rules) (4e = MMO) (5e = "New" Retro-Clone) or accidentally sets those trends.

While I'm a fan of D&D, I do my best to not be closed minded towards other RPGs. Including 4e D&D.
I just can't get interested in them without people to play them with.
And I can't really do more then maybe 4 games a week, without mental burnout.

*****
But, what I was trying to explain, is that there are ways for the DM to stay within the 5e Rules and still 'balance' the mages. The Bounded Accuracy design really cut down on Quadratic Wizards - and concentration stopped most game breaking shenanigans. Put in some real conditions, like: not having your Focus or at least the correct Components; means no casting of spells that require them.

A little more Gaming as War, with combat maybe Gaming as Sport.
I don't claim that my system is the best. I just offer it as a suggestion to others because it does work for me, with nearly all my Gaming Groups.

OldTrees1
2019-08-03, 12:11 PM
******
So, are we full circle? - where even with lots of reductions in Power, people still think Martials are getting the short end of the Wand?

Imagine you have a character concept. Imagine wanting to instantiate that concept into an RPG. Now imagine the authors of those RPGs lacked enough creativity / imagination for their mechanics to be able to instantiate your character concept. Furthermore imagine those authors are quite creative when it comes to another character concept. So creative that it inspired your imagination and broke some of your mental blocks about your character concept. Now not only did the published materials fail to instantiate your character concept but, by being more creative when instantiating another character concept, they raised your expectations with regards to instantiating your own character concept.

It is not about power. Some people can imagine these high level characters but those that author the published content can imagine the high level mages but cannot imagine these other high level characters (non-magic, non-caster, at-will, etc, etc). So you get disappointed players that have character concepts that cannot be instantiated because the author's imagination failed them. And most of these are the harder concepts to imagine. Personally I get stuck somewhere in levels 11-16*. At that point my imagination fails to be able to generate mechanics to instantiate these characters. So I understand the difficulty.

This is the short end of the wand. Some concepts are harder to imagine == thus => harder to design mechanics for == thus => harder to instantiate into the game. Those concepts tend to receive worse instantiations and characterizations as a consequence of these mental blocks.

*Levels based on 3rd edition D&D scale. Different RPGs/editions go beyond that level or stop before it** but that is where I stop being able to write mechanical representations for these concepts.

** This is kinda what you did when you chose to delay some of the magic flexibility to higher level. You altered the scale.

Ignimortis
2019-08-03, 12:48 PM
Imagine you have a character concept. Imagine wanting to instantiate that concept into an RPG. Now imagine the authors of those RPGs lacked enough creativity / imagination for their mechanics to be able to instantiate your character concept. Furthermore imagine those authors are quite creative when it comes to another character concept. So creative that it inspired your imagination and broke some of your mental blocks about your character concept. Now not only did the published materials fail to instantiate your character concept but, by being more creative when instantiating another character concept, they raised your expectations with regards to instantiating your own character concept.

It is not about power. Some people can imagine these high level characters but those that author the published content can imagine the high level mages but cannot imagine these other high level characters (non-magic, non-caster, at-will, etc, etc). So you get disappointed players that have character concepts that cannot be instantiated because the author's imagination failed them. And most of these are the harder concepts to imagine. Personally I get stuck somewhere in levels 11-16*. At that point my imagination fails to be able to generate mechanics to instantiate these characters. So I understand the difficulty.

This is the short end of the wand. Some concepts are harder to imagine == thus => harder to design mechanics for == thus => harder to instantiate into the game. Those concepts tend to receive worse instantiations and characterizations as a consequence of these mental blocks.

*Levels based on 3rd edition D&D scale. Different RPGs/editions go beyond that level or stop before it** but that is where I stop being able to write mechanical representations for these concepts.

** This is kinda what you did when you chose to delay some of the magic flexibility to higher level. You altered the scale.

Great post. That's why I keep getting disappointed by most high-fantasy RPGs that aren't Exalted or homebrewed to hell 3.PF.

OldTrees1
2019-08-03, 01:05 PM
Struck by a thought. Have to write it somewhere:

A way to make a flexible martials without limited resources / spellcasting:
Start with a variety of basic endeavors: Attack, Movement, ..., ..., etc
I suggest having the number of endeavors per turn and out of turn increase with level.
Have a chapter of alterations: Knockback, Power Attack, ..., etc
Alterations are not feats, you get access to all the ones you satisfy the unlock requirement for. No feats needed here.
Each option in the chapter of alterations will have:

An unlock requirement. For example Knockback might require Str 15, or Athletics Proficiency, or a Paraglider, or ..., etc
A requirement of the endeavor it will modify. For example Knockback would require the endeavor contacts the target of the knockback
A complexity cost. This prevents you from apply every compatible alteration each time you use an endeavor. Complexity ranges from 0 to some positive number. Negative complexity costs do not exist.
An effect (duh) which might scale or even trigger another endeavor. Knockback might have distance scale off of an Athletics check, or maybe it kicks off a Pushing endeavor to determine the distance.

Each time the character uses an endeavor (and that can be multiple times per turn or out of turn) they can modify it with alterations up to some complexity cap (which increases with level).

So you have martials whose flexibility scales with: (content created, complexity cap(mostly direct level scaling), and achieving unlock thresholds (indirect level scaling)).

So you could have someone use this system to do things like:
Hit a boulder for fast travel
Give an ally cover as a reaction
and many more

comk59
2019-08-03, 01:58 PM
Easy enough in my campaign: Zero. Do you have any idea how hard it is to make ball-bearings by hand? :)

Not very, actually. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shot_tower
I mean you need a tall tower and a bucket of water, but those are a dime a dozen in D&D.

Great Dragon
2019-08-03, 02:02 PM
OldTrees1

Imagine you have a character concept. Imagine wanting to instantiate that concept into an RPG. Now imagine the authors of those RPGs lacked enough creativity / imagination for their mechanics to be able to instantiate your character concept. Furthermore imagine those authors are quite creative when it comes to another character concept. So creative that it inspired your imagination and broke some of your mental blocks about your character concept. Now not only did the published materials fail to instantiate your character concept but, by being more creative when instantiating another character concept, they raised your expectations with regards to instantiating your own character concept.

Part of the problem there, my friend, is that your concept didn't start within the context of the game's intended design, and when trying to get everything wanted (especially at low levels for D&D) you're most likely stuck with an uncooperative DM.

Now, I will concede that a lot of RPGs tend to be focused around one thing, and suck at another.
WoD is my go to for this example: Choose only one thing: Werewolf, Vampires, Mage, Changeling, etc.
None of these books are compatible - even though they use the same d10 system.

Like a few years ago, I had what 5 players wanting to play DBZ concepts.
Which don't really translate well, even into 3.x bendable/breakable multi-classing rules.
A lot were very disappointed, even if they still played.
Note: this was before the ToB, which might have helped.

See, I had this problem back in AD&D - but when wanting to create my Human Mage.
The DM was very anti-mages, and the game system didn't seem to have any real rules that allowed much for them to do. (It's been ages, and my memory isn't reliable) I recall that I was literally nothing more then the Magic Missile Machine, when I looked at a lot of the other available spells (like Sleep) but there wasn't any way to really get new spells, unless the DM was nice to roll for Arcane Scrolls - and having to take 8 hours to Identify even one magical effect or item, (but not able to detect Cursed items) it was just easier to try to figure out what they did by experimentation, and hope the Party Cleric could cure anything bad that happened.


It is not about power. Some people can imagine these high level characters but those that author the published content can imagine the high level mages but cannot imagine these other high level characters (non-magic, non-caster, at-will, etc, etc). So you get disappointed players that have character concepts that cannot be instantiated because the author's imagination failed them. And most of these are the harder concepts to imagine. Personally I get stuck somewhere in levels 11-16 (Levels based on 3rd edition D&D scale) Different RPGs/editions go beyond that level or stop before it (This is kinda what you did when you chose to delay some of the magic flexibility to higher level. You altered the scale) but that is where I stop being able to write mechanical representations for these concepts.

At that point my imagination fails to be able to generate mechanics to instantiate these characters. So I understand the difficulty.
There are times when my imagination does fail me, regardless of RPG system.
Some of the things from Shadowrun (Adept) just broke my mind.


This is the short end of the wand. Some concepts are harder to imagine == thus => harder to design mechanics for == thus => harder to instantiate into the game. Those concepts tend to receive worse instantiations and characterizations as a consequence of these mental blocks.

Maybe this is my limit (for D&D) here?

Morty
2019-08-03, 02:08 PM
Pardon my tendencies to go to extremes.

But, I was actually confused by what you were aiming for, by your comment of "almost" on my reduced mage idea.


I didn't use the word "almost" in this entire thread.

OldTrees1
2019-08-03, 02:41 PM
OldTrees1
Part of the problem there, my friend, is that your concept didn't start within the context of the game's intended design, and when trying to get everything wanted (especially at low levels for D&D) you're most likely stuck with an uncooperative DM.

The character concept could be imagined before or after the context of the game's intended design. The point of failure is at the mechanical level. D&D includes the abstract concept of high level martial characters in its intended design. It intends for them to exist in the same space as high level spells. But when those authors went to create mechanics for that ... it takes them a lot of time, effort, tries, and innovation before they even thought of ToB.

PS: No need to presume an uncooperative DM. I am talking about an author's material rather than what my group changes.


Now, I will concede that a lot of RPGs tend to be focused around one thing, and suck at another.
WoD is my go to for this example: Choose only one thing: Werewolf, Vampires, Mage, Changeling, etc.
None of these books are compatible - even though they use the same d10 system.
I was not really talking about that. However, imagine Vampire Masquerade with all of its intent to allow many different types of Vampire. However the authors hit an imagination block so that only Dracula like vampires have mid-high level content with all the other types (despite being in the design) only having low level content.


Like a few years ago, I had what 5 players wanting to play DBZ concepts.
Which don't really translate well, even into 3.x bendable/breakable multi-classing rules.
A lot were very disappointed, even if they still played.
Note: this was before the ToB, which might have helped.
This is closer to what I was talking about D&D thinks and intends to support those abstract concepts, but the authors struggled to imagine how to make concrete mechanics that could instantiate those concepts. So the 3.0 Goku was either a 20th level Wizard or a 20th level Monk. Neither does a good job at capturing the concept because Monks (the better fit) did not have high level mechanics and Wizards (which did have high level mechanics) were not a good fit for the concept. Additionally you can see here that the 20th level Wizard is more flexible than Goku, so the player might conclude that a properly instantiated Goku would be lower than 20th level and a 20th level Goku would be even more flexible than in the original character concept.

And then in late 3.5 ToB came out which was a closer mechanical instantiation of the character concept. Now they could create something like Goku at 10th level.* While they would not be able to instantiate the Goku++ that was the same conceptual level as the 20th level Wizard, they could at least have their 10th level Goku.

* Or start at 1st with the lower level version of the concept that would eventually grow into Goku.

Hence my overall point. When trying to solve this instantiation problem it comes down to our imagination having few mental blocks for some character concepts than it does for others. The concepts locked behind more mental blocks take more time/effort/imagination/and innovation to overcome those mental blocks. Once you overcome those mental blocks then you can create the concrete mechanics that instantiate those character concepts at those levels.

It would be hard for me to imagine and create the mechanics necessary for instantiating a 60th level version of Todd from next door. :smallbiggrin: Although there is no Todd next door, so the concept of being fictional might help the process. :smalltongue: I would struggle long before 60th but the hyperbole and exaggeration was funny.


See, I had this problem back in AD&D - but when wanting to create my Human Mage.
The DM was very anti-mages, and the game system didn't seem to have any real rules that allowed much for them to do. (It's been ages, and my memory isn't reliable) I recall that I was literally nothing more then the Magic Missile Machine, when I looked at a lot of the other available spells (like Sleep) but there wasn't any way to really get new spells, unless the DM was nice to roll for Arcane Scrolls - and having to take 8 hours to Identify even one magical effect or item, (but not able to detect Cursed items) it was just easier to try to figure out what they did by experimentation, and hope the Party Cleric could cure anything bad that happened.
Part of that was the low level. (Character concepts span all level ranges but are weaker and less flexible when they are lower level.)
However a lot of that was the magic mechanics at the time. Luckily there have been innovations since. The Warlock, the 3rd edition Dread Necromancer, and the 4th/5th edition Cantrips come to mind as mages that have some at will magic. The 5th edition Rituals also addressed the Identify issue.


There are times when my imagination does fail me, regardless of RPG system.
Some of the things from Shadowrun (Adept) just broke my mind.
Maybe this is my limit (for D&D) here?
To be clear. I was talking about where my imagination fails to allow me to author mechanics to instantiate those character concepts. Somewhere in the 11-16th level range I run into a writer's block with regard to making high level martial mechanics. Above that point I fail to even author mechanics for those character concepts.

Lanaya
2019-08-03, 03:45 PM
Interesting. 4e made big mistakes (such as tying Role too strongly to Class)

Trying very hard to skate around this particular conversation without getting into edition war territory, but this is completely false, and a simple case of people being too turned off by the presentation of 4e to examine what it's actually doing (a thing that happens a lot). Yeah, the 4e PHB says that fighters are defenders and their job is to meat shield. The 3.5 PHB also tells you that a cleric's job is to healbot, yet that never stopped people from turning them into enormous tier 1 beatsticks that magic their problems out of existence once they get bored of beating them to death with their buffed up combat stats. As has already been noted, D&D has had roles ever since its inception, and that has never stopped people from moving outside that role to do other stuff. The only thing that changed in 4e was the addition of a little one-word summary of what that assumed role is, placed before the more detailed and flowery role description present in every edition's PHB.

So yeah, fighter's a defender class. And it's a defender class with a wealth of multiattack powers, which are the bread and butter of 4e striking, which defends teammates by beating monsters over the head for a bunch of damage if they attack anyone else, with explicit build options for saying screw AC, I'm going to haul a giant slab of metal around and cut people in half if they look at me funny, and then everyone'll be really well defended because there won't be anything left to attack them. In other words, exactly the same thing as fighter was in every edition, except with a bit more mechanical support to back it up. And while I'm using fighter as the example here, it's hardly unique. Wizards can still cast fireball if you don't like the idea of battlefield control, clerics still get plenty of support for wading into the front lines and beating people to death, paladins still smite evil, rogues can move away from striking and instead run around crippling enemies with dirty tricks, blah blah blah. This is all right there in the PHB1, mind - content from splats certainly helped to diversify the classes, but all the versatility to play the class in various different roles was there from day 1, with the PHB1 even explicitly telling you that role wasn't a straitjacket that forces you into a one-dimensional archetype, and the concept of roles was exactly the same as always, unchanged from the very first day Gygax picked up a d20 and decided to pretend to be an elf, and these roles were described and presented in the same way as it always had been. Literally the only thing that changed was the addition, to the role description in every class entry, of that one-word summary at the top.

Great Dragon
2019-08-03, 06:29 PM
@OldTrees1: I'm not sure how to proceed from here.

Most of the time, I can usually figure out how to fit a Concept for a Character into an RPG.

Like your Goku in D&D example: Without the Tome of Battle, the choices are Monk (most likely Sunsoul), or maybe a homebrewed 5e Fighter: Eldritch Knight.

Goku might have been Monk/Warlock in 3x D&D. But, again - not fully there.
I agree that Goku as any kind of Caster other than maybe Sorcerer in 3x didn't fit the Character.

Sure, it's not going to be a perfect fit in either case, which means unhappy Player.

But I really can't do One Punch Man. Or Superman or Heck - even Nightcrawler.

On the ToB: the only thing that I can think of would be making those disciplines be Short Rest - but would not be any closer.

Powers that don't have any resource costs just don't really translate well.
Even Fighters are still limited by Action Economy per round. And I still tend to see ToB maneuvers as a type of magic, and therefore should have a resource cost. Even the Paladin's Auras have that cost.


To be clear. I was talking about where my imagination fails to allow me to author mechanics to instantiate those character concepts. Somewhere in the 11-16th level range I run into a writer's block with regard to making high level martial mechanics. Above that point I fail to even author mechanics for those character concepts.

I mean, short of giving a martial a 20' diameter (energy) Nova Blast (Equal to a Meteor Swarm) once a day, there's really not a lot I can do to make them nearly equal to Mages at 20th level, for comparing power.
(but, even then someone would complain that the mage can do that at ranged and they can't)


Currently in 5e
5 (1d8) +5 Ability +3 magic = 13 times 8 = 104 damage in a round compared to 160 damage if the enemy (figure 1,000 targets, max) failed their save or 80 halved before resistances are applied.
And at 20th level, even the Mooks have more then 150 hp each.

The mage can do that 160 damage spell once a day, and the fighter can do that 104 DPR once per encounter (short rest assumed) plus 52 average damage all day.

But, yeah. My imagination's failure and lack of ability to do the mechanics better means;
all I can do is use/modify what's there enough where you might not walk away from my table.

Anonymouswizard
2019-08-03, 06:46 PM
Trying very hard to skate around this particular conversation without getting into edition war territory, but this is completely false, and a simple case of people being too turned off by the presentation of 4e to examine what it's actually doing (a thing that happens a lot).

Eh, people also misunderstand what a Defender's role is (I've seen people assume that they're 'high defence low damage', ignoring the required stickiness). There's also the idea of secondary roles, which should have been addressed in the PhB (the Fighter is very clearly a Defender with a secondary role of Striker, compared to the Paladin's Defender/Leader).

I think 4e would have sat with people a lot better if they'd instead had classes closer to sitting betweent he lines. So a Fighter can be a Defender or a Striker, or a Wizard can be a Controller or a Leader. I mean, it essentially had those, the Warlock springs to mind, but IIRC 4e didn't get to it's best point unitl you were running PHB1+PHB2 with some of the X Power supplements and potentially the campaign setting classes, because the additional powers allowed classes to branch out into additional roles.

Also, there was no Martial Controller, that really annoyed me. The Ranger was perfect for that, they could have been a shorter ranged controller who set down traps and lured monsters into them.

I'm not saying you're wrong, but a lot of classes were pushed into certain roles.

Lanaya
2019-08-03, 07:20 PM
There's also the idea of secondary roles, which should have been addressed in the PhB (the Fighter is very clearly a Defender with a secondary role of Striker, compared to the Paladin's Defender/Leader).

That's the thing, it was. Page 52, right in the description of what roles are.
Different classes approach their role in different ways, and many classes include limited elements of one or more other roles as well. For example, both the fighter and the paladin are defenders, but the fighter adds some aspects of the striker to his repertoire, while the paladin has some abilities often associated with leaders, such as healing.

Now, yeah, there are some classes here and there that get pushed into one role. Making a ranger who isn't a striker is difficult at best, and maybe 4e would be better if that weren't the case. But that's not a change from other editions. I'm not saying 4e is perfect, I'm specifically arguing against the idea that it represents a regression from its predecessors. You can't make a leader rogue in 4e without doing some ridiculous amount of convoluted splat-diving, but you can't do that in any other D&D edition either.

jjordan
2019-08-03, 07:32 PM
Ah, rational magic, where 'anythimng goes' is tossed aside for something that actually makes sense. I wish more games would use it(the only ones that do, to my knowledge, are Unknown Armies and games like Ars Magica).Ars Magica is an interesting choice of examples. It deals with the question of magical power imbalances by taking magic users out of play for long periods of time as they delve into the research and practice needed to advance their skills. Players maintain a stable of characters so they can be assured of getting game time while their other characters are unavailable.

This, more than anything else, is how Ars Magica deals with the perceived imbalances. Which is not to say I don't admire the heck out of their magic system.

OldTrees1
2019-08-03, 08:52 PM
@OldTrees1: I'm not sure how to proceed from here.
That might be because I am discussing rather than arguing.

I described what the root cause is, why it occurs, and the mechanism of how it occurs. I did this to help create empathy for both the player with the level capped concept and the author whose work failed to raise that level cap to the system's level cap. (It can be annoying to have a 5th level character in a 20th level group despite your sheet saying 20th level)

This is not an issue of balance. This is not an issue of power. It is an issue of flexibility. It is an issue of imagination limits. It is a consequence of two people with different limits to their imagination.

And progress can and has been made. Progress can happen faster while we understand the problem's mechanics.


Most of the time, I can usually figure out how to fit a Concept for a Character into an RPG.

Like your Goku in D&D example: Without the Tome of Battle, the choices are Monk (most likely Sunsoul), or maybe a homebrewed 5e Fighter: Eldritch Knight.

Goku might have been Monk/Warlock in 3x D&D. But, again - not fully there.
I agree that Goku as any kind of Caster other than maybe Sorcerer in 3x didn't fit the Character.

Sure, it's not going to be a perfect fit in either case, which means unhappy Player.

But I really can't do One Punch Man. Or Superman or Heck - even Nightcrawler.

So my examples were not in vain. You do see mismatch between the concepts supported in the abstract and the concepts supported mechanically once you reach higher level.

Hopefully you have also been reading HOW that mismatch occurs. Hopefully you are empathizing with me over the difficulty authors have with the limits of their imagination. I personally have stated the imagination limits of my own ability to create mechanics at higher levels. Hopefully you still empathize with those unhappy players. The players that had a concept, chose a RPG that the concept fit within, and then found a lack of supporting mechanics.

Knowing is half the battle.


Powers that don't have any resource costs just don't really translate well.
Even Fighters are still limited by Action Economy per round. And I still tend to see ToB maneuvers as a type of magic, and therefore should have a resource cost. Even the Paladin's Auras have that cost.

Sounds like we have a miscommunication. ToB maneuvers get expended. Spells get expended. Smites get expended. Fighter's attacks do not get expended despite only being allowed X actions each turn. Paladin Auras don't get expended nor do they have a duration that runs out. Some character concepts are more like Fighter's attacks & Paladin Auras than they are like ToB maneuvers, Barbarian Rages, or Paladin Smites. That distinction is what I usually label as "limited resources" to communicate the distinction those players cared about with regard to their character concepts they wanted to instantiate.


I mean, short of giving a martial a 20' diameter (energy) Nova Blast (Equal to a Meteor Swarm) once a day, there's really not a lot I can do to make them nearly equal to Mages at 20th level, for comparing power.
(but, even then someone would complain that the mage can do that at ranged and they can't)

This felt off topic.
1) I have been talking about flexibility not power.
2) I don't want to talking about any person to person conflict.
3) If you want to give martials an AoE effects, have you considered giving them Sweeping melee attacks (attack everyone in 3 squares) and either a Volley(dex) or Frag/Larger(str) ranged attacks? They are at least 10th level so that kind of flexibility can make sense.


But, yeah. My imagination's failure and lack of ability to do the mechanics better means;
all I can do is use/modify what's there enough where you might not walk away from my table.

1) Um, I am not at your table? Or where you using "you" to represent an arbitrary person?
2) Knowing your limitations (not failure) actually helps you overcome them when it is a limitation in imagination. During this dialogue I even had a spontaneous thought (which I posted). That might push my limitation further.
3) You are not alone. You have your imagination, the imagination of the players around you, and the imagination of everyone else you seek out. Jakinbandw's imagination came up with an idea. While their idea is too strong (again, it is flexibility not power that is being sought) it did display a way to push the imagination limit.
4) Your decisions are not written in stone. When a rulebook is published, that attempt is recorded for all time. If it has a mistake, it will be there forever. When you make a decision, you can alter it later. You have the freedom to continually improve your houserules/homebrew.

Great Dragon
2019-08-04, 09:55 AM
Spell slots don't work as a limiting mechanic and wouldn't even if spells themselves weren't so strong. They're entirely reliant on the GM being willing and able to enforce a number of "encounters" every day. This gets harder as you leave a traditional dungeon crawl. Furthermore, if casters have their per-day spells and non-casters don't, the whole party still operates on the casters' schedule. Which only contributes to the feeling that casters are the more important party members.

Furthermore, casters being screwed once they run out of spells or components is not a good thing.
It only enforces a binary - either they do have the right spell and solve a problem/encounter handily or they don't and they're neutralized. Same thing happens with anti-magic fields, zones and whatnot.


I didn't use the word "almost" in this entire thread.

IiRC - it was "close"

Somewhat close, yes.
- which I interpret as the same.

Sorry, I'll keep looking for you, Morty.

@Morty:
Casters Being Binary is actually meant to be a real limit. Spells are not like skills.
They do one thing, and it either works, or not


Yes, and it's a bad limit that doesn't work. As I have explained.
It's a root cause of many of the problems people debate about endlessly.

Me = Post #33
Morty = Post #38
Me = Post #39

Perhaps more elaboration on why everything that I've posted doesn't work as a limit to Mages?
(Don't want to read the entire thread again? OK)
Lower Spell Slots. Limited Spells Known/day. Concentration and Component requirements.
No Wish. No endless Simulacrum. No Demiplane/s. Switch Astral Projection and Plane Shift.
New = Put a CR cap on Gate?


That might be because I am discussing rather than arguing.

I'm sorry if I seem to be trying to argue, but that's really not my goal.
And sometimes I'll have trouble organizing/expressing my thoughts. (On Phone plus RL time limits)

As you noticed during a heated discussion about (metaphorical) Elephants in a (now dead?) thread not too long ago, I'm not very diplomatic in conveying my side of the debate. Your assistance with that was greatly appreciated.

Seems my Logic doesn't translate well, either.


I described what the root cause is, why it occurs, and the mechanism of how it occurs.

I'll try to re-read that.
(Placed in my post below)


I did this to help create empathy for both the player with the level capped concept and the author whose work failed to raise that level cap to the system's level cap. (It can be annoying to have a 5th level character in a 20th level group despite your sheet saying 20th level)

So, was my suggestion to take away all but the Cantrips for damage for a Wizard bring said down from their perch?

Doesn't seem so, what with all the other "instant win" (but still limited) non-combat spells (of mid-high range) available.

Which seems to be the complaint, here.


This is not an issue of balance. This is not an issue of power. It is an issue of flexibility. It is an issue of imagination limits.

I'm hoping that I'm showing that I'm at least trying to expand my knowledge and imagination.
(Especially since I'm now attempting to actually understand 4e)

But, with that flexibility for Martials, it seems that it is also duplicating/decreasing the same flexibility for mages.

Like the Fighter not being an Eldritch Knight, but still using Fly at least twice a day.

Like the Monk not being Way of the Shadow, but still matching Misty Step nearly at will.

These examples simply say: Subclasses are pointless.
Throw everything into a blender and just pick what you want.

Which then the game becomes a Point Buy System, and Archetypes barely have meaning. (Shadowrun)

Or is my imagination once again off track?


*"***
Having to reread the entire thread multiple times is time consuming.



I like (but am not using) a system where casting magic is difficult. The simplest way to do this is to give every spell a base 15 DC to be successfully cast. Add the level of the spell (cantrips are level 0) to get the target DC for successfully casting. Allow the caster to add their proficiency and spell-casting-ability modifier to their roll. Beyond that you can gain additional modifiers. Using a spell focus, using material components, casting as a ritual, taking additional time, getting assistance from another magic user, having the spell prepared ahead of time, and so on can provide bonuses to the caster's roll. If the roll fails then wild magic surges can happen and the severity of the effect is modified by how badly the caster failed their roll. At lower levels you can get a severe, debilitating migraine. Higher level spell failures might cause your brain to squirt out your ears and splatter on the walls. That makes a difference when spellcasters are deciding what to do.

So, i have to accept another possible chance at failing at something that I invested time and effort in getting?
So, to cast a first level spell at first level is a DC 16 check, where I get 2 + 3 (5 max) = +5 (+7) to the Roll.
Which means that I need to roll 11+ (9+ max) to succeed, and then I need to roll again to Hit, or the target needs to roll a save vs DC 13. And a 9th level spell is DC 24 so 6 +5 = 11 need 13+ on d20.

Extra steps for more failure chances are not something I’d really want to have to do.
But, I guess that’s just me.

Ritual-only magic is something I really wouldn't be interested in, frankly.

And yes, I did try it. In WoD Mage.
Most of the time my attempts to do a ritual failed (despite rolling good enough to succeed), simply because of a "random event/encounter" at one or more locations that a piece of the Ritual was at: everything from a rat/cat/dog messing it up, to a wandering little old lady that needed a candle for her grandson's birthday cake. Actively casting a spell sucked to the point of losing the desire to continue playing that Character.

It is a consequence of two people with different limits to their imagination.

Right. While getting Gygax to admit that he actually needed Arneson to make oD&D was nearly impossible, doesn't change that fact.

I heard that a lot of the simple D&D made by Arneson was considered lots better than Gygax's AD&D THACo.



And progress can and has been made.
Progress can happen faster while we understand the problem's mechanics.

Everybody can do something in combat, unless the Player deliberately builds a combat weak PC.
Like sHuman with 8s in Str, Con and Dex. And nothing but Int skills.

One of D&D's biggest failings is non-combat Abilities and resolution. It's either ignored/ hand-waved or is binary pass/fail
Which mostly duplicated combat.



So my examples were not in vain. You do see mismatch between the concepts supported in the abstract and the concepts supported mechanically once you reach higher level.

Indeed. I can step outside the (RPG) Box, but can't go more than a few feet.


Hopefully you have also been reading HOW that mismatch occurs. Hopefully you are empathizing with me over the difficulty authors have with the limits of their imagination. I personally have stated the imagination limits of my own ability to create mechanics at higher levels. Hopefully you still empathize with those unhappy players. The players that had a concept, chose a RPG that the concept fit within, and then found a lack of supporting mechanics.

I'm working on understanding how the mismatch occurs.

I attempt empathizing with authors and devs.

I have always empathized with unhappy Players, having been one more than once. I try to use the rules available to get as close to their concept as possible, even if bending or Homebrewing the rules is needed.


Knowing is half the battle.

Gi Joe !!! LoL


Sounds like we have a miscommunication. ToB maneuvers get expended. Spells get expended. Smites get expended. Fighter's attacks do not get expended despite only being allowed X actions each turn. Paladin Auras don't get expended nor do they have a duration that runs out.*
Some character concepts are more like Fighter's attacks & Paladin Auras than they are like ToB maneuvers, Barbarian Rages, or Paladin Smites. That distinction is what I usually label as "limited resources" to communicate the distinction those players cared about with regard to their character concepts they wanted to instantiate.

* I actually didn't know that.

So Auras help others, would using 3x Psionic Mantles (that only benefit the user) and features duplicating ToB Stances be closer?

ToB Disciplines being expended like spell slots.

IDK, I'd really rather make the ToB Classes be their own thing, since those Mechanics matched the Fluff rather well.



(A) This felt off topic.

1) I have been talking about flexibility not power.

2) I don't want to talking about any person to person conflict.

3) If you want to give Martials an AoE effects, have you considered giving them Sweeping melee attacks (attack everyone in 3 squares) and either a Volley(dex) or Frag/Larger(str) ranged attacks? They are at least 10th level so that kind of flexibility can make sense.

(A) Sorry, I tend to put down my thoughts as I have them, then run out of Time and Post so as to not lose everything. I now try to get most of what I want saved on Docs, so maybe I will get better at not being completely random.
I'll re-read my post and see if I can get it to make more sense.

1) See, flexibility is also a form of power.
It's just a different way to use/apply power.

2) Um, also my goal?

3) These are things that I have considered, but without a Playtesting Group, they just sit there.



1) Um, I am not at your table?

2) Knowing your limitations (not failure) actually helps you overcome them when it is a limitation in imagination. During this dialogue I even had a spontaneous thought (which I posted). That might push my limitation further.

3) You are not alone. You have your imagination, the imagination of the players around you, and the imagination of everyone else you seek out. Jakinbandw's imagination came up with an idea. While their idea is too strong (again, it is flexibility not power that is being sought) it did display a way to push the imagination limit.

4) Your decisions are not written in stone. When a rulebook is published, that attempt is recorded for all time. If it has a mistake, it will be there forever. When you make a decision, you can alter it later. You have the freedom to continually improve your houserules/homebrew.

1) In this case it was the Forum table, instead of a physical table.

Seems that when I have an Idea, there's a 75% chance that it will be shot down, a 15% chance it's a (liked) hit, and a 10% chance it will be ignored.

2) I'm having ideas, just not (seemingly) very helpful ones.

3) When no one responds to me, despite seeing new posts, just makes me feel ignored.

I really do appreciate your responding to me.

4) I'll most likely always be trying to improve my Houserules and Homebrew.

Comments and Suggestions in Ancient Realms and similar posts welcome. Just be prepared to write up long detailed explanations on why you think something should be changed.

Looking over your "thought" post.

OldTrees1
2019-08-04, 02:28 PM
I'm sorry if I seem to be trying to argue, but that's really not my goal.
And sometimes I'll have trouble organizing/expressing my thoughts. (On Phone plus RL time limits)

As you noticed during a heated discussion about (metaphorical) Elephants in a (now dead?) thread not too long ago, I'm not very diplomatic in conveying my side of the debate. Your assistance with that was greatly appreciated.

Seems my Logic doesn't translate well, either.
No problem. I was mostly highlighting that "if I reply to you, it does not imply I am contradicting you". This subthread started when you asked why people might still want more flexible martials even if you were nerfing the power of casters. So I described the desire for flexible martials in a manner that was independent of the power/flexibility of casters and also independent from the power of martials (the latter being emphasized by the comments about flexibility =/= power).


I'll try to re-read that.
(Space Saved for Edit)
Link to the clearest version: http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=24068226&postcount=83

Short summary: If the game says a player can play a Nth level X but the mechanics don't let them instantiate a Nth level X but would let them instantiate a 2Nth level Y. The player get disappointed that they can't instantiate a 2Nth level X.


So, was my suggestion to take away all but the Cantrips for damage for a Wizard bring said down from their perch?

Doesn't seem so, what with all the other "instant win" (but still limited) non-combat spells (of mid-high range) available.

Which seems to be the complaint, here.

I believe that change would be tangential to the desire for flexible martials.

To give a concrete example D&D says a high level party can fight Dragons. Dragons are known for aerial combat over hostile terrain. So the premise of D&D would allow a high level martials to have the flexibility needed to engage with a Red Wyrm over and inside a lake of lava. And that is just combat, high level D&D includes more than just combat.

So the player can imagine this mighty warrior leaping up at the dragon. Grabbing onto the dragon. Engaging in brutal combat as the Dragon scrapes them against walls and plunges through lava. And the Authors probably could imagine that too. But they were unable to find mechanics that would allow that warrior to be instantiated. So the 20th level fighter mechanics depict a 6th level warrior that is 20th level in name only (albiet with more damage, but this is about flexibility not power).


I'm hoping that I'm showing that I'm at least trying to expand my knowledge and imagination.
(Especially since I'm now attempting to actually understand 4e)

Your intent is clear. I can see your desire to understand.
As for imagination. I am mostly describing the kind of imagination limit. Other than understanding the limit, I don't have tips on how to expand that imagination. Although simply following this thread has helped me expand it slightly. I really was underestimating the flexibility movement speed (combined with additional actions mid move).


But, with that flexibility for Martials, it seems that it is also duplicating/decreasing the same flexibility for mages.

Like the Fighter not being an Eldritch Knight, but still using Fly at least twice a day.

Like the Monk not being Way of the Shadow, but still matching Misty Step nearly at will.

These examples simply say: Subclasses are pointless.
Throw everything into a blender and just pick what you want.

Which then the game becomes a Point Buy System, and Archetypes barely have meaning. (Shadowrun)

Or is my imagination once again off track?

Well Druids and Wizards both are flexible but are different. In 5E the Rogue Cunning Action, Expertise, and Reliable Talent give it some flexibility but in a different way than the Wizard.
1) Instead of giving Fighter "The Fly spell", ask yourself "How would fly increase the flexibility of Fighter and can I achieve a similar flexibility with a different mechanic." This is a much harder question. Hence why I also call for empathy with the authors.
2) Instead of #1, abstract it one step further. "In what areas is Fighter not able to be flexible and engage? Can I think of their way to be flexible and engage there?" An even harder question. You can start to see why I am describing the barrier rather than give answers.
3) Instead of #2, abstract it one step further. "What can the concept of a high level Fighter do? How can I make mechanics for that? Repeat again and again." This is how Wizard spells are made.

So in the end you don't get the "blender" effect. However the process becomes more taxing on the imagination. And this is not a solved problem. As I said earlier, I cannot imagine mechanics for the highest level martials. My imagination has a limit. I can create mechanics for a 10th level Fighter slaughtering an army:
1) Sweeping attack: Each melee attack hits 3 squares worth of foes. Makes even more sense if your movement can happen between attacks.
2a) Volley ranged attacks: Shooting a volley of attacks, make a ranged attack at a penalty against each enemy in a 10ft radius.
2b) Larger ranged attacks: Throwing a large object, make a single ranged attack at a penalty. It targets each enemy in a 10ft radius.

This is difficult but it is flexibility, not power, that martials lack and the player want. Attempts to merely staple on magic/casting solutions (see Tome of Battle) only work for some player. So the alternative is this process of recognizing the limits of imagination and then breaking through them.



* I actually didn't know that.

So Auras help others, would using 3x Psionic Mantles (that only benefit the user) and features duplicating ToB Stances be closer?

ToB Disciplines being expended like spell slots.

IDK, I'd really rather make the ToB Classes be their own thing, since those Mechanics matched the Fluff rather well.
Yeah Auras very neat. They helped me come up with some ideas. 3rd edition D&D had a Marshal class which tried to do a non magic themed Aura based feature. Personally I feel the 5E Paladin auras are more flexible and better designed. However the entire concept is a gold mine.

ToB stances were AMAZING. Having several passive effects you could swap between. Lovely.

I forgot about Psionic Mantles. Nice.

Yeah this kind of a mechanic is a good way to give a character / class / subclass a qualitative passive effect. Those can help increase flexibility.



1) See, flexibility is also a form of power.
It's just a different way to use/apply power.

Yeah that is technically true but the difference between vertical increases in power and horizontal increases in power is a useful distinction. If someone wants more flexibility, giving them +1000 damage will generally not satisfy the desire. Remember the One Punch reference earlier, it increased both the raw power and the flexibility but I did not care at all about the increase in raw power.

So that is why I stress it is about flexibility not power. (Same as the difference between "Tier 1 vs Tier 2" or "Tier 3 vs Tier 4")

Great Dragon
2019-08-04, 05:09 PM
Thank you for your patience.


No problem. I was mostly highlighting that "if I reply to you, it does not imply I am contradicting you". This subthread started when you asked why people might still want more flexible martials even if you were nerfing the power of casters. So I described the desire for flexible martials in a manner that was independent of the power/flexibility of casters and also independent from the power of martials (the latter being emphasized by the comments about flexibility =/= power).

Sorry, i was stuck on comparing your answers against a caster, instead of just against other martials.

And while thinking on how to have someone do something beyond the normal limits is how spells were made, they don't work outside of /magic.

Which is not what is wanted, atm.


As I said earlier, I cannot imagine mechanics for the highest level martials. My imagination has a limit. I can create mechanics for a 10th level Fighter slaughtering an army:
1) Sweeping attack: Each melee attack hits 3 squares worth of foes. Makes even more sense if your movement can happen between attacks.
2a) Volley ranged attacks: Shooting a volley of attacks, make a ranged attack at a penalty against each enemy in a 10ft radius.
2b) Larger ranged attacks: Throwing a large object, make a single ranged attack at a penalty. It targets each enemy in a 10ft radius.

This is difficult but it is flexibility, not power, that martials lack and the player want. Attempts to merely staple on magic/casting solutions (see Tome of Battle) only work for some player. So the alternative is this process of recognizing the limits of imagination and then breaking through them.


With some of the things from 3x I can imagine #1 of the above.
But, it requires expenditure of a resource most will complain about: Feats.
It starts with
Power Attack. For 5e this would be reduce to hit by Proficiency to deal double that value in damage. (Power boost. Keep going.)

Cleave - drop one foe and attack next within 5 feet.
(Flexibility?)

Great Cleave - no limit to number of foes dropped within 5 feat.
(Power + Flexibility?)

Supreme Cleave - as Great, but also 5 foot move, and continue Cleaving until missing or failing to drop a foe.
(Flexibility?)

Trail of Blood - Cleaving attacks up to full movement speed, so long as dropping foes.
(Power + Flexibility?)

So, Q (1) would keeping these as feats in 5e be enough to achieve some of the higher level flexibility for martials? That way both fighters and Barbarians have equal access.

Or Q (2) would those be better as things that are added to the base features of one class?
Most likely Barbarian.

I believe that (1) is closer to the goal.

#2 is what the Ranger's Hail of Thorns spell does.
Limited to only one class, and therefore not wanted.

#2b can be pushing Believably - even in a Fantasy Game.
A Halfling even with a 20 str should't be able to pick up a 10' diameter two ton rock and throw it 100 feet. (without serious magic!!)

um, still sympathizing with both authors and sad players.....


Struck by a thought. Have to write it somewhere:

A way to make a flexible martials without limited resources / spellcasting:
Start with a variety of basic endeavors: Attack, Movement, ..., ..., etc
I suggest having the number of endeavors per turn and out of turn increase with level.
Have a chapter of alterations: Knockback, Power Attack, ..., etc
Alterations are not feats, you get access to all the ones you satisfy the unlock requirement for. No feats needed here.
Each option in the chapter of alterations will have:

[1] An unlock requirement. For example Knockback might require Str 15, or Athletics Proficiency, or a Paraglider, or ..., etc

[2] A requirement of the endeavor it will modify. For example Knockback would require the endeavor contacts the target of the knockback

[3] A complexity cost. This prevents you from apply every compatible alteration each time you use an endeavor. Complexity ranges from 0 to some positive number. Negative complexity costs do not exist.

[4] An effect (duh) which might scale or even trigger another endeavor. Knockback might have distance scale off of an Athletics check, or maybe it kicks off a Pushing endeavor to determine the distance.

Each time the character uses an endeavor (and that can be multiple times per turn or out of turn) they can modify it with alterations up to some complexity cap (which increases with level).

So you have martials whose flexibility scales with: (content created, complexity cap (mostly direct level scaling), and achieving unlock thresholds (indirect level scaling)).

So you could have someone use this system to do things like:
[A] Hit a boulder for fast travel
[5] Give an ally cover as a reaction
and many more

I've noticed that Extra Actions are kinda hard outside Legendary Actions.

I can see Bonus and Reaction options being added, though. (Unless you meant completely rewriting the game Mechanics?)

(1) Ok.

(2)Bonus Action: Knockback:
Opposed Str check or
Str Save? (DC 8 + Proficiency + Str mod)

(3) complexity could be either Proficiency times per round (so not limited to just BA/RA) or perhaps on some other Ability - like Con?

(4) maybe knockback is opposed Str with the loser being shoved the difference between the Scores?

(5) Either as a Reaction with Protector Style?
or sacrifice your Bonus Action next round?

(A) Uses BA and move, but triples normal jumping distance in combat? O-C maybe double hourly travel rates for Con mod hours?

OldTrees1
2019-08-04, 11:07 PM
Thank you for your patience.

Sorry, i was stuck on comparing your answers against a caster, instead of just against other martials.

And while thinking on how to have someone do something beyond the normal limits is how spells were made, they don't work outside of /magic.

Which is not what is wanted, atm.


It is tough to figure out how to do something beyond the normal limits without using magic.
Then again, a high level martial is not "normal limits" despite not using magic.
So it is tough to design mechanics for high level martials.

It has been nice chatting with you. However the work week looms so I will not be as active.


With some of the things from 3x I can imagine #1 of the above.
But, it requires expenditure of a resource most will complain about: Feats.
It starts with
Power Attack. For 5e this would be reduce to hit by Proficiency to deal double that value in damage. (Power boost. Keep going.)

Cleave - drop one foe and attack next within 5 feet.
(Flexibility?)

Great Cleave - no limit to number of foes dropped within 5 feat.
(Power + Flexibility?)

Supreme Cleave - as Great, but also 5 foot move, and continue Cleaving until missing or failing to drop a foe.
(Flexibility?)

Trail of Blood - Cleaving attacks up to full movement speed, so long as dropping foes.
(Power + Flexibility?)

So, Q (1) would keeping these as feats in 5e be enough to achieve some of the higher level flexibility for martials? That way both fighters and Barbarians have equal access.

Or Q (2) would those be better as things that are added to the base features of one class?
Most likely Barbarian.

I believe that (1) is closer to the goal.

#2 is what the Ranger's Hail of Thorns spell does.
Limited to only one class, and therefore not wanted.

#2b can be pushing Believably - even in a Fantasy Game.
A Halfling even with a 20 str should't be able to pick up a 10' diameter two ton rock and throw it 100 feet. (without serious magic!!)

um, still sympathizing with both authors and sad players.....


The 3rd edition feats were an improvement from earlier versions. They let the martials gain at-will access to a limited number of combat tricks. Turns out the limitation of feats did not map well for growing flexibility with level. I attempt to address this below by having the alterations have unlock requirements rather than costing feats.

Yes you could increase 5E martial flexibility by combining a bunch of 3rd edition feats and class features as a 5E feat. For example look at the War Hulk prestige class and turn that into a feat named War Hulk which gives access to Sweeping attacks and Large ranged attacks. Sometimes expanding the flexibility will require making your own content / feats / class features.

Or yes, maybe adding more features to the base classes / subclasses would be a good idea. Avoid increasing the vertical power of the class too much (some is okay) because it is the horizontal power that is desired.

You could change Hail of Thorns from a Ranger spell into a basic combat option at 6th+ or 11th+ level. Use an accuracy penalty to rebalance.

Fair, maybe it is not a 2 ton boulder. Just a large object. If 20 strength can lift it then it probably hurts several goblins. Maybe it even skids across the ground like a comet.


I've noticed that Extra Actions are kinda hard outside Legendary Actions.

I can see Bonus and Reaction options being added, though. (Unless you meant completely rewriting the game Mechanics?)

(1) Ok.

(2)Bonus Action: Knockback:
Opposed Str check or
Str Save? (DC 8 + Proficiency + Str mod)

(3) complexity could be either Proficiency times per round (so not limited to just BA/RA) or perhaps on some other Ability - like Con?

(4) maybe knockback is opposed Str with the loser being shoved the difference between the Scores?

(5) Either as a Reaction with Protector Style?
or sacrifice your Bonus Action next round?

(A) Uses BA and move, but triples normal jumping distance in combat? O-C maybe double hourly travel rates for Con mod hours?

Since this is the general RPG area I was spitballing new mechanics. This kind of system would be more aimed at if someone was authoring a new edition of an RPG.

You have good ideas. I expect you could make your own list of alterations.
5) I was thinking of using a reaction to hit an object between your ally and the attack. So the Hold Person spell fails because it hits the object instead.

To convert to 5E D&D maybe:
1) Replace Extra Attack with an Extra Endeavor per turn.
2) Let all martials do an Endeavor as a reaction. (Different martials get access to different ones as reactions?)
3) Complexity limit per Endeavor is equal to their Proficiency
4) Have Attack, Move, Push, ... as some base Endeavors
5) Push would move a target further with a higher success. Additionally it could be used on objects.
7) Rebalance these.
6) Some alterations
Knockback [Attack or Push][Complexity 3]:

Unlock: Str 16 or Athletics proficiency.
Requirement: The endeavor hits a target.
Effect: Make a Push endeavor against the same target at half your Complexity max.

Sweeping [Attack or Push][Complexity 4]:

Unlock: Str 20, Large Size, or Athletics expertise.
Requirement: The endeavor hits a target.
Effect: The endeavor hits all targets in 3 continuous squares in reach.

Mighty Push [Attack or Push][Complexity 1]:

Unlock: Str 16, Athletics proficiency.
Requirement: The endeavor moves a target.
Effect: Take a -5 penalty on the endeavor. Double the movement.
This can be applied multiple times.

Launch [Push][Complexity 2]:

Unlock: Str 18, Large Size, or Athletics proficiency.
Requirement: The endeavor moves a target.
Effect: Halve the distance the target moves. Instead it also is thrown upwards that high.
This can be applied multiple times.

Up the Walls [Movement][Complexity 3]:

Unlock: Dex 18, 40ft Speed, or Acrobatics expertise.
Requirement: The movement is adjacent to a wall.
Effect: You run up the wall. You gain 5ft of altitude per 10ft you move.

Great Dragon
2019-08-05, 02:54 AM
Putting these things (slowly) into Ancient Realms.




As for imagination. I am mostly describing the kind of imagination limit. Other than understanding the limit, I don't have tips on how to expand that imagination. Although simply following this thread has helped me expand it slightly. I really was underestimating the flexibility movement speed (combined with additional actions mid move).

Einstein said that Imagination is more important than Knowledge.

But IMO/E Knowledge is the foundation of Imagination.

Knowledge tells what is already possible,
Imagination reaches for new limits.



The 3rd edition feats were an improvement from earlier versions. They let the martials gain at-will access to a limited number of combat tricks. Turns out the limitation of feats did not map well for growing flexibility with level. I attempt to address this below by having the alterations have unlock requirements rather than costing feats.

Yes you could increase 5E martial flexibility by combining a bunch of 3rd edition feats and class features as a 5E feat. For example look at the War Hulk prestige class and turn that into a feat named War Hulk which gives access to Sweeping attacks and Large ranged attacks. Sometimes expanding the flexibility will require making your own content / feats / class features.

Or yes, maybe adding more features to the base classes / subclasses would be a good idea. Avoid increasing the vertical power of the class too much (some is okay) because it is the horizontal power that is desired.

There are things that 3x D&D had that don't convert to 5e very well.

Making the War Hulk a feat could be neat, but in order to prevent too much O.P needs a limit. Maybe treats thrown objects as being proficient, but with maybe a 25/50 foot range?
Can use Extra Attack, but not Two-weapon Fighting or Multi-attack?


You could change Hail of Thorns from a Ranger spell into a basic combat option at 6th+ or 11th+ level. Use an accuracy penalty to rebalance.

I would most likely do so at 11th level, mostly to not overshadow the Ranger's coolness too early.


Fair, maybe it is not a 2 ton boulder. Just a large object. If 20 strength can lift it then it probably hurts several goblins. Maybe it even skids across the ground like a comet.

Let me see (5e) 20 Str times 15 = 300 pound rock. Um, how big would that be?
Like maybe a 3 foot diameter rock? Figure being able to throw that 10 feet with no problem, and maybe up to 20 feet at disadvantage? A Medium sized creature could throw that 15/30.
A Large creature could maybe throw that 20/50?


Since this is the general RPG area I was spitballing new mechanics.
This kind of system would be more aimed at if someone was authoring a new edition of an RPG.
Without some idea of the mechanics they would be using for the engine, I'll stick with what I (mostly) know.


You have good ideas. I expect you could make your own list of alterations.
Wow! Thanks!!!


5) I was thinking of using a reaction to hit an object between your ally and the attack.
So the Hold Person spell fails because it hits the object instead.
Well, for 5e, I could see doing that giving Advantage to the Save....
Other RPGs might allow negation.


To convert to 5E D&D maybe:
1) Replace Extra Attack with an Extra Endeavor per turn.
2) Let all martials do an Endeavor as a reaction. (Different martials get access to different ones as reactions?)
3) Complexity limit per Endeavor is equal to their Proficiency
4) Have Attack, Move, Push, ... as some base Endeavors
5) Push would move a target further with a higher success. Additionally it could be used on objects.
6) Rebalance these.
7) Some alterations

(1) I'd rather make it where Endeavors could be added to each attack, but maybe limited number of uses per round - see #3. Martials (other than Rogues) don't really get a lot of things to use BAs/RAs on. I'm not sure, though. Some of these I could see being used more than once a round, with each successful hit - like the Conditions that a Monk imposes on a hit. At no Ki cost.

(2) Same problem as (1).

(3) This is a good limit.
Maybe a Feat (11th level requirement) that adds either Dex or Cha to that limit for higher levels?

(4) Push/Toss, Drag/Move, Slide.

(5) Foes can try to oppose? Objects have a weight limit?

(6) Playtesting stage

(7) Most likely; more than once.


Knockback [Attack or Push][Complexity 3]:

Unlock: Str 16 or Athletics proficiency.
Requirement: The endeavor hits a target.
Effect: Make a Push endeavor against the same target at half your Complexity max.

Perhaps a Str Save DC 8 + Proficiency + Str modifier. Target moved back half maximum speed?


Sweeping [Attack or Push][Complexity 4]:

Unlock: Str 20, Large Size, or Athletics expertise.
Requirement: The endeavor hits a target.
Effect: The endeavor hits all targets in 3 continuous squares in reach.


Expertise locks this into Rogue (or Bard, but only Swords and Valor might be able to do it).
I'd suggest: Large Size or 20 Str plus 13 Dex and proficient in Athletics.

Roll separately for each target; with Disadvantage after first target?


Mighty Push [Attack or Push][Complexity 1]:

Unlock: Str 16, Athletics proficiency.
Requirement: The endeavor moves a target.
Effect: Take a -5 penalty on the endeavor. Double the movement.
This can be applied multiple times.


Yes, Bonus Action to allow movement by user to keep pace with target.
Opposed Str (Athletics) check with target pushed Double the difference in feet each time.


Launch [Push][Complexity 2]:

Unlock: Str 18, Large Size, or Athletics proficiency.
Requirement: The endeavor moves a target.
Effect: Halve the distance the target moves. Instead it also is thrown upwards that high.
This can be applied multiple times.


Requires Bonus Attack to initiate, must hit target, opposed Str (athletics) check?


Up the Walls [Movement][Complexity 3]:

Unlock: Dex 18, 40ft Speed, or Acrobatics expertise.
Requirement: The movement is adjacent to a wall.
Effect: You run up the wall. You gain 5ft of altitude per 10ft you move.


Requires Bonus Attack to initiate? Would still allow movement, and attacking foes on ceiling (if within range) as part of their Actions on their Turn.

*********
Thoughts?

Until next time, have Fun !

GreatWyrmGold
2019-08-07, 12:08 PM
Add a "Stamina" system that gives martial-types access to a point-based resource which lets them perform maneuvers. (and don't lock it down to near-uselessness like Ki)
But real people can't do that, and obviously we need to restrict fighters and rogues to the level of real-world soldiers and thieves despite not restricting clerics or wizards to the level of real-world priests or scholars.
...Nah, that's a ridiculous argument. Good thing nobody—

Although, as a rough baseline, we can use The Fantasy Trip to work out how weak a wizard would have to be to achieve balance with a (relatively) realistic warrior.

Consequently, in many cases, it doesn't make sense for a completely non-magical character to be more powerful than a character whose abilities are augmented by magic.
Why is the "Guy At The Gym Fallacy" still a thing? The dragonborn barbarian I'll be playing with this evening isn't restricted to the capabilities of Viking raiders attacking Lindisfarne any more than my dwarven cleric is restricted to the capabilities of the people he was raiding.



One thing almost no edition of D&D has done is point out that past roughly level 12 your characters are just beyond the scale of Mythic Mortals, especially the spellcasters. At that point I struggle to think pre-D&D stories which have martials at that power level, and literally can't think of any for magic users.
A few have tried, but done so pretty poorly. The one that sticks out in my mind is when they tried to define character tiers as "gritty fantasy," "high fantasy," "wuxia," and "superheroes," despite all of those genres having elements beyond character power and works whose power levels were vastly higher or lower than implied by their placement in that list. (D&D is, by default, high fantasy in all ways that weren't badly-redefined by game designers.)



I think there's also an aspect of 'warrior-type' powers like super strength gradually becoming kind of inherently ridiculous at really high levels of power.
What, and the mage's abilities aren't inherently ridiculous at high levels? Shadow Evocation hurts people with illusions! Storm of Vengeance makes acid rain for exactly six seconds! Astral Projection is hippy stuff!
If you find people doing deeds well beyond human capabilities "inherently ridiculous," maybe fantasy isn't the genre for you.



Spell slots don't work as a limiting mechanic and wouldn't even if spells themselves weren't so strong. They're entirely reliant on the GM being willing and able to enforce a number of "encounters" every day. This gets harder as you leave a traditional dungeon crawl.
It's not even necessarily a matter of the DM "enforcing" a certain adventuring schedule. Some types of adventures just don't lend themselves to half a dozen encounters with two hour-long commercial breaks.



If you enforce tracking accurately how many material components each Wizard is carrying I want the rogue to track exactly how many ball bearings they have on their person.
Bad argument. I've only met one rogue who used ball bearings, and he never used them successfully.
Most classes don't have material components they need to keep track of; archers need arrows, if the DM bothers with something that's so trivial to solve (mine tend to either not bring it up or say "You're good" if I put a skill point into an appropriate Craft skill).


Spell Point Systems already exist.

It doesnt make them much more powerful, just much more flexible.
Power equals power. (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0657.html) It doesn't matter if that power comes from throwing around higher-level spells or the flexibility to throw around lots of high-level spells or countless first-level ones; power equals power.



Well, one third thing is the treasure table. Somewhere along the way gamers (or at least forum-goers) decided that 'but fighters can use magic swords, which often have as much power as wizards' was not an acceptable answer to the fighter-mu split, but there's no specific reason it can't be.
My biggest problem with this is that magic swords don't have as much power as wizards. Power equals power, (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0657.html) and the caster's power doesn't come from casting one specific high-level spell. It comes from casting a varied bunch of spells of all levels, suited to a wide variety of situations. A +2 sword that shoots fireballs will never be as strong as a wizard that can cast fireball (without redesigning other aspects of the game), because that wizard can cast a variety of other spells as well as fireball.
There's also conceptual problems which arise from 5e's lackadaisical approach to magic items ("Eh, you'll get a few random ones; if you like 'em, great, if not, oh well"), and from some other games' approaches to magic items (for instance, wizards increasing their power further with the wealth fighters used trying to catch up to the wizard's level), but there are ways to get around that with better magic item distribution design.



IDK, 5e seems a lot more "Balanced" than all the other versions of D&D.
4e seemed better from what I saw of it. Rein in the frequency of top-tier caster abilities while giving martials their own suite of superhuman powers? Sounds good to me! (Of course, everybody I play with transitioned straight from 3.5 to Pathfinder or 5e, so my only hands-on experience was an aborted online game a few years back.)
I don't blame you for leaving 4e out; I blame the D&D's general opinion that 4e doesn't count for you leaving 4e out.



4e looked a bit too much of a MMO, and the Diablo RPG was decent enough for that: but maybe some of the underpinning 4e Mechanics can be salvaged and converted….

No, it's not an attempt to do a tabletop MMO.

It is a skirmish-level miniature wargame, as well as an RPG, but it has very little in common with MMOs. Do people really not look past the Defender/Striker/Leader/Controller setup? Because that's the only bit I can see that's in common with MMOs (it's also in quite a few single player CRPGs, as well as quite a few RTS and TBS games).
4e has mechanics largely redesigned from the ground up instead of building on foundations laid for a 1980's game with completely different design goals—just like a video game!
I always thought the "MMO-ness" of 4e came less from what it had and more from what it lacked. It had a good core set of mechanics, but focused less on the flavor than e.g. 5e did.



Honestly, I have a small list of things I wish had been kept from 4e. Healing Surges are one, Defender/Striker/Leader/Controller is another (Racial Powers are the third).
I'm fond of how they built every class on the same mechanics instead of giving one set powerful abilities with limited use (until you get enough spell slots that only the most game-breaking are actually limited) and another set unlimited-use decent abilities (which don't always scale as well, oops).
I don't like racial powers for the same reason I like Pathfinder 2e reframing "race" as "background". 4e focuses on race, making it seem like all sorts of things are just innate to someone by virtue of their ancestry, which might be true in a fantasy world designed a certain way, but designing your fantasy world that way has implications that make me uncomfortable if taken anywhere beyond "I get cool nature powers!" Meanwhile, PF2 does its best to imply that most racial abilities (including racial feats) are linked more to the culture one was raised in than their blood relatives, which has implications I'm more comfortable with.



To me, though, it felt like an attempt at a TTMMO.

And partially because of things you list... all the mechanics felt close to the same, with differences mainly being in how those abilities were "skinned" and some sliding scales for balancing... which is very common to MMOs. The whole "strictly and specifically defined role" thing too.
It's not just MMOs that do that, though. Shadowrun made all of its subsystems (mundane combat, spellcasting, conjuring, hacking, vehicle nonsense) work off the same few systems (most centrally, skills) and gave everyone the same sorts of resources to use. Sure, a street samurai was going to run through their physical damage counter faster than their stun damage counter while the street shaman ran through their stun counter faster (unless things went wrong for them), but they were the same core mechanics.
D&D's systems aren't a hallmark of it being A Tabletop RPG. They're a hallmark of it being a hodgepodge of ideas pasted together over nearly half a century by people who never felt safe cutting parts out or making massive changes. The way 4e, MMOs, and Shadowrun handle things is more a measure of having all those systems designed at once, for the same game, with the same vision in mind.

(Note: The version of Shadowrun I'm most familiar with is 2nd edition, thanks t the 2nd-edition SR books my dad had lying around.)



Sadly, we've seen character knowledge and sagacity poo-pooed as evidently meaningless in some recent threads...
Haven't seen those, so...
Seems like the kind of thing that's incredibly campaign-dependent, and very hard to work in well. Either you make it so your group can get everything important regardless of Knowledge rolls, or you risk your group not getting everything important because they flubbed a Knowledge roll.



But anyway, having a high INT should impact gameplay for people other than the wizard. But apparently the barbarian having an 8 INT doesn't stop him from spewing nuclear physics, even if his player can't lift 150lbs without losing mobility.
...which ties into a more general discussion about how badly-designed ability scores are in D&D, which is something we should have at some point. (TL;D-look to see if it ever got made: Everyone needs Dexterity, plus one or two other abilities per class and maybe Constitution/Wisdom; everything else is a complete dump stat 99% of the time.)



Please don't point at Gandolf, he's not really a wizard.
He's absolutely a wizard; he just comes from a universe where wizards are angels instead of scholars.
"Wizard" is not a multiversal constant. It means whatever it means in a given setting.



I know it's not a popular opinion in these parts, but, this really starts to get into why I consider the whole "adventuring day" and "resource expenditure" and "x/day" setup... something that's time has come and gone. There are other, better, more fluid and adaptable ways to handle things, and D&D just seems to refuse to consider them outside of optional rules that frankly fans of the game seem to hate.
There are ways to make resource-expenditure mechanics more interesting, but they would require linking those resources more closely with the rest of the game. At the end of the day, the only resource that matters is "Can you rest yet?", and D&D relies entirely on the DM to dole out that resource. It doesn't even provide much guidance on how to do so, beyond "Here's about how much fight you should have before the players rest, good luck enforcing that."
I have developed a distaste for Vancian systems in general. Video games have come up with some great ways to make combat dynamic and interesting without those "daily" limitations. Hollow Knight and Kingdom Hearts 1 have spells cost mana which regenerates when you attack, for instance, while many fighting games have you pause to charge a super-meter to power your strongest attacks. Or heck, look at VRPGs and the ways they balance their classes; they all have strictly-defined roles and active abilities which supplement those roles.



So here's a question, how would Saitama, of one punch man fame, fair against a high level wizard in dnd?

He's not a god, and purely martial, so I'm curious where he would rank.
Whose world are they fighting in?
In the OPM world, with OPM's rules, the wizard would blow up half the city and fight a bunch of heroes before Saitama showed up, beat the wizard in one punch, and probably gets blamed for the city blowing up or something else like that which works better if you're not just describing it at the tail end of a run-on sentence.
In the D&D world, bounded accuracy and limited martial damage mean that the wizard would survive enough punches to cast fly or some other spell that gets them out of Saitama's reach, meaning that Saitama needs to make an Athletics check and an attack roll to hit them and giving the wizard time to stick some kind of save-or-die spell on him.



If I pick up a book or PDF for a new system, and start seeing unavoidable attacks and instant kills, I generally put it down.
I don't think anyone's seriously modding in Saitama, they're just using him as a thought experiment for the theoretical maximum that their conception of a "fighter" could reach.

jjordan
2019-08-07, 12:38 PM
Not very, actually. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shot_tower
I mean you need a tall tower and a bucket of water, but those are a dime a dozen in D&D.I meant to thank you for pointing this out. I had assumed iron/steel bearings and that was a mistake on my part. Lead makes a lot more sense. And now I need to make sure rogues and monks keep track of how many bearings they have. :)

Max_Killjoy
2019-08-07, 12:49 PM
Why is the "Guy At The Gym Fallacy" still a thing?


Because quite a few of those arguing in favor of their pet "martial" insist that said character is a guy at the gym.

Anonymouswizard
2019-08-07, 02:22 PM
Why is the "Guy At The Gym Fallacy" still a thing? The dragonborn barbarian I'll be playing with this evening isn't restricted to the capabilities of Viking raiders attacking Lindisfarne any more than my dwarven cleric is restricted to the capabilities of the people he was raiding.

While I do prefer low power games and will always argue strongly in favour of them, I have to admit that you're roughly taking my comment out of it's intended context. It was intended to show that to make wizards on par with realistic warriors they need most of the disadvantages that realistic warriors have (particularly MAD), and that the simple benefit of doing things others can't is massive.

If the Warrior is the Guy at the Gym the wizard has to be the Scientist in the Lab. IF you want god like martials you can't have lab technician wizards, and if you want godlike wizards warriors can't be the guy at the gym.

(This was also about how it's easier to balance wizards to warriors than warriors to wizards. But we can ignore that bit.)

I wasn't saying that the Dragonborn Paladin should be restricted, I'm saying if he's restricted than the wizard should also be restricted. I personally prefer realistic power scales, although I'm not against the occasional game of superheroes or angels, and so will tend to argue from that perspective, but my point was 'guy at the gym' is flawed if you're not using that as your baseline for magic users.

Heck, let's give warriors Fatigue if fights last more than ten seconds, allow them to take Fatigue to roll better, and make environmental damage do Fatigue, and let's make it recover at exactly the same rate as Fatigue from wizardly spellcasting. Then let's make the cost for a spell at least equal to the cost of fighting in a battle.

Or let's not do that, say that doing something by magic is treated the same as doing it mundanely rules-wise, and let people fluff as they like.

Or let's take away spells that solve problems and focus on spells that create advantages.

There's many ways to make wizards and warriors balanced. I'll just focus on low powered solutions because I like it.


A few have tried, but done so pretty poorly. The one that sticks out in my mind is when they tried to define character tiers as "gritty fantasy," "high fantasy," "wuxia," and "superheroes," despite all of those genres having elements beyond character power and works whose power levels were vastly higher or lower than implied by their placement in that list. (D&D is, by default, high fantasy in all ways that weren't badly-redefined by game designers.)

What's High Fantasy? :smalltongue:

In all seriousness, D&D's latest editions have tried to throw themselves at so many genres that I can't really understand them. It used to be simple.

Levels 1-8 were a Heroic Fantasy game, where you were adventuring to fame and fortune. At level 9 you did it, you completed the Heroic Fantasy story, and the game tried to shift to being about domain management because you have the fame, the fortune, and the land. It's much more solidly rooted in the Conan the Barbarian heroic fantasy story than the Lord of the Rings high fantasy story, even though it has a specific point where you're assumed to have completed the heroic fantasy story and moved on to other things.

GreatWyrmGold
2019-08-07, 02:55 PM
While I do prefer low power games and will always argue strongly in favour of them, I have to admit that you're roughly taking my comment out of it's intended context. It was intended to show that to make wizards on par with realistic warriors they need most of the disadvantages that realistic warriors have (particularly MAD), and that the simple benefit of doing things others can't is massive.

If the Warrior is the Guy at the Gym the wizard has to be the Scientist in the Lab. IF you want god like martials you can't have lab technician wizards, and if you want godlike wizards warriors can't be the guy at the gym.
Alright, that's fair. You were just making it sound like you didn't think martial characters could even theoretically match the power of D&D casters.


(This was also about how it's easier to balance wizards to warriors than warriors to wizards. But we can ignore that bit.)
I'm not sure that's true; you just need to accept a different-feeling game.


In all seriousness, D&D's latest editions have tried to throw themselves at so many genres that I can't really understand them. It used to be simple.

Levels 1-8 were a Heroic Fantasy game, where you were adventuring to fame and fortune. At level 9 you did it, you completed the Heroic Fantasy story, and the game tried to shift to being about domain management because you have the fame, the fortune, and the land. It's much more solidly rooted in the Conan the Barbarian heroic fantasy story than the Lord of the Rings high fantasy story, even though it has a specific point where you're assumed to have completed the heroic fantasy story and moved on to other things.
That sounds like the kind of thing that never worked in practice. It reminds me of Spore, where if you liked one stage and did well at it, your reward was a completely different game that had nothing to do with the original.
I prefer how games like New Gods of Mankind handle their "domain management," for the simple reason that it's a central mechanic to the game from start to finish rather than something you unlock that becomes the new gameplay loop.

Great Dragon
2019-08-08, 05:55 AM
That sounds like the kind of thing that never worked in practice. It reminds me of Spore, where if you liked one stage and did well at it, your reward was a completely different game that had nothing to do with the original.
I prefer how games like New Gods of Mankind handle their "domain management," for the simple reason that it's a central mechanic to the game from start to finish rather than something you unlock that becomes the new gameplay loop.

The "new unlocked gameplay" loop is (IiRC) one of the main reasons why no-one really played past Tenth Level in "Classic" oD&D.
Or even in most AD&D games, really.

3e Birthright tried to do the "from start to finish" Domain Management, but very few people really got into it. I didn't really play Birthright, but I heard there was a lot of backstabbing and unfriendly PvP that happened. Like the worst of Game of Thrones and Intrigue based "The Americans" plus Gangbusters.

I'll be honest, I have trouble doing "Guy at the Gym" or even "Traveling Scientist" style gameplay. I mean, other than CoC (I don't play, so am going on Rumor) and maybe Spycraft and similar games, even come close.

Most everything else are "Heroic" RPGs.

Morty
2019-08-08, 05:58 AM
Levels 1-8 were a Heroic Fantasy game, where you were adventuring to fame and fortune. At level 9 you did it, you completed the Heroic Fantasy story, and the game tried to shift to being about domain management because you have the fame, the fortune, and the land. It's much more solidly rooted in the Conan the Barbarian heroic fantasy story than the Lord of the Rings high fantasy story, even though it has a specific point where you're assumed to have completed the heroic fantasy story and moved on to other things.



That sounds like the kind of thing that never worked in practice. It reminds me of Spore, where if you liked one stage and did well at it, your reward was a completely different game that had nothing to do with the original.
I prefer how games like New Gods of Mankind handle their "domain management," for the simple reason that it's a central mechanic to the game from start to finish rather than something you unlock that becomes the new gameplay loop.

A solution to this is to give players and GMs a way to keep playing on a given level, like E6 already does. And generally make power levels variable, doing on purpose what D&D has typically done by incompetence. It's the only real way I see of reconciling all the different visions floating in threads like this one.

Max_Killjoy
2019-08-08, 07:16 AM
What stops "guy at the gym" from being a hero in an RPG?

Isn't it just a matter of power scale?

Or does a character need to be capable of the impossible to be a heroic character?

(The HERO system specifically limits Heroic scale characters to normal characteristic maxes and no inherent superpowers.)

Anonymouswizard
2019-08-08, 07:50 AM
That sounds like the kind of thing that never worked in practice. It reminds me of Spore, where if you liked one stage and did well at it, your reward was a completely different game that had nothing to do with the original.

Never said it worked in practice, I was just making an observation about how the game was (rather explicitly) set up. Wizard/warrior balance wasn't as important past 8th level because it was assumed the Fighter would have an army as well as some elite guards..


A solution to this is to give players and GMs a way to keep playing on a given level, like E6 already does. And generally make power levels variable, doing on purpose what D&D has typically done by incompetence. It's the only real way I see of reconciling all the different visions floating in threads like this one.

There needs to be more opportunity for sideways advancement, certainly.

GreatWyrmGold
2019-08-08, 09:13 AM
3e Birthright tried to do the "from start to finish" Domain Management, but very few people really got into it. I didn't really play Birthright, but I heard there was a lot of backstabbing and unfriendly PvP that happened. Like the worst of Game of Thrones and Intrigue based "The Americans" plus Gangbusters.
That actually sounds like it could be fun, with the right group.



What stops "guy at the gym" from being a hero in an RPG?
Isn't it just a matter of power scale?
Or does a character need to be capable of the impossible to be a heroic character?
Depends on your definition of "hero". The classical hero needs to be superhuman, capable of triumphs and tragedies beyond the scale of mere mortals. Superheroes usually need to be superhuman, but not always explicitly so. But there are plenty of genres where a perfectly normal person can save the day.
It depends on your story more than anything, and generally speaking, D&D tries to give its players simple power fantasies. If you wanted, you could run a more grounded game with more mortal protagonists...but I'd recommend against using D&D for that. (Maybe some variant of E6.)



Never said it worked in practice, I was just making an observation about how the game was (rather explicitly) set up. Wizard/warrior balance wasn't as important past 8th level because it was assumed the Fighter would have an army as well as some elite guards.
I tend to think that how things work out in practice matters more than how things were supposed to work out. Turning off the reactor safety systems was supposed to give the folks at Chernobyl a better understanding of their reactor design, not melt it to slag.

Max_Killjoy
2019-08-08, 09:21 AM
Depends on your definition of "hero". The classical hero needs to be superhuman, capable of triumphs and tragedies beyond the scale of mere mortals. Superheroes usually need to be superhuman, but not always explicitly so. But there are plenty of genres where a perfectly normal person can save the day.
It depends on your story more than anything, and generally speaking, D&D tries to give its players simple power fantasies. If you wanted, you could run a more grounded game with more mortal protagonists...but I'd recommend against using D&D for that. (Maybe some variant of E6.)


Most of those "classical heroes" were blatantly superhumans in some way or another... those were almost the superhero stories of their day.

I don't think someone needs to be the son of Zeus or the son of Krypton to be a hero.


(I'd recommend against using D&D, flat out, but that's just me.)

Willie the Duck
2019-08-08, 09:41 AM
What stops "guy at the gym" from being a hero in an RPG?
Isn't it just a matter of power scale?
Or does a character need to be capable of the impossible to be a heroic character?
(The HERO system specifically limits Heroic scale characters to normal characteristic maxes and no inherent superpowers.)

As a generality, they absolutely can. At least they can in literature and the like. Cinematic interpretations of cliffhanger stories like Indiana Jones tend to take, well, cinematic liberties with what is possible, but the stories by Arthur Conan Doyle or H Ridder Haggard that inspired such movies tend to have genuinely 'heroic normal' characters, who never do anything a real world person couldn't actually do (the stories are just focusing on someone with a rather adventurous life, and the one who did survive to tell the tale).

When you translate that into RPGs... hmmm... I think the issue is that the Allan Quatermains and Lord John Roxtons of those tales are explicitly the characters do succeed by luck and appropriate use of skill, and we simply aren't bothering to read the exploits of the guy who swung the rope across the chasm and didn't catch the rock outcropping. In game terms, these are the characters who we already know what their dice rolls will be, and they will be low (and we'll use HERO system's 'rolling low is good' metric). If you take out the narrative conceit that you are only looking at the guys who succeeded, then these protagonists would appear to have some 'beyond guy at gym' abilities, that being unnatural luck.

I think, if we are playing an RPG (with random dice rolls), you might have to adjust the power scale/challenges-taken-on even lower, to something that a skilled and resourceful person could do reliably, and that might push the task below what someone might consider heroic.

Great Dragon
2019-08-08, 09:55 AM
Some more Random thoughts:

I just remembered some things that could also cut some Multiclassing Mages down from their perch.

Again, going back to older Editions of D&D.
It was specifically stated that Mages were not allowed to cast spells while wearing Armor (Also, taking away the spell failure percentages) and this limitation applied even when Multiclassing.

Sure, it means the Soradin is less spiffy, but also means that the Fighter/Wizard (Diviner) isn't walking around in Adamantine Full Plate.

I also don't let Regular shield and Shield spell bonuses stack. Kills that +10 to AC (even if only for that round at 17th level) that very few Class/Subclasses can match. This also makes Players think harder about their options.


*****
Next, spell slots don't stack, and only apply to their own class.

Which kills the Coffeelock (Warlock spell slots cannot be converted into Sorcerer points), and stops the "never ending" Smite Palalock.

It also prevents Multiclassing Mages to Upcast otherwise low power spells into more powerful slots. Shows a true benefit to dedicated casters.


*****
Now, you might be thinking:
"But, that doesn't stop the Monk/Mage from being OP."

But, I offer the following:
Splitting those two classes means that the PC is most likely MAD, and the Player isn't getting the full benefits of either class, and anyone remaining focused on only one of those classes is going to be lots better at doing that class, then the Multiclassed PC.


*****
Yes, I know this is just reducing the vertical Power level of some Multiclassing Mages.

I'm still working on increasing the horizontal for Martials.

PairO'Dice Lost
2019-08-08, 12:16 PM
Again, going back to older Editions of D&D.
It was specifically stated that Mages were not allowed to cast spells while wearing Armor (Also, taking away the spell failure percentages) and this limitation applied even when Multiclassing.

Sure, it means the Soradin is less spiffy, but also means that the Fighter/Wizard (Diviner) isn't walking around in Adamantine Full Plate.

While "Surprise, wizards now all want full plate!" was a fairly dumb decision, if you're going to get rid of that you should provide some way for gishy characters to continue to exist. Elves have been able to do the armored mage thing since 1e, and gishing it up has been an increasingly popular archetype over the years.


Which kills the Coffeelock (Warlock spell slots cannot be converted into Sorcerer points), and stops the "never ending" Smite Palalock.

Honestly, I'm glad the Coffeelock exists, since the 5e warlock is basically a 4e warlock structurally (has a handful of at-will, per-encounter, and daily spells) and a Coffeelock lets you play a 3e warlock (has a bottomless well of low-level spells). Sometimes a bug really is a feature. :smallamused:

Jakinbandw
2019-08-08, 01:48 PM
While "Surprise, wizards now all want full plate!" was a fairly dumb decision, if you're going to get rid of that you should provide some way for gishy characters to continue to exist. Elves have been able to do the armored mage thing since 1e, and gishing it up has been an increasingly popular archetype over the years.


If you want gishes though you would still have the arcane trickster, eldritch knight, bladesinger, and collage of swords. Also gishes always seemed like such an over reach "I want the power and versatility of a spellcaster while having the survivability and combat prowess of a buffed fighter." I think they really show what type of players want to minmax and try to make sure noone else at the table will have fun.

Great Dragon
2019-08-08, 02:08 PM
While "Surprise, wizards now all want full plate!" was a fairly dumb decision, if you're going to get rid of that you should provide some way for gishy characters to continue to exist. Elves have been able to do the armored mage thing since 1e, and gishing it up has been an increasingly popular archetype over the years.

I don't count either Eldritch Knight or Arcane Trickster as "mage" for that "Armored Gish" effect.



Honestly, I'm glad the Coffeelock exists, since the 5e warlock is basically a 4e warlock structurally (has a handful of at-will, per-encounter, and daily spells) and a Coffeelock lets you play a 3e warlock (has a bottomless well of low-level spells). Sometimes a bug really is a feature. :smallamused:

I'm still learning 4e, but: Warlock
5e Scaling Cantrips (mostly) improved the at-will powers? and short rest refreshing Slots are encouter powers? Invocations being always-on enhancements?

See, if the Player was spending Sorcerer points (and maybe sacrificing Sorcerer spell slots) to renew Warlock slots, I might be more lenient. But I have yet to see that happen.

Got any ideas on boosts to just Warlocks?
While some of the 3x Invocations are easy to convert, not all are really useful.

I was thinking about changing the energy type (except Acid and Psychic) of Eldritch Blast to depending on Patron, and having an Invocation to change to Force/Radiant/Necrotic at higher level.

But, I kinda figured that would be unwelcomed by most Players. IDK.

PairO'Dice Lost
2019-08-08, 03:24 PM
Also gishes always seemed like such an over reach "I want the power and versatility of a spellcaster while having the survivability and combat prowess of a buffed fighter." I think they really show what type of players want to minmax and try to make sure noone else at the table will have fun.

Yes, you can be a gish who just chucks fireballs while wearing full plate, but that's not generally what that means. Gishing it up isn't about being 100% caster and 100% fighter, much like how a paladin isn't just a full cleric stapled to a full fighter; it's about giving up raw power on both sides to combine the two in a synergistic way, like the duskblade, magus, psychic warrior, abjurant champion, etc., which generally takes the form of playing like a fighter but using magic in place of weapons, armor, fighting styles, and the like.


I'm still learning 4e, but: Warlock
5e Scaling Cantrips (mostly) improved the at-will powers? and short rest refreshing Slots are encouter powers? Invocations being always-on enhancements?

Yep, cantrips are basically at-wills, spell slots are basically encounters, Mystic Arcanum are basically dailies, and invocations are basically either feats (for the passive benefits) or more powers (for the ones that just let you cast more spells).


See, if the Player was spending Sorcerer points (and maybe sacrificing Sorcerer spell slots) to renew Warlock slots, I might be more lenient. But I have yet to see that happen.

Well, firstly, the whole point is that you sacrifice warlock slots because they come back on a short rest, if you're sacrificing sorcerer slots you're not gaining anything and might as well be a pure sorcerer.

And secondly, the reaction to the Coffeelock is much like the initial reaction to the 3e warlock: "Oh noes, it gets bazillions of castings of weak spells, that must be overpowered (if you completely ignore the highly limited spells known and low power level of the spells available)!" On a cheese scale of soft brie to sharp cheddar, it barely rates as Velveeta.


Got any ideas on boosts to just Warlocks?

I mean, personally, I prefer to chuck it entirely in favor of a more 3e-like version, where you have basically no usage restrictions on your magic, you can modify your primary attack in lots of ways, and Eldritch Blast isn't just a cantrip that all the other casters take with Magic Initiate and make the warlock sad, so I'm not the best one to ask about that. :smallwink:

Arbane
2019-08-09, 10:43 AM
What stops "guy at the gym" from being a hero in an RPG?

Isn't it just a matter of power scale?

Or does a character need to be capable of the impossible to be a heroic character?

(The HERO system specifically limits Heroic scale characters to normal characteristic maxes and no inherent superpowers.)

The Guy at the Gym can absolutely be a hero, as long as they're not constantly being chumped by people with actual superpowers, which generally requires some degree of Plot Control. Being able to SURVIVE doing heroic stuff would be a nice bonus, too, but that might require unrealistic abilities like being able to dodge bullets.

GreatWyrmGold
2019-08-09, 03:26 PM
Most of those "classical heroes" were blatantly superhumans in some way or another... those were almost the superhero stories of their day.
Yes, I know. That's why I described them as necessarily superhuman.


I don't think someone needs to be the son of Zeus or the son of Krypton to be a hero.
To this I reply with the point you quoted: What is a hero? Is performing deeds beyond the capacity of normal humanity a critical component of heroism, as it is for classical heroes and superheroes? Or is it sufficient to have superhuman morality or determination, a will to do good exceeding that of normal people?


(I'd recommend against using D&D, flat out, but that's just me.)
Eh, it has its uses. It's the only decent level-based system I've been able to find, and those are ideal for introducing new roleplayers to a system while giving old hands something to work with.



Next, spell slots don't stack, and only apply to their own class.

Which kills the Coffeelock (Warlock spell slots cannot be converted into Sorcerer points), and stops the "never ending" Smite Palalock.

It also prevents Multiclassing Mages to Upcast otherwise low power spells into more powerful slots. Shows a true benefit to dedicated casters.
It's easy to recognize a feature as something that makes a given build powerful. It's harder to recognize whether removing that feature will get you what you want. Doing this puts us back in the 3.5 paradigm where multiclassing out of casting classes (save for prestige classes giving +1 level of previous spellcasting class) was worthless. Dedicated casters have true benefits. They can cast higher-level spells (nearly always better than upcasting low-level spells) and have access to higher-level class features (which, unlike in 3.5, actually matter).
Messing with the new system that WotC designers put together isn't worth crippling a theoretical monstrosity and a potent build.



And secondly, the reaction to the Coffeelock is much like the initial reaction to the 3e warlock: "Oh noes, it gets bazillions of castings of weak spells, that must be overpowered (if you completely ignore the highly limited spells known and low power level of the spells available)!" On a cheese scale of soft brie to sharp cheddar, it barely rates as Velveeta.
In theory, you can set up the core components of a coffeelock at low levels where raw 1st-level spells are still potent and then skip long rests long enough to build up a ludicrous supply of spell slots, letting you toss guiding bolts and burning handss like cantrips at levels where they are significantly more powerful than cantrips.
In practice, if the DM remembers that people need to sleep, you'll need some extra component that takes extra effort and levels to set up.



The Guy at the Gym can absolutely be a hero, as long as they're not constantly being chumped by people with actual superpowers, which generally requires some degree of Plot Control. Being able to SURVIVE doing heroic stuff would be a nice bonus, too, but that might require unrealistic abilities like being able to dodge bullets.
That, or give them some kind of separate skill (like being good at tactics, if your world's powers don't include convenient divination) that none of their allies or enemies have.

Great Dragon
2019-08-09, 04:14 PM
1) Counter:
(A) Which Caster has the ability to non-magically double their Hit Points?

(B) Without Racial perks or Multiclassing, wear armor that makes hitting them difficult? (Mage Max AC = 23)

(C) Do an extra 9d6 damage whenever a friend is near? Sometimes not even needing that.

2) So, I suppose that the Martial with Leadership and at least decent Charisma can’t convince the local Army to come help out against the threat to the region? Oh, wait that require Roleplaying !! Dice Rolls optional.

3) Um - only the Cleric has the power to actually reverse/cheat death - not the Mages.
Avoid death? Maybe, for a little while, anyway.

4) No one should be able to do everything. Regardless of Class.
Especially in a tRPG designed for Group Play.



What does non-magical have to do with anything.
I never requested for the martials to get a magical increase in potency AND flexibility. I just want them to also increase in both mechanical choice and mechanical power. Choice every level or so and power every second. Please. Preferably at an accelerated pace for the power.

My point there was: there are things the Martials can do, that Caster's really can't duplicate, and even when they can, is only in a very limited fashion.


And just for giggles:
A) Bladesinger. Song of Defense doesn't mention magic, just consuming spell slots.

Which is in the same boat as a Smiting Paladin.
Smiting Warlocks are even more limited.
Burning your slots actually reduces the PC's options and flexibility in that combat.


B) Weird contrived scenario. Hexblade level 10 (not that the armour matters much...) (Forge) Cleric, maybe with a Dodge action on top because, y'know they don't need the action to deal damage that often. Magic Jar. Shapechange. True Polymorph. Other ways of getting around this…

Off that list, I'll say the Mages should not have both Shapechange and True Polymorph.
To me, Shapechanging is a Druid thing.


C) Willy the Extra-Planar Whisperer. His Friendly Neighborhood Extra-Terrestrials don't even need him on the same continent.
Was Willy a Whisper Bard?


But again. Who really cares about 9d6 damage? It's 31,5 average without modifying for misses. The Evocation Wizard probably didn't even want to take 25,5 certain, never miss damage.

So, the Wizard does less damage each hit, and only a few times a day; where Rogue is still rocking that "mere" 10 to 13+31 (5 from 1d8 + 5 Dex +3 magic plus Sneak Attack) damage almost every round (assuming a 30% miss chance and no AoO) all day long….


2) *sniff sniff* smells like Stormwind Fallacy. Yes, DM can help you. Nice. And this option isn't open to the caster who can also add extraterrestrial allies, because?? Oh, because nothing.

GMs that only help one type of class, aren't really running the game as intended.

I've already addressed Planar Binding.
And Plane Shift is being covered by others.

Mostly, I find that the various Summons (which are the most common) are basically the Caster adding a few Mooks into the combat. A warrior at anything over 5th level that is properly equipped can deal with even 8 wolves (giant wolf Spiders are a little harder, but only if they hit, and the warrior fails their Con save and is then attacking with Disadvantage) attacking them.

And even being able to bring in a CR 10 Devil with Infernal Calling (costing the Mage their only 9th level slot) isn't much of a threat to most CR 17+ Challenges. Plus, said Devil is hostile to the Mage and allies; and the mage losing Concentration frees the Devil to do whatever it wants for three minutes….

Clerics burning a 7th level slot for a CR 5 Celestial (Unicorn), is really pathetic, IMO.
But, like stated above, even the CR 10 Deva wouldn't really make too much difference.


3) Clone. Resurrection. Contingency. Wish.

I guess these are just dependant too much on the GM.


4) Is this even a point? If yes, for whom?
I might have had a random thought, and can't remember what my point was. So, I'll skip this.


The combination of power, utility and flexibility; the growth and quality of mechanically supported player agency was.
But, several people have tried to address this - including the making of 4e (which I'm trying to learn), and I still see lots of "it's not enough" complaints.


Edit]C) make the world press casters between adventures - ie make them chased so they can't spend downtime to build armies, always have escape mechanisms prepared, avoid fame, etc. It doesn't make the class chassis weaker, but it prevents them from snowballing

See, these are some things that can happen in my games. I'm not arguing that Mages don't have power, but I'm saying that having that power causes problems that make it difficult for them. Everyone with any kind of Status (money or political position) is going to bother the Mage/s for everything from "Solving a small problem" to making custom magical items (that burn Downtime). Even if the Mage manages to get an escape Mechanism in place, there are ways to counter that, or force them to use it while being pursued (putting a trap or Ambush at the "safe" location, if known)

Being Famous is a double sided blade (and affects all classes differently) or at least should be.

Really, Casters other than Clerics try to avoid being too well known. It's why the Hermit Mage/Druid is a trope.

@Fable Wright: check here (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?592305-I-never-noticed-this-bet-you-haven-t-either&p=24024665#post24024665), as well.


Nothing says 'I fight dragons' like launching harpoons out of a Dragonslayer Greatbow. Or allowing said harpoons to initiate a ranged grapple. Nothing says "Fightin' Man" like wrenching a dragon out of the sky with your mighty thews, before taking out your lance and ending them rightly.

This is indeed awesome. Thanks for the idea!


Short summary: If the game says a player can play a Nth level X but the mechanics don't let them instantiate a Nth level X but would let them instantiate a 2Nth level Y. The player get disappointed that they can't instantiate a 2Nth level X.

Ok. But then someone might be able to come up with a 1.5 N level B.
But, because they are stuck complaining about both X and Y, they reject it.


That actually sounds like it could be fun, with the right group.

Indeed. Finding that Group can be challenging, though.

GreatWyrmGold
2019-08-09, 04:22 PM
If you're specific enough about the mechanics used to "not die" or "deal damage," then there are a bunch of things casters can't do that martials can. But at the end of the day, it only matters who survived and how much damage was dealt, not the mechanics used to resolve it. What matters is how effective their respective mechanics make them at doing those things, and the gap between how well casters can survive and deal damage and how well martials do so isn't as big as you seem to think.

On the other hand, abilities based entirely outside of mechanics (like leading armies) are irrelevant to this discussion, because nothing short of DM fiat stops the wizard or cleric from doing the exact same thing.

Jakinbandw
2019-08-09, 06:16 PM
On the other hand, abilities based entirely outside of mechanics (like leading armies) are irrelevant to this discussion, because nothing short of DM fiat stops the wizard or cleric from doing the exact same thing.
I think the idea there is: "congrats! You can do something everyone can do without wasting a spell slot. And do it less good than people that roleplay.

Its like saying mages in 5e are great because of the blade ward spell.

MeimuHakurei
2019-08-10, 08:10 AM
I think the idea there is: "congrats! You can do something everyone can do without wasting a spell slot. And do it less good than people that roleplay.

Its like saying mages in 5e are great because of the blade ward spell.

If RP is that central to the game the best build is not to have a character sheet at all - after all, rules only get in the way of roleplaying, am I right?

Great Dragon
2019-08-10, 08:39 AM
On the other hand, abilities based entirely outside of mechanics (like leading armies) are irrelevant to this discussion, because nothing short of DM fiat stops the wizard or cleric from doing the exact same thing.

Also, it's far more likely for Casters to try and get an army (etc), especially for Mages - because trying to bring in your (successfully bound) Fiend "allies" has a much higher risk, if not cost: and not just money.

And without Rule-Controlled Dice Rolls, those Players that are good at Roleplaying will dominate over those that aren't. While those rules don't always help, most people can accept a "random chance" as being more Fair to everyone in the group.

Jakinbandw
2019-08-10, 11:59 AM
If RP is that central to the game the best build is not to have a character sheet at all - after all, rules only get in the way of roleplaying, am I right?

Congrats on not engaging with my point.

Great Dragon
2019-08-12, 09:55 AM
I think the idea there is: "congrats! You can do something everyone can do without wasting a spell slot. And do it less good than people that roleplay.

5e made Charms borderline worthless, especially for long term goals, like said Army.

Sure, Dominate on the General might work, but there's always the chance that someone knew that person, and notices the sudden change in behavior: and calls in a friendly caster to investigate and negate your control.

Or lacking their own caster/s, simply knocks out the General, and waits for you to come find out why said isn't moving the Army the way you want
- Ambush!

And unless you already had Contingency+Teleport (or Plane Shift, etc) or Word of Recall already in place, escape isn't likely.


Its like saying mages in 5e are great because of the blade ward spell.


LoL
Well, maybe if it was (RAW) a Bonus Action or Reaction to cast....

Same for True Strike.
It's almost always better to make an attack every round than to not attack one round for only a slightly better chance of hitting the next round.

(I have yet to make a Mage with either.
But then, I'm actually hoping the Martials keep my Mage out of Melee !!)
****************

Feat
Power Attack: Subtract Proficiency from attack to deal double that value in damage. Applies to both melee and ranged.


Fighting Style: Barbarian, Fighter, Paladin and Ranger.

3rd level: Kill a foe and attack another within 5 feet.

6th: No limit to foes attacked, so long as the last was killed.

10th: Take a 5 foot free move while Cleaving foes.

14th: Able to use full movement while Cleaving Foes.

Thoughts?

GreatWyrmGold
2019-08-16, 07:48 AM
5e made Charms borderline worthless, especially for long term goals, like said Army.
"Borderline worthless" is unfair. 5e codified the charm spell-line into something nice and unambiguous, which isn't much good at winning allies but does keep you safe and help your Persuasion attempts.


Sure, Dominate on the General might work, but there's always the chance that someone knew that person, and notices the sudden change in behavior: and calls in a friendly caster to investigate and negate your control.

Or lacking their own caster/s, simply knocks out the General, and waits for you to come find out why said isn't moving the Army the way you want
- Ambush!

And unless you already had Contingency+Teleport (or Plane Shift, etc) or Word of Recall already in place, escape isn't likely.
That's always been a weakness in (unattended) dominate person plans. Never heard complaints about "Well, if you dominate one person and people realize it, they might not listen" before, so I've also never heard people make the obvious counterarguments.
For instance: If you convince the general the Diplomacy way, there are still likely to be subordinates who don't like the new plan and may work against it. Same plotline, same result; the only difference is that success or failure are dependent on one Persuasion roll per point and how hard your DM decides this is going to be, instead of just one save and you're done.


Same for True Strike.
It's almost always better to make an attack every round than to not attack one round for only a slightly better chance of hitting the next round.
Numerically speaking, the two are equivalent. One just eats up a cantrip slot and triggers advantage-based abilities.



Feat
Power Attack: Subtract Proficiency from attack to deal double that value in damage. Applies to both melee and ranged.


Fighting Style: Barbarian, Fighter, Paladin and Ranger.

3rd level: Kill a foe and attack another within 5 feet.

6th: No limit to foes attacked, so long as the last was killed.

10th: Take a 5 foot free move while Cleaving foes.

14th: Able to use full movement while Cleaving Foes.

Thoughts?
Not sure what you're trying to accomplish with either.
Power Attack seems like a watered-down, more general version of Great Weapon Master/Sharpshooter. I think it's redundant. (And also that "Power Attacking" with a crossbow or something is weird.)
Cleave is weak as heck. Cleave and especially Great Cleave were weak feats in 3.5 because of how rare it is to down an enemy, especially at higher levels (given how hit points increase and damage really doesn't). If you wanted to make a semi-practical Cleave fighting style, you'd need to base it around some other ability that supports Cleave-ing. Probably something that boosts damage.
(Also, you can move between attacks by default in 5e.)

Great Dragon
2019-08-16, 01:11 PM
"Borderline worthless" is unfair. 5e codified the charm spell-line into something nice and unambiguous, which isn't much good at winning allies but does keep you safe and help your Persuasion attempts.

Right, which is why I said "for long term goals".

Short term goal: Charm Monster successfully used on the Minotaur to convince him to show your party the way out of the Maze. And so long as your gone by the end of the hour, do you really care that the Minotaur is mad at you?

But, honestly, why would my Wizard take the chance of the General (who is a High Level Person with - what? about a 40% chance) resisting his Charm?

Especially if Wiz not going Solo, and can just "assist" his Bard/Rogue friend with Expertise in Persuasion, thus not taking the chance of making a (Permanent) enemy?


That's always been a weakness in (unattended) dominate person plans. Never heard complaints about "Well, if you dominate one person and people realize it, they might not listen" before, so I've also never heard people make the obvious counterarguments.

For instance: If you convince the general the Diplomacy way, there are still likely to be subordinates who don't like the new plan and may work against it. Same plotline, same result; the only difference is that success or failure are dependent on one Persuasion roll per point and how hard your DM decides this is going to be, instead of just one save and you're done..

Which (kinda) supports my point: that Spells shouldn't be treated as "Auto Win" buttons, and that there can be equal chance for both Magical and non-magical ways to achieve the same goal. And with similar results.

The difference is, sure, Dominate is faster, but unless supervised there's too many Sprockets and Cogs to last long. And if you're right there all the time, and they make that daily save, well - hope you had an Escape Plan already in place.

But then, that's why there's a lot of "Use a disguise (either Magical or not) - Get what I want (again, Magic or non-Magic)- and burn out" plans.
These require more DM planning.


Numerically speaking, the two are equivalent. One just eats up a cantrip slot and triggers advantage-based abilities.

In which case, why not just make it a Bonus Action to cast? I'm trying this, and no real problems, yet.

Only Rogue with Magic Initiate (or Arcane Trickster) would really get a benefit, being able to SA each round. But cost any other BA Features.

Better to have Rogue with MI: Familiar.
Where only Swashbuckler and Inquisitive don't really need either.


Not sure what you're trying to accomplish with either.
Power Attack seems like a watered-down, more general version of Great Weapon Master/Sharpshooter. I think it's redundant. (And also that "Power Attacking" with a crossbow or something is weird.)

Yeah, I've been busy, and if I'd had a Playtesting Group, I would have seen the same.

I did consider combining those, but then would work only on really weak (Low AC) Mooks.


Cleave is weak as heck. Cleave and especially Great Cleave were weak feats in 3.5 because of how rare it is to down an enemy, especially at higher levels (given how hit points increase and damage really doesn't). If you wanted to make a semi-practical Cleave fighting style, you'd need to base it around some other ability that supports Cleave-ing. Probably something that boosts damage.
(Also, you can move between attacks by default in 5e.)

I'm not sure how to add extra damage.

Would adding a Knockdown effect to Cleave (killing isn't needed) work better?
But, isn't that redundant for Battlemasters?
Might help the others, though.

hoaiphong123
2019-08-16, 09:59 PM
hmm, Martials need demigod

GreatWyrmGold
2019-08-16, 11:00 PM
Right, which is why I said "for long term goals".

Short term goal: Charm Monster successfully used on the Minotaur to convince him to show your party the way out of the Maze. And so long as your gone by the end of the hour, do you really care that the Minotaur is mad at you?

But, honestly, why would my Wizard take the chance of the General (who is a High Level Person with - what? about a 40% chance) resisting his Charm?

Especially if Wiz not going Solo, and can just "assist" his Bard/Rogue friend with Expertise in Persuasion, thus not taking the chance of making a (Permanent) enemy?
Assuming that failing to charm a general can have negative side effects, but failing to Persuade a general can't, is obviously going to make charm seem useless. But that's not a pair of assumptions that are always going to be accurate.


The difference is, sure, Dominate is faster, but unless supervised there's too many Sprockets and Cogs to last long. And if you're right there all the time, and they make that daily save, well - hope you had an Escape Plan already in place.
Again, why are you ignoring the possibility of Things Going Wrong for non-magical plans? I'd argue that the non-dominated general is more vulnerable to Things Going Wrong, because anything which disrupts the premises of the arguments you made to them could ruin your whole deal.


In which case, why not just make it a Bonus Action to cast? I'm trying this, and no real problems, yet.
I dunno. The designers probably didn't want players to be able to casually gain advantage on every attack, knew advantage wasn't worth a spell slot, and refused to give this spell a to-hit bonus as part of their rule to not give those out...except that they did, for a spell or two. Oops.


I'm not sure how to add extra damage.
...Add an ability that lets the fighter attack for increased damage? Maybe something like the barbarian's Reckless Attack, where you accept advantage-to-hit for double damage?


Would adding a Knockdown effect to Cleave (killing isn't needed) work better?
But, isn't that redundant for Battlemasters?
Quite probably. Which is why it probably makes more sense to make Cleave a Battlemaster maneuver than an entire fighting style. (Maybe Power Attack, too, if you want it to not overlap with GWM/Sharpshooter.)

Great Dragon
2019-08-17, 02:08 AM
Assuming that failing to charm a general can have negative side effects, but failing to Persuade a general can't, is obviously going to make charm seem useless. But that's not a pair of assumptions that are always going to be accurate.

Partly because the effects of failure for the spell are listed in the book, and aren't for a failed Skill Check.


Again, why are you ignoring the possibility of Things Going Wrong for non-magical plans? I'd argue that the non-dominated general is more vulnerable to Things Going Wrong, because anything which disrupts the premises of the arguments you made to them could ruin your whole deal.

Mostly due to how the OP was started - ie "Martials are greatly overshadowed by casters" - that I put in my comments about how limited a lot of these "Auto Win" spells really are. Or at least, could be.

Most DMs that I've heard about, don't really have too much trouble dealing with mundane Challenges;
Depending on the DM, and Personality of the General, the odds of said General making their Save and immediately having the Caster and/or Party executed can be a lot higher: where maybe the worst that happens on a failed Diplomacy would be arrest and imprisonment. With Exile next worst, and being given a Quest being maybe the best.


Things Going Wrong
Is kinda the DM's job.

Now I can't think of every possible thing that the PC/s are going to try, but I can plan for things that are listed in the book (spells) or that are the most likely to be used (Skills).
And Improve the rest.


I dunno. The designers probably didn't want players to be able to casually gain advantage on every attack, knew advantage wasn't worth a spell slot, and refused to give this spell a to-hit bonus as part of their rule to not give those out...except that they did, for a spell or two. Oops.

Yeah, I don't know, either.


...Add an ability that lets the fighter attack for increased damage? Maybe something like the barbarian's Reckless Attack, where you accept advantage-to-hit for double damage?

Quite probably. Which is why it probably makes more sense to make Cleave a Battlemaster maneuver than an entire fighting style. (Maybe Power Attack, too, if you want it to not overlap with GWM/Sharpshooter.)

Well, with the Fighting Style, I was hoping to help more Classes than just one Class' Subclass.

Maybe keep it a feat? Two at most?

Cleave including knockdown? (Str Save? Or opposed Str Check?)

Cleaving Terror: (req: Cleave) can Dash (Bonus Action?) so long as Cleaving?

I can even think of some Out of Combat uses for those.
Imagine being in the bar with the Martial having the Cleave feat, being able knock down those people between them and their target (person or the door), and other Party members just following in the cleared path behind them!

Or that Martial getting Cleaving Terror plowing through the crowded market without even slowing down!!!

GreatWyrmGold
2019-08-17, 05:48 PM
Partly because the effects of failure for the spell are listed in the book, and aren't for a failed Skill Check.
IIRC, the effects for success on a Skill Check aren't that well-described, either. That's more a result of skill checks being vague as heck in 5e than proof of their power.


Well, with the Fighting Style, I was hoping to help more Classes than just one Class' Subclass.
First off, other classes can use Battlemaster maneuvers with the right feat. Second off, that's not a great reason to fit a square peg in a round mechanic. Maybe find some non-Cleave-line derivative way to boost martial classes?
This isn't the homebrew subforum, don't expect premium-grade homebrew advice.

Great Dragon
2019-08-17, 07:45 PM
First off, other classes can use Battlemaster maneuvers with the right feat. Second off, that's not a great reason to fit a square peg in a round mechanic. Maybe find some non-Cleave-line derivative way to boost martial classes?
This isn't the homebrew subforum, don't expect premium-grade homebrew advice.

Well, I tried.

I placed my ideas here, because they were Suggestions for ways to address the complaint in the Original Post.
If they were Accepted by the OP (or enough of the members posting) I would have moved them to Homebrew for more focused feedback, especially if asked.

I have found some of the ideas here good enough to add to my Ancient Realms thread in World Building (didn't feel they needed more work, as yet - so not in Homebrew), but seems not very many people are interested in responding there. *Shrug*


*****
No new ideas at this time.
I'll check in every once in a while.

Kardwill
2019-08-30, 07:35 AM
Or let's not do that, say that doing something by magic is treated the same as doing it mundanely rules-wise, and let people fluff as they like.


Love how the Dresden Files Accelerated deals with this : Want to kick down a door? Make a "Forceful" roll. Want to blast it with your kinetikomancy? Make a "Forceful" roll. And sure, the kinetomancer can spend a round drawing power from the nearest leyline to get a +2, but the bruiser can spend the same round to grab some heavy object for a +2 as well. :)

They then blew up that balance by giving a flat +1 to supernatural stuff (your werewolf or wizard get +1 when they use their werewolf-power or magic, but your mafia bruiser does not get it when he does regular mafia-stuff). but for a game that proclaims it doesn't bother with balance, it achieves a pretty nice amount of it.
Especially considering that the previous DF game by the same publisher (Dresden Files Role Playing Game) follows the "Wizards can blow up the planet while mundanes struggle to stay alive" scool of game design.

OldTrees1
2019-08-30, 11:49 AM
Love how the Dresden Files Accelerated deals with this : Want to kick down a door? Make a "Forceful" roll. Want to blast it with your kinetikomancy? Make a "Forceful" roll. And sure, the kinetomancer can spend a round drawing power from the nearest leyline to get a +2, but the bruiser can spend the same round to grab some heavy object for a +2 as well. :)

They then blew up that balance by giving a flat +1 to supernatural stuff (your werewolf or wizard get +1 when they use their werewolf-power or magic, but your mafia bruiser does not get it when he does regular mafia-stuff). but for a game that proclaims it doesn't bother with balance, it achieves a pretty nice amount of it.
Especially considering that the previous DF game by the same publisher (Dresden Files Role Playing Game) follows the "Wizards can blow up the planet while mundanes struggle to stay alive" scool of game design.

What if they both want to get to the moon? Is the bruiser allowed to roll (and is it against the same DC)?

Great Dragon
2019-08-30, 12:41 PM
Love how the Dresden Files Accelerated deals with this : Want to kick down a door? Make a "Forceful" roll. Want to blast it with your kinetikomancy? Make a "Forceful" roll. And sure, the kinetomancer can spend a round drawing power from the nearest leyline to get a +2, but the bruiser can spend the same round to grab some heavy object for a +2 as well. :)

They then blew up that balance by giving a flat +1 to supernatural stuff (your werewolf or wizard get +1 when they use their werewolf-power or magic, but your mafia bruiser does not get it when he does regular mafia-stuff). but for a game that proclaims it doesn't bother with balance, it achieves a pretty nice amount of it.

I'd just apply the extra +1 to mafia bruiser stuff.

Sure, the Wizard might blow the door off the hinges with their kinetikomancy (Forceful Roll + 2 Layline and +1 "magic") - which is maybe impressive. But has absolutely no chance of sneaking up on anyone on the other side of said door.

And while the Bruiser doesn't get another bonus to knocking the door open (Forceful Roll +2 heavy object) maybe they do get that extra +1 when trying to quietly pick the lock instead.


*****
@OldTrees1: depends on what's available to get to the moon, I suppose.

Just jumping (on Earth) shouldn't get either anywhere close.
(Although while Harry did manage to get some great height with kinetikomancy, he got stuck in a tree for his effort !!)

The Bruiser taking a Rocket to the moon might depend on how closely skilled they are to an Astronaut.
And maybe if they remembered to check the Fuel Level.....

The Wizard opening a Portal and walking through the Nevernever might work, but might have them end up lost on (the equivalent of) Venus or something.
(Figuring out how the DF Nevernever works as a DM is fun !)

Anonymouswizard
2019-08-30, 12:44 PM
What if they both want to get to the moon? Is the bruiser allowed to roll (and is it against the same DC)?

Yes. He rolls at the exact same difficulty (in Dresden Files Accelerated I believe that would require about a +50, in a system where your highest approach is unlikely to be more than +6, and you roll won't add more than +4, better start creating those advantages and stacking those free invokes...).

Why is this so hard? The same end result gets the same difficulty whether you're doing it via magic, brute strength, or running for parliament and bringing in a new law (although I'd question doing the last in the middle of combat).

OldTrees1
2019-08-30, 12:46 PM
Yes. He rolls at the exact same difficulty (in Dresden Files Accelerated I believe that would require about a +50, in a system where your highest approach is unlikely to be more than +6, and you roll won't add more than +4, better start creating those advantages and stacking those free invokes...).

Why is this so hard? The same end result gets the same difficulty whether you're doing it via magic, brute strength, or running for parliament and bringing in a new law (although I'd question doing the last in the middle of combat).

So the Bruiser rolls against a DC of +50 and the Wizard makes a portal and walks through the Nevernever (also at DC +50)?
I was asking because it sounded like the system would still prohibit the Bruiser from getting a roll or would allow the Wizard an alternative way with a lower DC. I wanted to ask before I got my hopes up too high. Because the baked in equivalent DC sounds nice but suspicious.

Great Dragon
2019-08-30, 01:13 PM
Jump target +50 and Portal target +50 would seem fairly balanced.

I'm also curious about DF-RPG, but haven't gotten it because I can't find anyone else interested near me.

GreatWyrmGold
2019-08-30, 06:15 PM
The Bruiser taking a Rocket to the moon might depend on how closely skilled they are to an Astronaut.
I missed the word "skilled" the first time I read this, so my mental image was a mafia thug mugging an astronaut and stealing the Space Shuttle. (Which wouldn't get to the Moon, even if it was still in service, but hush.)

Great Dragon
2019-08-30, 06:24 PM
I missed the word "skilled" the first time I read this, so my mental image was a mafia thug mugging an astronaut and stealing the Space Shuttle. (Which wouldn't get to the Moon, even if it was still in service, but hush.)

ROFLMAO !!

Yeah, so the Astronaut wakes up, sees the Bruiser leaning over them, who says "Your going to get me to the moon, see?"

And the Astronaut has to explain (maybe twice?) that the Space Shuttle can't do that....

Kardwill
2019-08-31, 03:58 AM
I'm also curious about DF-RPG, but haven't gotten it because I can't find anyone else interested near me.

Note that DF-RPG and DF-A are from the same publisher and are both Fate games, but they are fairly different.

DFRPG is crunchy (for a Fate game), with 35 skills, dozens of powers, a point buy character creation, a detailed (and overpowered) magic...

DF-Accelerated is much more streamlined, with 6 skills, "fuzzier" powers, a "caracter class" creation, a simpler unified system, etc...

I love both games, both do a really nice job to emulate the novels in their own way, but they don't really scratch the same itch :)

Jakinbandw
2019-08-31, 07:27 AM
a detailed (and overpowered) magic...

Eh... I'm not sure I agree. I played as a pure mortal in a party of mages and I was the one who took out an entire group of Mercenary (Ghouls I think?). Having eight fate points to burn on a single roll is really powerful. I care not for your armor, health or anything. You're all going to get bribed! :P Seriously though, In two rounds I got results of 12 and 16 respectively on social attacks. Meanwhile one mage was just about to finish a summoning and the other had his fireball do pretty much nothing against all the physical defenses of the mercs.

Max_Killjoy
2019-08-31, 07:55 AM
Personally, I find it deeply dissatisfying and disassociated if two characters are using wildly different means, but roll the same thing because they're both trying to achieve the same ends.

Jakinbandw
2019-08-31, 08:38 AM
Personally, I find it deeply dissatisfying and disassociated if two characters are using wildly different means, but roll the same thing because they're both trying to achieve the same ends.

What is this a comment on?

Max_Killjoy
2019-08-31, 09:18 AM
What is this a comment on?


It was the idea of a mage and a bruiser both rolling something called "forceful" to knock down a door that brought it up, but more generally about systems that go that far into the abstract and disassociated.

Great Dragon
2019-08-31, 09:49 AM
What is this a comment on?

If I was to guess:


Jump target +50 and Portal target +50 would seem fairly balanced.


Personally, I find it deeply dissatisfying and disassociated if two characters are using wildly different means, but roll the same thing because they're both trying to achieve the same ends.

IMO - if both the DC and the result are the same, there is little difference between using the same Mechanical method for both and using different Mechanic for each. The latter just tends to favor your PC's specific Ability/Skill focus. But if the first is using the same Mechanic and allows different Ability/Skills as the "means" - there isn't any real difference.

I understand your point, though:
I suppose the D&D example would be Perception vs Investigation.
Secret Doors and Traps.
By Raw, all that is required is the PC successfully making a Perception Roll to detect these.
Which means that Investigation is worthless.
(Unless used as the 5e version of Gather Information, I suppose)

And that Bards [with a good Perception, Expertise most likely] are just as good at Finding Traps and (if they have Thieves Tools from a background) [with a good Dex] Disarming them.
The Rogue putting Expertise in Thieves Tools usually isn't worth it, since by RAW: nothing has a DC over 20, and past 11th level a 19 without even rolling will get 99.99% of traps.

I'm Old School, in that I believe that both Secret Doors and Traps are designed to not be easily noticed, and just looking around the room doesn't detect them (even if you have a 30 Passive Perception! Although that will detect the location of even Invisible creatures) actually inspecting the area where these are (investigation) is required to locate these.

YMmV

GreatWyrmGold
2019-08-31, 10:34 PM
Personally, I find it deeply dissatisfying and disassociated if two characters are using wildly different means, but roll the same thing because they're both trying to achieve the same ends.
I'd say it depends on the framing of the roll more than the roll itself. The mechanical difference between a barbarian smashing a door and a rogue picking a lock is basically just that one is an ability check and one is a skill check.

Great Dragon
2019-09-02, 11:58 AM
I'd say it depends on the framing of the roll more than the roll itself. The mechanical difference between a barbarian smashing a door and a rogue picking a lock is basically just that one is an ability check and one is a skill check.

Yes, but there is actually a difference there.

The skill check adds both Proficiency and Ability Modifier to the roll; where Ability check is just the mod.
Against the same DC, the Skill has a better chance.

I was compairing same effective total (even if different means = Prof +Str vs Prof +Dex) against the same DC - for there not really being a difference.

olskool
2019-09-03, 01:28 PM
I have enjoyed reading all of the responses but I will address the question in the title. You don't need to increase their power IF you add a different "restriction" to magic users. You can reduce the power of magic by using an existing 5e Game Mechanic, the Skill Check to do it. Whether you keep the Vancian limits or drop them entirely, the Skill Check will add a degree of uncertainty to spell casting. I use the following formulas for Casting;

For casting a spell under average adventuring conditions:

The DC is 10 + The Spell's Level (+1 thru +9, 0 for cantrips). The Caster gets to add his Proficiency Bonus and his INT Bonus to his Skill roll.

So a 1st level mage with a +6 total proficiency and attribute bonus would succeed in casting a 1st level spell on a roll of 5 or more (a 75% chance of success). A 20th level mage with a +10 bonus would only fail on a roll of 1. That same 20th level mage would cast a 9th level spell on a roll of 9 or more (a 55% chance of success). This system will help limit the power of magic by making casting it less certain than the RAW rules.

The DC can be varied by conditions too. A mage casting a spell in the quiet confines of his library might have a DC of 5. That same mage casting a spell while under missile attack or on a wobbly rope bridge could have a DC of 15. Being engaged in HTH would impose a DC of 20 AND DISADVANTAGE on the roll. This system basically falls in line with the fighter's "To Hit" rolls and makes magic more uncertain during an adventure.

Anonymouswizard
2019-09-03, 05:48 PM
I have enjoyed reading all of the responses but I will address the question in the title. You don't need to increase their power IF you add a different "restriction" to magic users. You can reduce the power of magic by using an existing 5e Game Mechanic, the Skill Check to do it. Whether you keep the Vancian limits or drop them entirely, the Skill Check will add a degree of uncertainty to spell casting. I use the following formulas for Casting;

For casting a spell under average adventuring conditions:

The DC is 10 + The Spell's Level (+1 thru +9, 0 for cantrips). The Caster gets to add his Proficiency Bonus and his INT Bonus to his Skill roll.

So a 1st level mage with a +6 total proficiency and attribute bonus would succeed in casting a 1st level spell on a roll of 5 or more (a 75% chance of success). A 20th level mage with a +10 bonus would only fail on a roll of 1. That same 20th level mage would cast a 9th level spell on a roll of 9 or more (a 55% chance of success). This system will help limit the power of magic by making casting it less certain than the RAW rules.

The DC can be varied by conditions too. A mage casting a spell in the quiet confines of his library might have a DC of 5. That same mage casting a spell while under missile attack or on a wobbly rope bridge could have a DC of 15. Being engaged in HTH would impose a DC of 20 AND DISADVANTAGE on the roll. This system basically falls in line with the fighter's "To Hit" rolls and makes magic more uncertain during an adventure.

Eh, D&D magic essentially needs a full rewrite, and skill-based magic isn't the worst way to do it (subdivide the skills enough and you wouldn't even need the resource management aspect). I actually really like skill based magic, and it's in every fantasy game I own bar one (maybe two? I can't remember if you get to add a skill in Keltia*). It could also be rewritten to be time-based, be resource-based (a favourite of mine, I have a d6 Fantasy setting I want to run where every spell requires material components), be inherently luck based (*cough*Warhammer*cough*), be inherently risky (Warhammer, again), be intrinsically tied to alignment, be inherently specialised, or a mixture of two or more of thread.

I've got ideas, I've got a lot of ideas as how to balance a magic system, and very few use limited energy despite it brumby something I quite like. I very rarely use miscast or wild magic though, for the same reason I rarely use fumbles (I don't wish to discourage acting). But it's very difficult to balance a system by taking a list of spells, sorting them into large categories, and applying blanket rulings. Not impossible, but you're better off building from the ground up.

* Actually it's a really good idea there, you cast by spending the metagame currency to build your dice pool, I'm considering using the basic system in my home brew.

PairO'Dice Lost
2019-09-03, 06:57 PM
Eh, D&D magic essentially needs a full rewrite, and skill-based magic isn't the worst way to do it (subdivide the skills enough and you wouldn't even need the resource management aspect). I actually really like skill based magic, and it's in every fantasy game I own bar one (maybe two? I can't remember if you get to add a skill in Keltia*).

Conversely, I think skill-based is probably one of the worst ways to go if you were to rewrite D&D magic, partly because it is in practically every fantasy game out there--say what you will about Vancian magic balance-wise, but it's certainly distinct flavor-wise and mechanically and rarely found outside D&D and its direct derivatives--but partly because D&D scales much more drastically than almost every other game out there, even other zero-to-hero ones, and skill-based stuff doesn't really scale that well unless you sharply restrict the math to the point that it's not really skill-based anymore.


Vancian magic doesn't "need" a rewrite at all. In and of itself, the base system is perfectly functional, well-balanced given its design goals, and can be fairly flexible within its constraints (prepared vs. spontaneous vs. a mix, class-specific spell lists vs. shared lists vs. tier lists, and so on). The problem is, and has always been, that individual spells can end up stronger or weaker than whatever balance point du jour you're aiming for, and that individual classes can have lists that are too broad or too narrow. That's why all the "replace Wizards with Beguiler-like classes" fixes work out well, why late Pathfinder settled on the 2/3 caster model, and so forth.


But it's very difficult to balance a system by taking a list of spells, sorting them into large categories, and applying blanket rulings. Not impossible, but you're better off building from the ground up.

Again, that's not really necessary. The vast majority of spells are basically fine--maybe a little strong or a little weak, maybe a little niche, maybe a little clunky, but there's a reason that when Pathfinder (or Arcana Evolved, or dozens of other 3e-based products) mucked around with the spell lists, most of the spells ended up unchanged except perhaps for trivial changes made so the developers could justify their paycheck. Most forumites here can rattle off the broken spells pretty easily, polymorph and gate and so on--and that's just the thing, there are just a fairly small set of broken spells (and, granted, a somewhat larger set that some think are totally fine and some thing are game-breakers too) but people take a look at a couple dozen spells out of the literal 3,000+ spells AD&D and 3e had and conclude that the whole system is broken, when you only really have to address the major outliers.

Which isn't to say that you couldn't or shouldn't go back to the drawing board, spell-wise--I've done plenty of tweaking in that area myself--just that it's not necessary to touch huge swaths of the spell list to improve balance, and it's not necessary to throw out Vancian to do that either.

Great Dragon
2019-09-04, 12:54 AM
@Dice. I love your post !

I would point out that D&D stopped using Vancian magic after 3x. At least as I understand how Vancian magic is supposed to work.

1e to 3x = want the same spell more than once per day? Memorize it for each time you want it. Plus components (for each casting) on hand required. (I still have nightmares about literal handwritten books of component "accounting" type tracking. Material type, number (and cost) of "uses", and exact location)

Both 4e and 5e don't require relearning the same spell for each use, but do put an effective over-all Daily Limit.


*****
I agree that rewriting the entire magic system isn't needed. All that is needed is for the DM to decide on which spells are even allowed in the game.

I've made comments on how I've tried to better balance D&D's Magic vs Martial.
(Which seems ignored)

Some of my ideas for Expanded Martial Abilities were accepted, along with a few from other members.

I don't really have any more ideas to offer.

But, I did like your post and wanted to let you know.

Thanks for reading.

Anonymouswizard
2019-09-04, 04:19 PM
Conversely, I think skill-based is probably one of the worst ways to go if you were to rewrite D&D magic, partly because it is in practically every fantasy game out there--say what you will about Vancian magic balance-wise, but it's certainly distinct flavor-wise and mechanically and rarely found outside D&D and its direct derivatives--but partly because D&D scales much more drastically than almost every other game out there, even other zero-to-hero ones, and skill-based stuff doesn't really scale that well unless you sharply restrict the math to the point that it's not really skill-based anymore.

Sorry, I was a bit unclear, I like skil-based magic. I also have about nine systems that do skill based magic everywhere from competently to amazingly. I don't need D&D to do skill based magic (in fact, I don't need D&D at all).

If D&D's magic went right in on the components and used them as the main limiting factor I'd be thrilled, but no system seems to be willing to deal with material components and D&D5e just went with 'if you have a magic wand you can ignore them'. Where are my mystic reagants!?


Vancian magic doesn't "need" a rewrite at all. In and of itself, the base system is perfectly functional, well-balanced given its design goals, and can be fairly flexible within its constraints (prepared vs. spontaneous vs. a mix, class-specific spell lists vs. shared lists vs. tier lists, and so on). The problem is, and has always been, that individual spells can end up stronger or weaker than whatever balance point du jour you're aiming for, and that individual classes can have lists that are too broad or too narrow. That's why all the "replace Wizards with Beguiler-like classes" fixes work out well, why late Pathfinder settled on the 2/3 caster model, and so forth.

D&D's version of vancian magic breaks my verisimilitue over it's knee and leaves me crying. Especially 5e, which should have just used a spell point system. But there's some core assumptions which mean that if you change the way spellcasting works (e.g. moving from Vancian Magic to a skill-based system) you need to rewrite it all from the ground up.

A lot of this lack of clarity stems from me losing a long post and having to write a shorter post on my phone. It was supposed to be 'if you're messing with the magic system at all...'


Again, that's not really necessary. The vast majority of spells are basically fine--maybe a little strong or a little weak, maybe a little niche, maybe a little clunky, but there's a reason that when Pathfinder (or Arcana Evolved, or dozens of other 3e-based products) mucked around with the spell lists, most of the spells ended up unchanged except perhaps for trivial changes made so the developers could justify their paycheck. Most forumites here can rattle off the broken spells pretty easily, polymorph and gate and so on--and that's just the thing, there are just a fairly small set of broken spells (and, granted, a somewhat larger set that some think are totally fine and some thing are game-breakers too) but people take a look at a couple dozen spells out of the literal 3,000+ spells AD&D and 3e had and conclude that the whole system is broken, when you only really have to address the major outliers.

Which isn't to say that you couldn't or shouldn't go back to the drawing board, spell-wise--I've done plenty of tweaking in that area myself--just that it's not necessary to touch huge swaths of the spell list to improve balance, and it's not necessary to throw out Vancian to do that either.

Eh, if you're throwing the spell slots out of the window you would do a lot better to subdivide more. Go in and give more powerful spells high DCs, or more difficult to aquire components, or restrictions on use.

Also bare in mind that PAthfinder 1e was close to 3.5 because people wanted to stick with something close to 3.5, I believe that 2e has changed a lot of stuff, and wouldn't be shicked if they went back to the drawing board for how spellcasting works, which affected which spells were broken. I partocularly think the removal of hard limits would change the balance of spells to make the more spam-friendly mid level spells overpowered, although yes the required changes probably wouldn't exceed a quarter of the spell list once you remove the 'this spell needs to be a point higher/lower than normal for it's level'.

PairO'Dice Lost
2019-09-05, 01:18 PM
I would point out that D&D stopped using Vancian magic after 3x. At least as I understand how Vancian magic is supposed to work.

1e to 3x = want the same spell more than once per day? Memorize it for each time you want it. Plus components (for each casting) on hand required. (I still have nightmares about literal handwritten books of component "accounting" type tracking. Material type, number (and cost) of "uses", and exact location)

Both 4e and 5e don't require relearning the same spell for each use, but do put an effective over-all Daily Limit.


D&D's version of vancian magic breaks my verisimilitue over it's knee and leaves me crying. Especially 5e, which should have just used a spell point system. But there's some core assumptions which mean that if you change the way spellcasting works (e.g. moving from Vancian Magic to a skill-based system) you need to rewrite it all from the ground up.

Yeah, part of the problem is definitely that 4e unceremoniously ditched Vancian magic and then 5e added back the superficial trappings in a zombified form while not actually doing anything close to Vancian. But that's a whole 'nother rant of mine, for another time. :smallamused:

Flavor-wise, Vancian is actually pretty great for versimilitude, at least in terms of having some amounts of fluff in common with real-world magical traditions, where spell points/skills/etc. are all based on New Age-y magical ideas from the 50s at the earliest. As I posted before in a previous thread on a similar topic:


Regarding how well Vancian represents magic, as one or two people mentioned upthread spell preparation involves performing a little ritual for every spell you want to cast and then storing it away for later, which has quite a bit more historical influence than most systems. In Goetic magic, you pull out your musty old tome, inscribe a mystical diagram on the floor, wave your arms in mystic gestures, chant for an hour and ten minutes, call out "Demon, come forth!" and poof, a minor demon from the Lesser Key of Solomon appears in your magic circle.

In D&D magic, you pull out your spellbook, inscribe a mystical diagram on the floor, wave your arms in mystic gestures, chant for an hour--then magically lock the current state of the ritual away in your mind instead of finishing it immediately. When you want to complete it, most likely after buffing yourself, double-checking the dimensional anchor, etc., you wave your arms in mystic gestures, chant for ten minutes, call out "Demon, come forth!" and poof, a CR 6 or lower demon from the Monster Manual appears in your magic circle.

Not only is the general flavor pretty much the same, going from "perform a big fancy ritual" to "perform most of a big fancy ritual and save the last bit to be triggered later" is probably the best extrapolation of traditional European hermetic magic, Mesoamerican sacrificial magic, or the like to get you combat-time spells; the concept of nebulous "magical energy" that a person just has and uses to "do stuff with magic" is a very modern one, comparatively, and doing things like negotiating during combat with previously-bound spirits to help you would be too slow.

Regarding how D&D magic works, it does essentially work on a True Names/Language of Magic concept, though it isn't explicitly called out as such aside from truenaming. The vast majority of spells have verbal components, spoken in a tongue belonging to ancient and powerful magical beings, and there's an entire class for people who can talk and sing so well that magic happens (and the bard was was, incidentally, the first example of a prestige or advanced class back in 1e, basically being better magic-users than the Magic-User). You need to know creatures' names to call them specifically with planar binding and similar spells, and most magic items have magic words that make them function. Power Word spells pack the most amount of power into the smallest space (in AD&D, they were very powerful spells given the lower overall monster HP and had ridiculously fast casting times, and even in 3e they're no-save spells with proportionally powerful effects) and are explicitly words with inherent magical power. Other examples of words-as-magic abound: glyphs, sigils, runes, symbols, etc., and of course wizards and archivists write down magic spells in their spellbooks and prayerbooks--magic spells made of words which themselves are magical and can't be understood by the uninitiated; scrolls, likewise, are literally written-down magic.

If you were to put an explicit statement in the Magic chapter that "D&D magic works by knowing and using the language of magic," you'd have to change absolutely none of the fluff and it would work just fine. And incidentally, while magic doesn't work via spirits, there are plenty of classes in 3e with a "get magic from powerful spirit creatures" theme, including the spirit shaman and wu jen with their minor-class-feature-but-basically-just-flavor companion spirits, the sha'ir who works magic entirely through its companion spirit, the warlock who gains power from a pact with an otherworldly being, the binder who channels spirits through his body, the hexblade that has a companion spirit that's basically a curse made manifest, and every single arcane class with a familiar.

Part of the problem is that D&D is the "default RPG," so everyone assumes that you're not picking it up from scratch but rather coming from a prior edition and generally having a more experienced player give you all the lore background on magic and the planes and such, and so the developers don't spend much page space on expounding on default setting assumptions (assuming they have that background themselves, which isn't a good bet with the current crop of developers). Some people are lore-obsessed and spend far too much free time going through obscure 1e and Planescape books (*cough* :smallredface:), but most don't go through more than the "What's the high-level overview on magic?" section of the PHB so things don't always make fluff sense.

If 5e was going to stick with Vancian, they should have put in a lot more than "Magic something something spell slots something something Weave" (and they couldn't even get that right, since the Weave is FR-only :smallannoyed:) so that groups picking the game up for the first time would have a good idea of how things are actually supposed to work. When I've run 5e for new-to-D&D folks and actually given them the lore dump from AD&D and 3e, they generally went from "This is dumb and makes no sense" to "That's actually pretty cool and different."


If D&D's magic went right in on the components and used them as the main limiting factor I'd be thrilled, but no system seems to be willing to deal with material components and D&D5e just went with 'if you have a magic wand you can ignore them'. Where are my mystic reagants!?

That approach has probably been tainted by AD&D DMs who went overboard with tracking material components to screw over "balance" magic-users, and on top of that the newer systems seem allergic to giving PCs any substantial amounts of magical stuff (either magic items or resources that can be traded for magical stuff) and prefer to keep people on a tight gear treadmill, which is fairly incompatible with giving magic-users money to buy reagents, systems for harvesting and preparing reagents, and so forth.

Personally, I'd love to see such a system. I'm a big fan both of mechanics that let you combinatorically assemble resources for various effects and of systems that let you harvest rare plants/monster parts/etc. and use them for crafting. But that, too, would require a ground-up build, as "Okay, fireballs cost one salamander scale, invisibility costs one pixie wing...." just wouldn't be sufficient.

Max_Killjoy
2019-09-05, 01:42 PM
I'm just sitting here chuckling at the assertion that "Vancian magic" reflects or captures "ancient tradition", and other setups are all "50's new age" or something.

Vance's Dying Earth works-- and Gygax clearly cites them as THE inspiration for the system -- are published from 1950 to 1984.

http://www.dyingearth.com/files/GARY%20GYGAX%20JACK%20VANCE.pdf
https://theevilgm.wordpress.com/2012/02/03/a-brief-history-of-vancian-magic/
http://arcana.wikidot.com/vancian-magic
https://nerdsonearth.com/2018/05/vancian-magic/

Morty
2019-09-05, 02:28 PM
Preparing spells is certainly distinct, that much I'll agree with. I have a certain nostalgic fondness for it. I can also understand the argument against skill-based casting. What I remain deeply sceptical of is the viability of balancing per-day spells against abilities that don't have this restriction.

Willie the Duck
2019-09-06, 09:14 AM
I'm just sitting here chuckling at the assertion that "Vancian magic" reflects or captures "ancient tradition", and other setups are all "50's new age" or something.

Max, in other threads you've railed volatilely about being mischaracterized and/or having been burdened with being accused of making arguments you never made. I would think you would show PairO'Dice Lost the same deference. He didn't say either of these things. He said that Vancian had some amounts of fluff in common with real-world magical traditions, and that spell points and skills (not other setups, or all other setups, or the like) were based on 1950+ new age traditions. Mind you, I'm not really convinced by the argument, either, but he, like you, deserves to be critiqued based on the position that he actually took.


Preparing spells is certainly distinct, that much I'll agree with. I have a certain nostalgic fondness for it. I can also understand the argument against skill-based casting. What I remain deeply sceptical of is the viability of balancing per-day spells against abilities that don't have this restriction.

It certainly requires most other variables to be held constant, particularly how much 'adventuring' comes up per 'per-day.' I know that this is completely anecdotal, but --back in the day, it worked. B/X, BECMI, AD&D 1e … back when we were playing it, it worked. And that's because a lot of other things were held constant: the backdrop was 'a dungeon,' the per-day time frame was 'one evening's worth of gaming' (or sometimes half an evening's, if it was more than our usual 2.5 hour timeslot). We house ruled some changes (particularly if we exceeded name level, but 'you get to be a general or lord' was not considered commensurate compensation to the fighter in exchange for the magic user getting level 5+ spells), but once we did, the relative balance between MUs, clerics, elves (or fighter-mages in AD&D), and fighters was pretty good (sorry rogues and halflings).

Max_Killjoy
2019-09-06, 09:29 AM
Max, in other threads you've railed volatilely about being mischaracterized and/or having been burdened with being accused of making arguments you never made. I would think you would show PairO'Dice Lost the same deference. He didn't say either of these things. He said that Vancian had some amounts of fluff in common with real-world magical traditions, and that spell points and skills (not other setups, or all other setups, or the like) were based on 1950+ new age traditions. Mind you, I'm not really convinced by the argument, either, but he, like you, deserves to be critiqued based on the position that he actually took.


I responded as I read it, and I find it dubious at best that spell-points-and-skills magic systems were ever based on "1950s new age traditions", and ironic that this was presented as a supposed contrast to Vancian magic, when Vancian magic originates in the 1950s out of whole cloth.

PairO'Dice Lost
2019-09-06, 03:38 PM
I'm just sitting here chuckling at the assertion that "Vancian magic" reflects or captures "ancient tradition", and other setups are all "50's new age" or something.

Vance's Dying Earth works-- and Gygax clearly cites them as THE inspiration for the system -- are published from 1950 to 1984.


I responded as I read it, and I find it dubious at best that spell-points-and-skills magic systems were ever based on "1950s new age traditions", and ironic that this was presented as a supposed contrast to Vancian magic, when Vancian magic originates in the 1950s out of whole cloth.

I'm well aware of when Dying Earth was published and the context around it, and have actually read all of it, I'm not just going off the Appendix N notes. The point I was trying to get at in the original post, and perhaps could have expanded on here, was that when it comes to magical aesthetics there's a pretty big spectrum between magic as actually practiced (specifically in the pseudo-Medieval-to-pseudo-Renaissance period that the rest of D&D's aesthetic is largely based on) on the one end, and magic as viewed in more modern fantasy works on the other.

Magic-as-actually-practiced was, essentially, one part mysticism and one part science. There were fancy diagrams and chanting, there were textbooks full of alchemical formulas and reagents, there were lists of demons and procedures for bargaining with them, there was a whole lot of ritual around the whole thing, and most importantly magic was a process of channeling that which was outside the magic-user (spirits or demons or angels or even gods themselves) to some useful end. To those workers of magic, magic wasn't some special separate something, it was merely another part of an integrated worldview that held everything from prayer to physics as being part of a cohesive whole; Newton famously worked on a variety of alchemical and occult studies with just as much rigor and interest as his more "real" studies on optics and gravity. And in general, if you follow a particular procedure successfully, you get a certain magical result, just like following a chemical formula or computer program (though obviously they didn't think of things in those terms at the time).

Then you have magic-as-seen-in-popular fantasy, where magic is much more of an idiosyncratic individual thing. Magic works by willpower/emotion/etc., often with some sort of focus like a wand or gem or something, but any words/gestures/foci are largely mnemonic aids and/or emotional props like Dumbo's feather, and the more powerful magic-users can go without them entirely. Magic comes entirely from the user, either via some sort of internal reservoir of magical energy or via an innate gift or talent that lets you tap into some external energy source that only people born with wizard blood or whatever can access. Magic is generally a thing rather than a process, where there's a sharp divide between "things that have magic in them" and "things that don't have magic in them," and you can magic at things all you want in whatever way you want until your internal magical battery runs dry.

Both approaches to magic can be used well in fiction, and many works use some blend of the two, including D&D (things like antimagic field being able to "turn off" magic in an area or spell levels being fungible for spontaneous casting is a strictly New Magic thing), or have the two kinds of systems side-by-side in-setting (LotR has Old Magic human sorcery and Maiar wizardry with chants and staffs and all next to New Magic rings of power and elven magic with feelings and willpower and all, Dresden Files wizards can do both New Magic quick'n'dirty Evocation and Old Magic incense'n'candles Thaumaturgy, and so on). Neither is inherently better than the other, it all depends on what fits your setting best.

But the context of my original post, and Anonymouswizard's post that I responded to, was that a lot of people object to Vancian magic on the grounds that "it doesn't make sense that magic would work like that" or "it doesn't feel magical" or whatever, and everyone and their brother who homebrews up a new magic system (for D&D or any other RPG) almost exclusively takes the "mana bar + magic skill(s), done" approach. It's assumed, for some reason, that this is how magic "really works" or is "supposed to work" and Vancian's idea of performing little rituals to call on extraplanar energy is nonsensical, when in fact for hundreds if not thousands of years that's exactly how people viewed it as working--heck, the flavor of Eberron's magewrights and adepts, where a blacksmith knows one specific ritual to make his swords better and a midwife knows one specific ritual to heal a mother in labor and so on, is much closer to how people actually practiced folk magic in ye olden days, and Eberron is the least Medieval published setting out there aesthetically.

So while I have no idea whether Vance actually researched or inspired by real-world magical traditions or whether he started with the magic-as-misunderstood-technology-and-sapient-mathematics premise and just worked backward from there (the same way 40K's techpriests and other post-apocalyptic settings turn maintenance rituals into religious rites because the characters are going through everything by rote), and I know that Gygax and Arneson retrofit Vancian flavor onto their mechanics rather than coming up with something flavor-first, the point is that if you were trying to come up with a system that looks and feels a lot like how magic did historically, it would turn out a heck of a lot closer to Vancian magic than any of the common alternatives people like to replace it with, and the idea that a magic system "making sense" or "feeling magical" has to mean just thinking really really hard to make things happen or gauging how much magical oomph to shove into a given magical effect is purely a product of fantasy literature from the last 50 years or so.


Preparing spells is certainly distinct, that much I'll agree with. I have a certain nostalgic fondness for it. I can also understand the argument against skill-based casting. What I remain deeply sceptical of is the viability of balancing per-day spells against abilities that don't have this restriction.

A couple points:

1) Balancing per-day abilities was originally viewed as a resource management problem for the magic-user: if you had 6 fights in a day and kept running out of spells in fight 4, that wasn't viewed as a failure of balance on the part of the game designer, that was viewed as the magic-user failing to use his resources well. Like Willie the Duck said, if the rest of the game supports that and a group plays the way the game assumes they will, that setup works great. I don't run my games that way anymore and I don't know of anyone who does (or at least no one who isn't still running OD&D, anyway), but there are certainly contexts in which that kind of balance is acceptable and indeed desirable.

2) "Vancian" doesn't have to mean "per day." A setup in which it takes 1 hour to prepare a single spell and you can cast it as often as you want as long as you have the time to rest and re-prepare spells in between would still be Vancian, and would look pretty close to AD&D given that back in the day magic-users had to spend 10-15 minutes per spell level preparing each spell and high-level MUs often only prepared a fraction of their expended spells each day because it would take two or three full days to top themselves off.

3) You can make lots of variations on standard D&D magic while still retaining the Vancian feel. Perhaps the call to the Violet Cloud spell creates a floating violet ball o' death that can be used in a variety of ways, so you can prepare it once and do different things over the course of a combat instead of having to prep a bunch of different offensive combat spells. Perhaps Phandal's mantle of stealth and other movement-enhancing utility spells last basically all day, so spell preparation is much more about choosing what one effect will be the most generally useful for the day than about figuring out how to time that 1 round/level invisibility spell the best. Perhaps merely having a spell prepared gives you minor magical perks (like miniature [Reserve] feats for every spell)...but spells really want to be cast, so whenever you use the minor effect you might accidentally cast the full spell and be done with that one for the day.

Basically, just because the exact implementation of Vancian magic in a given edition isn't to your taste doesn't mean you have to chuck out all the flavor and mechanics wholesale, there's a ton of room for experimentation and tweaking to taste.

Morty
2019-09-07, 07:39 PM
It certainly requires most other variables to be held constant, particularly how much 'adventuring' comes up per 'per-day.' I know that this is completely anecdotal, but --back in the day, it worked. B/X, BECMI, AD&D 1e … back when we were playing it, it worked. And that's because a lot of other things were held constant: the backdrop was 'a dungeon,' the per-day time frame was 'one evening's worth of gaming' (or sometimes half an evening's, if it was more than our usual 2.5 hour timeslot). We house ruled some changes (particularly if we exceeded name level, but 'you get to be a general or lord' was not considered commensurate compensation to the fighter in exchange for the magic user getting level 5+ spells), but once we did, the relative balance between MUs, clerics, elves (or fighter-mages in AD&D), and fighters was pretty good (sorry rogues and halflings).



1) Balancing per-day abilities was originally viewed as a resource management problem for the magic-user: if you had 6 fights in a day and kept running out of spells in fight 4, that wasn't viewed as a failure of balance on the part of the game designer, that was viewed as the magic-user failing to use his resources well. Like Willie the Duck said, if the rest of the game supports that and a group plays the way the game assumes they will, that setup works great. I don't run my games that way anymore and I don't know of anyone who does (or at least no one who isn't still running OD&D, anyway), but there are certainly contexts in which that kind of balance is acceptable and indeed desirable.

Yeah, I guess I just consider those contexts wholly unappealing.


2) "Vancian" doesn't have to mean "per day." A setup in which it takes 1 hour to prepare a single spell and you can cast it as often as you want as long as you have the time to rest and re-prepare spells in between would still be Vancian, and would look pretty close to AD&D given that back in the day magic-users had to spend 10-15 minutes per spell level preparing each spell and high-level MUs often only prepared a fraction of their expended spells each day because it would take two or three full days to top themselves off.

3) You can make lots of variations on standard D&D magic while still retaining the Vancian feel. Perhaps the call to the Violet Cloud spell creates a floating violet ball o' death that can be used in a variety of ways, so you can prepare it once and do different things over the course of a combat instead of having to prep a bunch of different offensive combat spells. Perhaps Phandal's mantle of stealth and other movement-enhancing utility spells last basically all day, so spell preparation is much more about choosing what one effect will be the most generally useful for the day than about figuring out how to time that 1 round/level invisibility spell the best. Perhaps merely having a spell prepared gives you minor magical perks (like miniature [Reserve] feats for every spell)...but spells really want to be cast, so whenever you use the minor effect you might accidentally cast the full spell and be done with that one for the day.

Basically, just because the exact implementation of Vancian magic in a given edition isn't to your taste doesn't mean you have to chuck out all the flavor and mechanics wholesale, there's a ton of room for experimentation and tweaking to taste.

Fair point on Vancian magic not requiring daily restrictions. If it could be done differently, I could see it retaining the Vancian "feel" without the balance problems that come with per-day spells.

Great Dragon
2019-09-10, 09:18 AM
I don't run my games that way anymore and I don't know of anyone who does (or at least no one who isn't still running OD&D, anyway), but there are certainly contexts in which that kind of balance is acceptable and indeed desirable.

Well, I kinda do. I run my 5e game with an unknown number of Encounters (1) in the Dungeon (or throughout the day) and for the most part, I just let the Caster's Player decide when to cast non-cantrip spells. Once out of Spell Slots, they need to figure out how to engage with the Challenge, and Cantrips only go so far.

(1: I have one Player that has figured out how to be a great scout: Owl Familiar. 120 Darkvision. Even if it's killed, only costs 10 gold and a little time to replace. I'm working on some countermeasures for those foes that know about the Owl.)

Thing is, yeah Cantrips are more potent in this Edition, but still don't hold a candle to a lot of actual spells. Although, a lot basic damage 1st level spells aren't as effective at High Level as Cantrips, without Upcasting: and I wonder how the Devs missed that.

Also, I don't stop the Party from taking short or long rests. And I rarely have something attack them when they do. (but it can happen, especially in the Dungeon)

However, I will figure out what the various Creatures are doing during that time, especially Smart ones. And taking into account how much "notice us" activities (especially combat) the party has been doing up to that point.

So, in a way, I'm still using the oD&D style of play: Casters still have to carefully manage their slot resources. And the Party has to manage thier consumables (potions, scrolls, and non-recharging wands) until they can either (A) find more as Treasure or (B) return to town to try and buy more.

I encourage my Players to think of ways to solve problems, sometimes in advance (I'm using some of Grid's Magic Items creation ideas - I'll find and add the link later)

PairO'Dice Lost
2019-09-10, 08:17 PM
Yeah, I guess I just consider those contexts wholly unappealing.

Well, keep in mind that dungeon crawls aren't the only context in which that sort of setup makes sense and could be used. Any scenario in which you have a finite set of resources with which to complete a given mission--and if you run out of those, you have to improvise/adapt/scrounge/etc. with what's left--has a similar challenge-prediction-and-resource-management aspect, and plenty of other adventure formats, from Shadowrun raids to James Bond movies where Q gives him a specific handful of gadgets in the beginning and he has to make use of them for the mission at hand, could be considered to fall under that umbrella despite not resembling dungeon crawls in the slightest.

That doesn't mean that one should then port Vancian to Shadowrun or anything like that, obviously, just that the fact OD&D used Vancian in a certain context doesn't mean that Vancian can't fit in any similar contexts.


Fair point on Vancian magic not requiring daily restrictions. If it could be done differently, I could see it retaining the Vancian "feel" without the balance problems that come with per-day spells.

Very true. In fact, I was kind of excited when WotC announced the at-will/encounter/daily setup for arcane casters in 4e, 'cause I figured encounter spells would basically be a bunch of "you can re-prepare these spells without resting, but have to spend X minutes/spell to do so," in the same way that ToB maneuvers talk about "refreshing between encounters" but actually involve spending 5 minutes prepping maneuvers, while daily spells would still require resting to refresh because they're more powerful and somehow lock/burn out/etc. the spell slot, with at-wills being something like [Reserve] feats and being dependent on which encounter and daily spells you have prepared.

Which was obviously nowhere close to what we got, but I can certainly imagine an alternate universe in which 4e dropped with varying power schedules per power source from the start and Arcane was "original flavor" Vancian like that, other power sources did different things, rituals weren't an overly-expensive afterthought, and 4e magic in general didn't leave a terrible taste in everyone's mouths.


Well, I kinda do. I run my 5e game with an unknown number of Encounters (1) in the Dungeon (or throughout the day) and for the most part, I just let the Caster's Player decide when to cast non-cantrip spells. Once out of Spell Slots, they need to figure out how to engage with the Challenge, and Cantrips only go so far.
[...]
So, in a way, I'm still using the oD&D style of play: Casters still have to carefully manage their slot resources. And the Party has to manage thier consumables (potions, scrolls, and non-recharging wands) until they can either (A) find more as Treasure or (B) return to town to try and buy more.

What you're talking about is the same basic DM advice on varying encounter frequency and difficulty that's been in every DMG (except perhaps the 4e one, I didn't read that one much), and that pretty much everyone follows to some degree these days. It's hard not to, really, unless you totally avoid all Vancian magic, consumable items, etc. (which can definitely be fun, I ran a 3e campaign with a warlock/DFA/binder/warblade party that had basically no limited resources and it was a blast), but that's quite atypical.

I was more specifically talking about the OD&D dungeon crawl experience, where you had fixed exploration procedures (that have since largely fallen by the wayside), dungeons were designed in terms of rooms instead of encounters and an "encounter" could be 1 room's monsters or 1 room's monsters + wandering monster or 3 rooms' monsters or other combinations based on where you explored/whether you made lots of noise/etc., Magic-Users were generally not expected to cast a spell in every round of a fight or even resort to spells before mundane solutions, and so forth. Where you might not even start the game with any combat-relevant spells, magic was meant to feel just as rationed as your food and your torches, and resting in the dungeon wasn't ever something you could count on.

I loved that kind of feel when I played OD&D, and still do when I go back and play OD&D these days...but I rarely do that, because that experience is very dungeon-focused and I'm not usually in the mood for that, and that's what I was talking about when I said no one really runs that way anymore outside of OD&D.

Duff
2019-09-10, 11:17 PM
It depends a lot on how you define strength. How heavily do you weight in and out of combat options? How long (in encounters) is your adventuring day?

If your campaign mostly uses the class tools in combat (either hand-waiving the out of combat stuff or role playing it with little use of system) then its a fairly simple task. Your goal is to let your "martial" class take out as many enemies in a day as your caster. Give them damage or conditions to deliver that result.
Give defenses/hitpoints/stealth enough to match the durability of a caster with a sensible array of defensive spells.
The greater stamina of being able to keep whacking things with a sword long after the caster has run out of spells is worth more if you do long days, less if you have one fight per day most days.


If spells are contributing a lot out of combat as well, it's a little harder. Spells let a caster do pretty much any job which needs doing. So you probably want to allow mundane skills to be better at what they do (so, a thief's lock picking can do complex locks while a knock spell only does basic ones for example). You could divide up the out of combat areas to ensure each non-caster class has an area where they will outshine a caster. A ranger in the woods is as undetectable as a flying invisible wizard, but can do it for longer to make up for slower. They can also match or beat the cleric's create food as a hunter/gatherer.

Another way to go about it would be to make magical and mundane solutions better against either magical or mundane problems. So you could have "Takes magic to fix magic" where your knock spell is most effective against magical locks, but will struggle against good technology. Your magic attacks work well on magical monsters but struggle against mundanes, while whacking things with a sword is great against the soldiers and will struggle on the ghosts


Or switch it. Magical solutions are best on mundane problems. Your fireball is great for clearing the soldiers, but to get rid of ghosts, you the mundane scattering of salt, or to hit them with silver weapons, or the focused will that comes from using your own strength to swing a sword. Only a skilled thief can pop a magical lock. This works best when a high level of knowledge about magic is assumed for mundane characters.

Great Dragon
2019-09-13, 05:09 AM
It depends a lot on how you define strength. How heavily do you weight in and out of combat options? How long (in encounters) is your adventuring day?

To me, giving the Players tactical tools is another form of strength.

But, remember that Player Agency is in effect, as well. They choose which Spells (or Skills/Subclass Features for Martials) to have available/known. They choose when to use them, and when not to.

As the DM, know what spell is most effective, but also figure out which skill/s can also bypass the Challenge with a reasonable DC.

(Example: the DM shouldn't expect the PC/s to expend a resource to "win". Let the Players figure out other ways to get it done)


Your goal is to let your "martial" class take out as many enemies in a day as your caster. Give them damage or conditions to deliver that result.
Give defenses/hitpoints/stealth enough to match the durability of a caster with a sensible array of defensive spells.

Part of the problem that I see there, is that these kind of things are either locked behind a specific Class/Subclass (Monk/Hand and Fighter/Battlemaster for Knockdown, Knockback: and Stun effects are rare) or just not covered by RAW. Which means that not every Homebrew will work. (Nevermind that RAW also doesn't always work)


If spells are contributing a lot out of combat as well, it's a little harder. Spells let a caster do pretty much any job which needs doing. So you probably want to allow mundane skills to be better at what they do (so, a thief's lock picking can do complex locks while a knock spell only does basic ones for example).

As I have stated, Spells aren't flexible like Skills. A spell does the one thing that it says, and no more. (This is why there were half a dozen similar spells - the various "Hand" spells being the most obvious - of different levels in 3x)

Ok, sure. The Wizard can Fireball a group of foes (for about 42 damage, 21 on a save), but that's only really effective against Mooks of less than CR/Lv 3. (Most Players rarely Upcast Fireball/Lightning Bolt above 5th level, since there are better spells to choose from up there) Most Monsters/foes over CR 7 are only a little singed even if they Fail (individual results vary), and that's not counting those with Resistance/Immunity. (But most of these are obvious, and the Mage just changes energy type)


You could divide up the out of combat areas to ensure each non-caster class has an area where they will outshine a caster.

I find Pure Fighters (Champion, mostly) to be the hardest to do this for. I can help a little with Custom Backgrounds, but honestly, "Have Sword, Will Hit" (For Glory and/or Pay) tends to be a little limited outside combat.


A ranger in the woods is as undetectable as a flying invisible wizard, but can do it for longer to make up for slower. They can also match or beat the cleric's create food as a hunter/gatherer.

Funny thing is, the most obvious way to do that is Outlander Ranger. Able to find enough food and water for 10 people as long as the Environment allows. Neither they, nor their allies, are slowed by difficult terrain or Environmental hazards in their chosen Favored Terrain/s outside of combat.

I extend that for the Ranger in combat, as well. I believe that it is supposed to apply to even Magical effects used within the terrain.
But, on phone and AFB, so not sure.


Another way to go about it would be to make magical and mundane solutions better against either magical or mundane problems. So you could have "Takes magic to fix magic" where your knock spell is most effective against magical locks, but will struggle against good technology. Your magic attacks work well on magical monsters but struggle against mundanes, while whacking things with a sword is great against the soldiers and will struggle on the ghosts

Or switch it. Magical solutions are best on mundane problems. Your fireball is great for clearing the soldiers, but to get rid of ghosts, you the mundane scattering of salt, or to hit them with silver weapons, or the focused will that comes from using your own strength to swing a sword. Only a skilled thief can pop a magical lock. This works best when a high level of knowledge about magic is assumed for mundane characters.

I tend to try and blend these.

Like: Where silver or magic is effective against the Ghost, but so is mundane salt.

I tend to use the Monster's CR for Knowledge DCs. And DC = 10 + spell level for knowing a spell's effects: Arcana for Bards/Mages, Religion for Clerics/Paladins, and Nature for Druids/Rangers.

Seems to work for most of my games.

ChamHasNoRoom
2019-09-13, 06:20 AM
The idea that Vancian magic is more ritualistic than skill based magic strikes me as a non-sequitir. In skill-based magic, the skill measures how many rituals and demon-binding glyphs and etc. you have memorized, just like it measures how much physics or chemistry you have memorized. The way Vancian spells erase themselves from your memory in particular is completely detached from how magic was thought to work in the medieval and Renaissance era, as once you know a ritual you can conduct it at-will given enough time and the right materials. Vancian magic could work as representative of finite materials, except then you should only be able to prepare spells when you are able to restock materials and your ability to prepare spells should be limited not by level, but by how many materials you can afford or harvest. The best way to model magic as it was thought to work in the old days would be as a set number of spells (some of which might have completely unrelated effects, i.e. summoning a demon who can turn you invisible, locate an object, or make someone fall in love with you), and whether you acquire them as class features or from a point-buy system or just as treasure or what, once you have them, you can cast them either:

1) Completely at-will,

2) For as long as your material components hold out (with different spells requiring different, though possibly overlapping, materials), or

3) As often as you can successfully complete a skill check to perform the ritual properly, with potentially dire consequences for failing.

PairO'Dice Lost
2019-09-14, 12:24 PM
The idea that Vancian magic is more ritualistic than skill based magic strikes me as a non-sequitir. In skill-based magic, the skill measures how many rituals and demon-binding glyphs and etc. you have memorized, just like it measures how much physics or chemistry you have memorized. The way Vancian spells erase themselves from your memory in particular is completely detached from how magic was thought to work in the medieval and Renaissance era, as once you know a ritual you can conduct it at-will given enough time and the right materials.

For the bazillionth time: while Vancian spell preparation was originally described as "memorizing" spells in addition to "preparing" them, you are not and have never been literally memorizing anything. You're going through a ritual to cast a spell and then you stop short and hold the spell as a mental construct for later. The "But I don't forget high school chemistry!" argument hasn't made sense since 1e.</pet peeve>


The best way to model magic as it was thought to work in the old days would be as a set number of spells (some of which might have completely unrelated effects, i.e. summoning a demon who can turn you invisible, locate an object, or make someone fall in love with you),

Yep, it's called lesser planar binding. :smallamused:


and whether you acquire them as class features or from a point-buy system or just as treasure or what, once you have them, you can cast them either:

1) Completely at-will,

2) For as long as your material components hold out (with different spells requiring different, though possibly overlapping, materials), or

3) As often as you can successfully complete a skill check to perform the ritual properly, with potentially dire consequences for failing.

Keep in mind that the rituals involved in D&D spells take a long time to carry out (in AD&D it was a flat 10-15 minutes per spell level per spell regardless of the magic-user's level, in 3e you get faster at prepping spells as you level to fit everything into an hour, and I generally houserule things back to AD&D spell prep times). So "cast fireball at will" would really translate to "cast 1 fireball every half an hour if you spend the entire half an hour carrying out the fireball preparation ritual"--not super useful at combat scale.

You're right that magic-users should theoretically be able to cast spells directly from a spellbook without preparing them by going through the whole prep process and just casting the spell immediately at the end instead of using up a slot, and that was a very common houserule back in the day (different from casting a spellbook page immediately like a scroll, which was an actual rule in UA) that has since made it into 5e as ritual casting; it doesn't make sense that only some 5e spells have the ritual tag when all spells should function that way, but 5e isn't Vancian, so whatever.

Also keep in mind that the whole point of spell preparation, which basically every skill-based suggestion completely misses, is that you're performing your preparation in a nice calm and worry-free environment so you can take your time to carry out the ritual correctly and don't need to rush and possibly mis-draw the pentagram or whatever. Then once you cast it you don't need to make a skill check to see if you can channel enough mana or whatever because (A) that's not at all how D&D magic works and (B) you already effectively cast the spell during preparation then so why would you figure out whether you can carry it out correctly now?

So essentially, a slightly-and-commonly-houseruled Vancian already hits all the high points of what you're talking about. Which is my whole point, really, that people ignore the flavor of Vancian and then complain that the flavor of Vancian doesn't make sense and try to swap out parts of the mechanics that make it not work with the flavor.

Morty
2019-09-14, 02:06 PM
Well, keep in mind that dungeon crawls aren't the only context in which that sort of setup makes sense and could be used. Any scenario in which you have a finite set of resources with which to complete a given mission--and if you run out of those, you have to improvise/adapt/scrounge/etc. with what's left--has a similar challenge-prediction-and-resource-management aspect, and plenty of other adventure formats, from Shadowrun raids to James Bond movies where Q gives him a specific handful of gadgets in the beginning and he has to make use of them for the mission at hand, could be considered to fall under that umbrella despite not resembling dungeon crawls in the slightest.

That doesn't mean that one should then port Vancian to Shadowrun or anything like that, obviously, just that the fact OD&D used Vancian in a certain context doesn't mean that Vancian can't fit in any similar contexts.

I feel like the main problem isn't that it's resource management, but rather that the resource management is disproportionately skewed towards some characters. That is to say, the whole party has to schedule around the wizard's and the cleric's daily resources.


Very true. In fact, I was kind of excited when WotC announced the at-will/encounter/daily setup for arcane casters in 4e, 'cause I figured encounter spells would basically be a bunch of "you can re-prepare these spells without resting, but have to spend X minutes/spell to do so," in the same way that ToB maneuvers talk about "refreshing between encounters" but actually involve spending 5 minutes prepping maneuvers, while daily spells would still require resting to refresh because they're more powerful and somehow lock/burn out/etc. the spell slot, with at-wills being something like [Reserve] feats and being dependent on which encounter and daily spells you have prepared.

Which was obviously nowhere close to what we got, but I can certainly imagine an alternate universe in which 4e dropped with varying power schedules per power source from the start and Arcane was "original flavor" Vancian like that, other power sources did different things, rituals weren't an overly-expensive afterthought, and 4e magic in general didn't leave a terrible taste in everyone's mouths.

I'm normally inclined to give 4E credit for not giving spellcasters special treatment, but it's hard to argue the dial was cranked too hard in the other direction. I suppose daily spells might be easier to balance if they were only part of the casters' repertoire, to be used occasionally, with the main legwork being done with more easily recharged ones.

PairO'Dice Lost
2019-09-14, 07:10 PM
I feel like the main problem isn't that it's resource management, but rather that the resource management is disproportionately skewed towards some characters. That is to say, the whole party has to schedule around the wizard's and the cleric's daily resources.

Yeah, it's definitely skewed, and unfortunately even if you can come up with a good non-magical-feeling resource system for noncasters (a nontrivial feat on its own), there's not much to be done about that as long as the Guy At The Gym Fallacy folks have a strong voice and the OSR crowd still views fighters and thieves as the beginner and/or "what you play if you didn't roll well enough to be a real class" classes.

I was kinda hoping 5e's "You can customize the game to any edition and any level of complexity!" pitch meant that they'd have resource-intensive and resource-less versions of every class archetype, from something like Barbarian/3e Warlock/Rogue/Spontaneous (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/classes/spontaneousDivineCasters.htm) Healer on the simple side to something like Warblade-plus-a-daily-stamina-system/Wizard/Factotum/Cleric on the more complex side, as I have just as many friends who like the wizard-y flavor but find spellcasting too complicated as I have ones who like playing a tactical warrior and want more fiddly bits to play with. But alas, 'twas not to be.


I'm normally inclined to give 4E credit for not giving spellcasters special treatment, but it's hard to argue the dial was cranked too hard in the other direction. I suppose daily spells might be easier to balance if they were only part of the casters' repertoire, to be used occasionally, with the main legwork being done with more easily recharged ones.

There's definitely room for a Vancian-as-in-actual-Dying-Earth caster class, where even at high levels you only have a handful of situational daily spells but they're real showstoppers when you do cast them. You could do a lot with the [Reserve]-feat-like idea I mentioned, stuff like having the most excellent prismatic spray prepared giving you a variety of color-themed blasting options, having Phandal's absolute domination prepared giving you various social skill benefits, and so forth; if they're good enough and actual spells are few enough that casters don't want to cast their actual spells, that gets you the better balance point you're looking for and makes for an interesting play dynamic besides.

OldTrees1
2019-09-14, 09:38 PM
Yeah, it's definitely skewed, and unfortunately even if you can come up with a good non-magical-feeling resource system for noncasters (a nontrivial feat on its own), there's not much to be done about that as long as the Guy At The Gym Fallacy folks have a strong voice and the OSR crowd still views fighters and thieves as the beginner and/or "what you play if you didn't roll well enough to be a real class" classes.

I was kinda hoping 5e's "You can customize the game to any edition and any level of complexity!" pitch meant that they'd have resource-intensive and resource-less versions of every class archetype, from something like Barbarian/3e Warlock/Rogue/Spontaneous (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/classes/spontaneousDivineCasters.htm) Healer on the simple side to something like Warblade-plus-a-daily-stamina-system/Wizard/Factotum/Cleric on the more complex side, as I have just as many friends who like the wizard-y flavor but find spellcasting too complicated as I have ones who like playing a tactical warrior and want more fiddly bits to play with. But alas, 'twas not to be.

The resource-less versions would be so valuable if they were balanced / extended to be on par with the resource-intensive classes.

I would love to play a Mage without resources. The 3E Warlock was a great first draft that I loved to bits.
I would also welcome a Martial version of the 3E Warlock.

To top it off there is also the non caster Mage archetype (and sub archetypes) that has yet to be investigated. They exhibit magic more as static abilities (passive, always active) rather than discrete magical acts (cast spell, have effect, have duration, end).

Satinavian
2019-09-15, 12:34 AM
You're right that magic-users should theoretically be able to cast spells directly from a spellbook without preparing them by going through the whole prep process and just casting the spell immediately at the end instead of using up a slot, and that was a very common houserule back in the day (different from casting a spellbook page immediately like a scroll, which was an actual rule in UA) that has since made it into 5e as ritual casting; it doesn't make sense that only some 5e spells have the ritual tag when all spells should function that way, but 5e isn't Vancian, so whatever.

There are many RPG systems out there that have nothing to do with Vancian magic and still have casting times measured in hours and ritual preparation times measured in days. If your main argument for Vancian magic being closer to real world magic is "But it takes as long", then that is not a compelling argument. D&D magic is not slow, including preparartion.

The whole "preparing a spell until nearly finished and keep it in the state until you need it" does never pop up in real world magic traditions. The closest thing is some kind of wards where the casting is completed and the magic already active but the real effect requires some outside trigger.

Pretty much everything else from real world magic has been ported to RPGs. There are RPG supplements regarding where you can read about qualia, sympathetics etc. and use that in the rules. There are RPG supplements going deep enough into Wuxing that they might as well work as introduction to Taoism. Pretty much everything magical has found its work into RPGs. Most often far more true to source than whatever D&D did.

Max_Killjoy
2019-09-15, 09:22 AM
There are many RPG systems out there that have nothing to do with Vancian magic and still have casting times measured in hours and ritual preparation times measured in days. If your main argument for Vancian magic being closer to real world magic is "But it takes as long", then that is not a compelling argument. D&D magic is not slow, including preparartion.

The whole "preparing a spell until nearly finished and keep it in the state until you need it" does never pop up in real world magic traditions. The closest thing is some kind of wards where the casting is completed and the magic already active but the real effect requires some outside trigger.

Pretty much everything else from real world magic has been ported to RPGs. There are RPG supplements regarding where you can read about qualia, sympathetics etc. and use that in the rules. There are RPG supplements going deep enough into Wuxing that they might as well work as introduction to Taoism. Pretty much everything magical has found its work into RPGs. Most often far more true to source than whatever D&D did.

This and a couple other posts have done a good job of getting into why I was so incredulous -- so incredulous that I was waiting until I was coherent to get into more detail.

ChamHasNoRoom
2019-09-16, 03:11 PM
For the bazillionth time: while Vancian spell preparation was originally described as "memorizing" spells in addition to "preparing" them, you are not and have never been literally memorizing anything.

For starters, "just because it was called memorization doesn't mean you were actually memorizing anything" is not a very convincing argument. Even less so since you lose the ability to re-memorize a spell without your spellbook, no matter how many times you've done it before. A lot of wizards have been memorizing Magic Missile on a daily basis for months and the spell only contains one page's worth of instructions, it's very strange that they don't have that one page committed permanently to memory. People may have realized that losing memory of your spells when casting them was dumb as far back as 1e and have been making tortured justifications ever since, but that doesn't change the fact that this is what the words "re-memorize spells" actually mean.

More relevantly, this is the opposite of how rituals in medieval-style magic work. Generally speaking, failing to complete a ritual right before the end means all your effort was wasted if you are lucky. Many rituals would allegedly cause dire consequences if you didn't complete them properly, on account of the demon you were summoning would escape (stories about demon exorcisms frequently use the same trope, although in this case the "spell" is just "make this person not possessed anymore"). It's perfectly typical for there to be stories where someone puts a hex on an enemy with the dire warning that they had damn well better follow through all the way to the end, because once that hex gets going someone is getting messed up, and if it's not your target, it's gonna be you. Any last-minute flights of conscience are gonna have dire consequences. Or sometimes it's that the target of the hex is a witch and if you don't finish her off, she will wreak terrible vengeance when she has recovered.


Keep in mind that the rituals involved in D&D spells take a long time to carry out

We aren't talking about how long D&D spells take to cast. We're talking about how long medieval ritual magic takes to cast and whether or not D&D adequately models that. D&D does not get points for being similar to itself. Unsurprisingly, medieval ritual magic durations are all over the place, because they're folklore spread out over an entire continent and an entire millennium. Some rituals can only be performed at specific times of day, month, or year, but don't take very long once the time has arrived. Others can be done whenever but require special components, like sympathetic magic that needs hair or blood or whatever from the target, but once you've got that you can hex them pretty much at-will. Others do actually take a long time, but with the aforementioned fizzling if not horrible magical catastrophe if you perform them incorrectly, including if you stop performing them right before the end. Sometimes you perform the ritual once and then you have the superpower indefinitely, or until something goes wrong with your voodoo workshop back home that's keeping the demon contained/spell going/whatever. At the point when you've taken the many permutations of folk lore and given them standardized preparation costs, you've migrated far from whatever medieval/Renaissance roots you may have once had, not that Vancian magic ever had any particular similarity to medieval/Renaissance magic to lose.


So essentially, a slightly-and-commonly-houseruled Vancian already hits all the high points of what you're talking about.

No, it doesn't. The heart of D&D's Vancian magic system is its spell slots, which have no justification in the ritual setup whatsoever. Even ignoring the fact that stopping a ritual before the end isn't a good idea according to medieval/Renaissance belief, there's no reason why someone who's just completing a bunch of rituals shouldn't be able to complete as many rituals as they have time for in the morning. If the only spell you know is magic missile and it takes you 10 minutes to prepare it, then your level 1 Magic User should logically be able to prepare six of them per hour. In fact, if the duration of the spell isn't linked to sunrises or sunsets or a year and a day or whatever, there's no reason not to store up dozens, hundreds, thousands, or whatever of them so that you can pop off an unlimited number of spells at-will.

Everything about D&D magic - from the standardized cost for preparation to the lack of consequence for breaking off mid-ritual to the extremely game mechanical effects of a fireball or passwall - everything except the most basic, foundational concept of "casting spells" is wholly unlike the medieval/Renaissance traditions.