Wizards should be better than fighters.

[magicalmagicman]

Makes the game more realistic.

Real life wizards make robots. Robots are better soldiers than human soldiers.
Real life wizards make Power Armor. Wizard in Power Armor is better than a human soldier.
Real life wizards make tanks, gunships, battleships, and fully automate them with drone or ai technology. They're better than a human soldier.
Real life wizards use genetic augmentations to turn themselves into super soldiers. Mutant super soldiers are better than human soldiers.
Real life wizards make automated mass production complexes manned by drones and robots that lets him build and churn out machinery of epic proportions quickly and by himself. Human soldiers have no idea where to even start.

In case you didn't notice, real life wizards are anyone in the intellectual fields, mainly technology and science. And a human soldier is someone who spends his life increasing his muscle mass or reflexes through training.

So why are people arguing that once a wizard hits high levels and have enough gold to buy a country, he should still be on par with a human soldier? Makes no sense. Wizards should be stronger than fighters. Because human bodies are fragile, weak, and inferior to even animals. Bears beat humans. Tigers beat humans. So people who dedicate their lives making their bodies stronger through training even fully knowing that they will never be able to beat a bear in strength should be weaker than people who dedicate their lives making their bodies stronger through anything but training like studying biology, chemistry, physics, robotics, etc.

[NigelWalmsley]

So why are people arguing that once a wizard hits high levels and have enough gold to buy a country, he should still be on par with a human soldier?

People aren't arguing that. People, broadly, make one of two arguments about Wizards and Fighters.

1. The Wizard should not be allowed to become high level. If doing something would make the efforts of Conan or Aragorn irrelevant, that is not a thing you should be allowed to do.
2. High level Fighters should become more powerful than human soldiers. If the Wizard is going to become Dr. Strange, the Barbarian should become Thor.

Either solution is workable. I personally favor the latter, in no small part because I think Thor is cool and would like to be able to play a character that does Thor stuff without having to be some manner of caster (which Thor is obviously not).

[Kalkra]

High level Fighters are quite a bit more powerful than human soldiers. Also, I don't think super-soldiers exist in real life. I get your point, though. That being said, the real-life wizards you're talking about really more like WBL-mancers. I mean, designing something doesn't make you more powerful, owning it does.

[Ramza00]

This feels like a Thermian Argument


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AxV8gAGmbtk

How do you kill a Vampire? Well Vampires are not real and thus an appeal to realism does not work. Instead you appeal to some form of external meaning, some form of framework another person is semi familiar with. Even though there is all these new internal meaning combinations of something unique that is a mixture of external things you picked up over a lifetime of experiences.

This mixture of internal and external means you have a tension where no matter what you someone else will have criticisms, suggestions, etc while simultaneously sharing their appreciation and thanks. All of this is balanced with an internal voice that chooses and a legitimate choice is I do not care.

—————

Thus if a person wants to make an Achilles or Thor the game system should be friendly to that. Likewise if a person wants to make a Mage the game system should be friendly to that.

[AvatarVecna]

This feels like a Thermian Argument


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AxV8gAGmbtk

How do you kill a Vampire? Well Vampires are not real and thus an appeal to realism does not work. Instead you appeal to some form of external meaning, some form of framework another person is semi familiar with. Even though there is all these new internal meaning combinations of something unique that is a mixture of external things you picked up over a lifetime of experiences.

This mixture of internal and external means you have a tension where no matter what you someone else will have criticisms, suggestions, etc while simultaneously sharing their appreciation and thanks. All of this is balanced with an internal voice that chooses and a legitimate choice is I do not care.

—————

Thus if a person wants to make an Achilles or Thor the game system should be friendly to that. Likewise if a person wants to make a Mage the game system should be friendly to that.

I sorta agree with the last part and sorta don't. A point of clarification: if the system is built around the idea that options are balanced against each other, then the ability to build concepts of similar levels of general capabilities should be equal. 4e doesn't have this problem because fluff has little bearing on the balance of mechanics - indeed, the balance is probably the strongest part of 4e design. You see the same in systems like M&M, where most paths to your goal will have similar costs for similar effect, and the ones that don't are obviously too cheap/expensive. Put another way:


If the Wizard is going to become Dr. Strange, the Barbarian should become Thor.

[tiercel]

From even a rough game balance point of view, something like "linear fighter quadratic wizard" is more palatable if the y-intercept and slope of the fighter are calibrated so that fighter > squishy wizard at low levels, hulky fighter = glass cannon wizard at mid levels, BDF < God wizard at high levels -- assuming that gameplay is spread over all levels even roughly equally. If wizard stomps all over fighter at most or even all levels (e.g. Abrupt Jaunt and scroll-scribing WBL-mancy at level 1), then it feels like it invalidates an entire playstyle.

A second approach to this is to make fighter less linear, hence the fandom by some for Tome of Battle, so that you have more quadratic fighter quadratic wizard... or, at least, more x^1.5 fighter, quadratic wizard, i.e. wizards don't so completely outpace fighter-types that the playstyle still feels valid/useful/fun at the same table.

Basically, I also agree with the Thor / Dr Strange remark above.

Also, "realistic" and "D&D" is... yeah. It's a game. See, for instance, too many instances of physics vs. D&D or economics vs. D&D -- you can import more of those elements into your game if you really want to, but at the end of the day that's not really the focus of the game system as written.

And, sometimes (to generalize) D&D nerds who have Int > Str, as much as they might want to roleplay a high-Int character outplanning, out-optioning, and out-gaming the game itself, also might want to HULK SMASH and.. that should probably work in what is basically a sword-and-sorcery "kill orcs, save the prince/ss, turn back the undead horde, and take their stuff" kinda game.

[Psyren]

While I agree that wizards should generally be better, there's a lot of daylight between "better than fighter" and "can solo archfiends and do every role in the game simultaneously." Put another way, you can nerf a 3.5 wizard's ceiling substantially and still have them be better than a fighter.



Thus if a person wants to make an Achilles or Thor the game system should be friendly to that. Likewise if a person wants to make a Mage the game system should be friendly to that.

The game system IS friendly to that. Achilles and Thor are not ordinary fighters - one is a templated or Mythic human, and the other is a deity. You have all the tools you need to build them in this game system.

[Rynjin]

2. High level Fighters should become more powerful than human soldiers. If the Wizard is going to become Dr. Strange, the Barbarian should become Thor.

Either solution is workable. I personally favor the latter, in no small part because I think Thor is cool and would like to be able to play a character that does Thor stuff without having to be some manner of caster (which Thor is obviously not).

No huge input on the thread, I just find it amusing that despite our disagreements on this same subject as to whether or not Wizards are OP, we definitely 100% agree on the end goal for balance.

Fantasy characters should be fantastical, no matter their "class".

[Lord Raziere]

The game system IS friendly to that. Achilles and Thor are not ordinary fighters - one is a templated or Mythic human, and the other is a deity. You have all the tools you need to build them in this game system.

I think thats being overly literal about that sort of thing. A class should not need a race to pull a classes weight.

[Psyren]

I think thats being overly literal about that sort of thing. A class should not need a race to pull a classes weight.

You don't need to be a mythological figure to pull your weight though. A fighter who is not Achilles or Thor can still take on anything level-appropriate in the Monster Manual, is my point. But if you want to be Achilles or Thor, you aren't a normal human anymore, and there are rules for that.

[Lord Raziere]

You don't need to be a mythological figure to pull your weight though. A fighter who is not Achilles or Thor can still take on anything level-appropriate in the Monster Manual, is my point. But if you want to be Achilles or Thor, you aren't a normal human anymore, and there are rules for that.

Thats still overly literal. you seem keep doing this thing where you think that people using these examples want to literally being them in every single aspect, when that is generally not the case. generally when people say this sort of thing they meant to take inspiration from that character they are talking about, not literally copying them one to one. when you play batman wizard builds, do you literally make all your wizards humans who dress up in the costume and fluff your book as a utility belt? and if you don't, would you?

[Rynjin]

You don't need to be a mythological figure to pull your weight though. A fighter who is not Achilles or Thor can still take on anything level-appropriate in the Monster Manual, is my point. But if you want to be Achilles or Thor, you aren't a normal human anymore, and there are rules for that.

That's...debatable, honestly. There's a lot of things Fighters can't effectively deal with on their own. They're particularly vulnerable to Ref or Will based save or lose effects, as an example.

Flight is also another simple one. Yes, yes, magic items can solve the issue...but that's just involving another person in it in a roundabout way.

[Ignimortis]

*snip*


There are no real life wizards. People you claim to be "real life wizards" are people who use laws of our reality to achieve these things, the laws that govern everyone and everything. Wizards, on the other hand, usually manipulate their mana or magic energy or whatever to break the rules of their reality, to create effects that circumvent any actual rules of the world. Sure, magic usually has its' own rules, but they are generally not exactly bound to normal physics, biology or geometry, it's a special set of rules for special finger-wagglers who are (often) the only ones who can even interact with them anyway.

Thus, if there's a special set of rules for magicians, why wouldn't there be a special set of rules for warriors? Why do they have to follow "realism" in a magical world where there's more than normal Earth-type physics and biology at play?

[Psyren]

Thats still overly literal. you seem keep doing this thing where you think that people using these examples want to literally being them in every single aspect, when that is generally not the case. generally when people say this sort of thing they meant to take inspiration from that character they are talking about, not literally copying them one to one. when you play batman wizard builds, do you literally make all your wizards humans who dress up in the costume and fluff your book as a utility belt? and if you don't, would you?

Ramza said he wanted to make Achilles or Thor. I took the request at face value when I replied; it's not as though you or I can read minds to figure out which aspects of those characters he wanted literally vs. metaphorically.

And I don't play "batman" wizard builds at all.


That's...debatable, honestly. There's a lot of things Fighters can't effectively deal with on their own. They're particularly vulnerable to Ref or Will based save or lose effects, as an example.

Flight is also another simple one. Yes, yes, magic items can solve the issue...but that's just involving another person in it in a roundabout way.

WBL is an expected part of the game. If you deny it at your table, fine, but you're not exactly playing the game as it was designed to be played - WBL is in the core books for a reason.

And if you demand that the Fighter must be able to make his own gear, well, in Pathfinder they can, and that's what I play.

[Rynjin]

WBL is an expected part of the game. If you deny it at your table, fine, but you're not exactly playing the game as it was designed to be played - WBL is in the core books for a reason.

And if you demand that the Fighter must be able to make his own gear, well, in Pathfinder they can, and that's what I play.

This is getting off into the weeds again, as this argument always does. "This character can be tricked out with a single specific build or selection of items to solve XYZ problem" does not make that character good, and at that point it's not really the character solving problems, it's the items.

Yes, every character gets WBL. That doesn't mean that, as some people would try to make the argument, that a Rogue is OP because they can Use Magic Device any spell a Wizard can.

[Kelb_Panthera]

I think thats being overly literal about that sort of thing. A class should not need a race to pull a classes weight.

All classes need a race to pull their weight. We don't play classes. We play characters that may or may not be of a given class and, typically, seek to select a race that is as compatible as possible with our preferred class. Nobody that wants to play a wizard is gonna pick a feral half-orc for their race just like nobody that wants to go barbarian is gonna pick a venerable grey elf.

That's ultimately the crux of this whole, neverending disagreement; class is only a fragment of the whole picture but that's the only fragment that anyone wants to look at because of some notion that it's the only part of your character that you can be reasonably sure the GM won't usurp. That notion is simply not valid and forums like this abound with examples of GMs nerfing classes on both side of the magic divide, both blatantly and "stealthily."

FFS, look at the whole picture, folks. You get a race, class(es), and WBL unless the GM interferes. If the only part of "fighter" you're looking at is the class itself, of course it's not going to look as good as the wizard class. The latter completely dominates the character's identity and abilities while the former is much more evenly divided between those three build elements.

Now, that said, there -is- something to be said for having direct access to magic in a world where survival is so heavily dependent on it. A wizard is certainly able to deal with more types of challenge than a fighter but he'll never be as good at solving the challenge of directly fighting a foe, if we presume equal degrees of optimization of the entire character and not just its class.

Seriously though, if you want to look at these things in a clean room then don't pretend that other elements of the system aren't there just because it's (ostensibly) more common for them to be altered or restricted.

[Psyren]

This is getting off into the weeds again, as this argument always does. "This character can be tricked out with a single specific build or selection of items to solve XYZ problem" does not make that character good, and at that point it's not really the character solving problems, it's the items.

Yes, every character gets WBL. That doesn't mean that, as some people would try to make the argument, that a Rogue is OP because they can Use Magic Device any spell a Wizard can.

"UMD every spell a wizard can" is a strawman, and nothing that I actually said. You specifically mentioned flight and reflex/will saves, which are pretty basic holes that items can and should plug. I'm not expecting fighters to copy every wizard trick, and go running around binding efreeti or creating demiplanes or raising the dead.



FFS, look at the whole picture, folks. You get a race, class(es), and WBL unless the GM interferes. If the only part of "fighter" you're looking at is the class itself, of course it's not going to look as good as the wizard class. The latter completely dominates the character's identity and abilities while the former is much more evenly divided between those three build elements.

Agreed, and honestly I'd say that being "as good as the wizard class" is a silly goal for a fighter to have anyway. "Good enough to fight CR-appropriate monsters in the monster manual" is the metric we should be using, for Fighters or any other PC class.

[FaerieGodfather]

{scrubbed}

Every single argument I have ever seen from "realism" in D&D boils down to either blatantly applied double standards (such as The Guy at the Gym Fallacy) or someone assuming that one of the game's blatantly unrealistic abstractions (such as weapon damage or hit points) is a functional model of real-life phenomena when it interacts strangely with the rule they're complaining about.

[Mordaedil]

What are these real life wizards that they are talking about here? Office-workers, programmers, engineers, construction workers, machines assemblers or factory workers?

[magicalmagicman]

People have seemed to have missed my point so I'll be a little more explicit.

In real life, brain beats brawn. By lightyears. Brawn cannot even hope to compare to brains. Brains create fully automated heavy firearms using explosive ammo. Brains create thermonuclear weapons. Brains create super viruses. Brains create super soldiers either robotically, cybernetically (not yet but will), genetically (not yet but will), or a mix of all three.

Brawn just stimulates his body in a way it develops more muscle mass as he consumes more protein and has no hope in hell of beating a bear in a fist fight. And even then it is the Brains that develop performance enhancing drugs.

And in d&d this is remarkably implemented. The wizard does everything what a Brain is supposed to do. Which is everything. And the fighter does what a Brawn is supposed to do. Which is having no hope in hell of challenging the Brain in anyway at all. Just like in real life.

So it's only natural that fighters drop off after the wizard gets his doctorate in magic, just like how bullies drop off after graduating school.

So some people have mentioned since wizards are fantastically competent in all fields of study, so fighters should also be fantastically have super strength. That's fine, but that doesn't change the fact that wizards can create or enslave an army of fantasy creatures who are innately superior to humans in every way, which means nothing changes unless Humans are in fact biologically the most powerful race in the setting, which they are not.


High level Fighters are quite a bit more powerful than human soldiers. Also, I don't think super-soldiers exist in real life. I get your point, though. That being said, the real-life wizards you're talking about really more like WBL-mancers. I mean, designing something doesn't make you more powerful, owning it does.

You can't own what doesn't exist. It's the designers that invent the stuff.

I'll get to everyone's posts later. Don't have a lot of time. Great points are made by all.

[Mystral]

Makes the game more realistic.

Real life wizards make robots. Robots are better soldiers than human soldiers.
Real life wizards make Power Armor. Wizard in Power Armor is better than a human soldier.
Real life wizards make tanks, gunships, battleships, and fully automate them with drone or ai technology. They're better than a human soldier.
Real life wizards use genetic augmentations to turn themselves into super soldiers. Mutant super soldiers are better than human soldiers.
Real life wizards make automated mass production complexes manned by drones and robots that lets him build and churn out machinery of epic proportions quickly and by himself. Human soldiers have no idea where to even start.

In case you didn't notice, real life wizards are anyone in the intellectual fields, mainly technology and science. And a human soldier is someone who spends his life increasing his muscle mass or reflexes through training.

So why are people arguing that once a wizard hits high levels and have enough gold to buy a country, he should still be on par with a human soldier? Makes no sense. Wizards should be stronger than fighters. Because human bodies are fragile, weak, and inferior to even animals. Bears beat humans. Tigers beat humans. So people who dedicate their lives making their bodies stronger through training even fully knowing that they will never be able to beat a bear in strength should be weaker than people who dedicate their lives making their bodies stronger through anything but training like studying biology, chemistry, physics, robotics, etc.

You talk about making things more realistic and then start citing sci-fi. I can't tell if you're joking.

[Gruftzwerg]

Makes the game more realistic.
k, lets have some realistic fun^^

Real life wizards make robots. Robots are better soldiers than human soldiers.
Ehh what? Nope. We can build drones, but not automated fighting robots. That's still sci-fi as far as I know.


Real life wizards make Power Armor. Wizard in Power Armor is better than a human soldier.
I wanna see how the Wizard in a Power Armor should win against a combat trained soldier? How is the Armor gonna help at all against ambush, sniping, traps, hand to hand combat or anything without actual combat experience and knowledge? the wizard will try to hide in his armor like a coward until the soldier finds his track and kills him. Or he will die just from starvation..^^


Real life wizards make tanks, gunships, battleships, and fully automate them with drone or ai technology. They're better than a human soldier.
Not fully automated AI.. That sci-fi too. For everything else mentioned you still need a trained soldier with actual skill to use em. And wizards are never as good as soldiers in that regards. Compare it with video games. How many video game developers are Progamer (top 1%)? Like zero?


Real life wizards use genetic augmentations to turn themselves into super soldiers. Mutant super soldiers are better than human soldiers.
I like comics and manga's too ;)


Real life wizards make automated mass production complexes manned by drones and robots that lets him build and churn out machinery of epic proportions quickly and by himself. Human soldiers have no idea where to even start.
Again, our robots are still not that far. We still need some humans here and there. And especially when it comes to defend and counquer resources.


Thx god that we still have some time until some greedy evil genius will take over the world. Maybe not much time, but yeah..^^

[Rynjin]

"UMD every spell a wizard can" is a strawman, and nothing that I actually said. You specifically mentioned flight and reflex/will saves, which are pretty basic holes that items can and should plug. I'm not expecting fighters to copy every wizard trick, and go running around binding efreeti or creating demiplanes or raising the dead.

I said it's an argument I HAVE seen, not one I've seen you making.




Agreed, and honestly I'd say that being "as good as the wizard class" is a silly goal for a fighter to have anyway. "Good enough to fight CR-appropriate monsters in the monster manual" is the metric we should be using, for Fighters or any other PC class.

That's a really poor metric IMO.

When it comes down to it, every class fights. "Fighting" is not a class defining thing. That, ultimately, is why Fighters suck. Even if you take the statement "Fighters are good enough to fight CR appropriate monsters" at face value...so? So can every other PC class. It's a meaningless metric.

There are roughly 4 pillars of play to D&D, and while fighting is the biggest one, it's still only about 60% of the total game.

[Psyren]

I said it's an argument I HAVE seen, not one I've seen you making.

Ok, good, we're on the same page then.


That's a really poor metric IMO.

When it comes down to it, every class fights. "Fighting" is not a class defining thing. That, ultimately, is why Fighters suck. Even if you take the statement "Fighters are good enough to fight CR appropriate monsters" at face value...so? So can every other PC class. It's a meaningless metric.

There are roughly 4 pillars of play to D&D, and while fighting is the biggest one, it's still only about 60% of the total game.

(I only know exploration, social interaction and combat - what's the 4th pillar?)

I'm not sure what you're suggesting. Should every class be equally good at all the pillars? That's another problem entirely, the "why have a rogue" problem.

And yes, wizards can succeed at all three of the pillars - but the solution there is to make it very costly for them to do so, thus making it much more efficient for them to step back and let other classes shine. 3.5 failed at that, but 5e got a lot closer to succeeding.

(Also - maybe the person who sat down and picked the fighter class did so because they only care about that pillar.)

[Rynjin]

(I only know exploration, social interaction and combat - what's the 4th pillar?)

At least in a lot of games I've played, Investigation/Information gathering.


I'm not sure what you're suggesting. Should every class be equally good at all the pillars? That's another problem entirely, the "why have a rogue" problem.

And yes, wizards can succeed at all three of the pillars - but the solution there is to make it very costly for them to do so, thus making it much more efficient for them to step back and let other classes shine. 3.5 failed at that, but 5e got a lot closer to succeeding.

(Also - maybe the person who sat down and picked the fighter class did so because they only care about that pillar.)

Equally good? No. But the ability to have a base level of competence at it within the class's features should be available.

IMO every class should interact with every pillar in a unique fashion. Not necessarily to the same level of efficacy, but have the ability to bring something unique to the table.

As a quick example, if the Fighter had the ability to size up the combat prowess of people he sees, that would give him some level of in-class interaction with Social Interaction and Investigation. It is valuable information to know that, ex., the Grand Vizier is hiding the fact that they are a very deadly combatant.

For a class that can already kind of do it all, look at Bard. Bards contribute in combat by buffing and being a secondary combatant; they make passable archers or fencers. They contribute in social interaction by having class features that aid their social skills, and by naturally having a bent towards being Cha based. They contribute in exploration by having a lot of skill points and a bit of magic; this is their weakest pillar, but they still bring something interesting to the table with features like Inspire Competence. They bring something in the pillar of Investigation by, usually, having Diplomacy for Gather Info at the least, and higher level cool options like Legend Lore.

I think every class should have some kind of tiered level of interaction with the pillars. Bard is basically Social Interaction = Combat > Investigation > Exploration.

Fighter IMO should be Combat >= Exploration >Social interaction > Investigation.

Unfortunately they basically bring nothing unique to the table in ANY of the last three.

[Kelb_Panthera]

That's a really poor metric IMO.

Not so much poor as incomplete. A warrior archetype character should be able to competently* fight a foe of his own challenge rating just as a skillful skirmisher archetype character should be able to use his skills to deal with traps, obstacles, and people of his challenge rating and a caster archetype can deal with esoteric magical challenges of his level.


When it comes down to it, every class fights. "Fighting" is not a class defining thing.

I would say that every class participates in combat. The skirmishers don't actually fight much on their own. Casters, unless they've gone gish, don't really fight at all so much a they offer auxiliary support to the other two.

A character of any archetype can build such that they can (poorly) cover the roles of the others or offer them support in turn and probably should, to a certain extent. You can even build characters of one archetype that use class(es) designed for one of the others to a fairly competent degree but they'll actually become -less- capable in the role their classes were intended for.

That is: you can build a face-shredder rogue or a gish but the former won't be as good at the skill game as he otherwise could be and the latter will have trouble with his magic lagging behind where it ought to be, for example.


That, ultimately, is why Fighters suck. Even if you take the statement "Fighters are good enough to fight CR appropriate monsters" at face value...so? So can every other PC class. It's a meaningless metric.

That's not actually true though. A skirmisher rogue or ninja will get abolutely ROFL-stomped by a beater enemy of his own CR and even a caster could find himself in dire straights in a hurry if he aims at the wrong defenses or needs a few rounds of buffing time he's not gonna get. The warriors' advantage is that, unless you come at them while they sleep, they're pretty much always ready for the fight at CR appropriate levels.

This is precisely why "fighting" very much -can- be a character defining thing. As for class defining, it's the archetype that defines the -most- classes in the game. There are more classes and prestige classes dedicated to being warriors than there are of either of the other archetypes, possibly combined.


There are roughly 4 pillars of play to D&D, and while fighting is the biggest one, it's still only about 60% of the total game.

I gotta ask the same thing as psyren here: fighting, puzzle solving/ exploration, social, and.... ??? Unless you're considering exploration and puzzle-solving to be separate things?

That aside, not everyone likes or wants to participate in every aspect of the game. If someone chooses to play a warrior archetype character and puts -zero- effort into being able to interact with NPCs or deal with mundane environmental concerns beyond keeping himself alive and fed, he's sending a very clear signal to the GM that either he's not interested in those other aspects of the game or he has no idea what he's doing in the CharGen minigame. The former should be respected and the latter offered aid by more experienced members of the group.

[Rynjin]

See above, I answered your question while you were writing. =)

[Kelb_Panthera]

See above, I answered your question while you were writing. =)

To put it as succintly as possible, since I'd be largely rehashing what I've already said in this thread; what you've described is already possible within the system as-is. It's just not all pinned exclusively to class and, IMO, doesn't need to be.

If the GM hates christmas* that's an entirely separate problem to what the system allows you to build.




*The magic item christmas tree and special snowflake characters

[PoeticallyPsyco]

I'm sure others have already covered this (and probably better than my sleep deprived brain is currently capable of doing), but what the heck.

Realism as an ideal can work for designing a lot of games; D&D should not be one of them.

That's not to say that there shouldn't be consistency. Of course the rules of the universe should be relatively consistent; that's important for immersion as well as making it possible to improvise and extrapolate. But in a universe where chimerae can eat you, giants laugh at the square cube law, and suggesting conservation of energy would get you laughed out of most schools, constraining martial characters to what a human is capable of on Earth - to what is realistic - is actually detrimental to consistency. As such, 'realism' should take a (distant) back seat to fun game-play, balance, consistency, and making interesting choices available.

What's more, that's already pretty much the case in several areas. AntiAuthority wrote an excellent post a while back (Critiquing the "Guy at the Gym" Fallacy (https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?600999-Critiquing-the-quot-Guy-At-The-Gym-quot-Fallacy&highlight=guy+at+the+gym)) detailing how realistic human capabilities are already incompatible with gameplay aspects like being able to successfully fight large predators in melee at any skill level (Tyrannosaurus is only CR 8; a level 14 fighter should be able to take on two of them without much trouble). Even ignoring the fact that studying runes can let you shoot lasers from your teeth, the fact that martials' capabilities are way beyond human in some areas but are still arbitrarily kept within human capabilties in others has always been extremely weird to me.

There is an argument to be made that "linear fighters, quadratic wizards" exists not due to realism, but because that's how the fantasy archetypes the game is supposed to simulate work in fiction. Of course wizards are stronger at high level; you wouldn't expect Aragorn to have access to more raw power and utility than Gandalf, no matter how much experience he got. I think that's fair (and suspect that that is the reason for the discrepancy in the first place), but I still disagree with it strenuously, because to me that should still be less important than fun, and being unable to significantly contribute outside of combat (and often having limited options even in combat) has a lot of room for improvement in the fun department. Yes you can always add fun by roleplaying, but you could do the same with a character that also had fun mechanical options, so that's a moot point. One interesting idea I've seen before is that one of the few non-divisive things about 4E is dividing the level 1-30 career into Heroic, Paragon, and Epic, with the relatively realistic mundane martial archetypes existing entirely in Heroic Tier (the first 10 levels); the archetypes exist, and are just as playable as any other archetype, but once you hit 11th level you start going beyond the limits of an ordinary human and never stop, transitioning into more superhuman/magical/mythical archetypes.


EDIT: Having gone through the thread, I'll heartily second the idea of every base class being able to mechanically contribute in every pillar of game-play by default. If at any point you have to say "Okay we're doing social stuff now, I'll just work on my homework" and it's not because you specifically and intentionally sacrificed/traded away those abilities, something has gone wrong at the game design level. Once again, I don't count role-playing, because literally every class is equally capable of role-playing; adding the same amount to each class's total capabilities won't change who's better at it. This wouldn't be a problem if role-play was the main way of dealing with non-combat pillars, but there are literally hundreds of ways to mechanically interact with the noncombat pillars, and they aren't fairly distributed.

Tangent time: 3.5's skill system theoretically does a pretty good job of this, but has some problems. The distribution of skill points for each class doesn't take into the utility they get from class features or the main stat of the class; see Wizards generally having far more skills than Fighters in addition to hundreds of utility spells to learn and then spend 15 minutes preparing in an empty slot. And of course, the mundane skills generally (there are notable exceptions) pale in comparison to magical options at higher levels for problem solving. I'd like to see more epic options for skills, available sooner, and martial classes as a rule having better access to them than magical classes.

Regarding the idea that Brain should always trump Brawn, and thus wizards should be stronger than fighters. I don't have a problem with that per say, but there are a lot more types of brain than book-smart (wizards): the street smart bruiser savvy enough to quickly size up a situation and know how to react, the diplomat who weighs broad implications and subtle nuances, the martial artist who has studied their art to the point of being a science and can size up opponents and run odds at a glance, the tactician who can predict their allies and direct their opponents... I could go on. The Fighter archetype could easily accommodate any or all of these, but in actuality a PC class in the PHB that's typically considered a core party member is (without a lot of investment that actively hinders their fighting prowess) a pure Brawn destined to be, like you say, outclassed by high level. That's weird to me.

[Mordante]

People aren't arguing that. People, broadly, make one of two arguments about Wizards and Fighters.

1. The Wizard should not be allowed to become high level. If doing something would make the efforts of Conan or Aragorn irrelevant, that is not a thing you should be allowed to do.
2. High level Fighters should become more powerful than human soldiers. If the Wizard is going to become Dr. Strange, the Barbarian should become Thor.

Either solution is workable. I personally favor the latter, in no small part because I think Thor is cool and would like to be able to play a character that does Thor stuff without having to be some manner of caster (which Thor is obviously not).

{Scrubbed}

[Mordaedil]

People have seemed to have missed my point so I'll be a little more explicit.

In real life, brain beats brawn. By lightyears. Brawn cannot even hope to compare to brains. Brains create fully automated heavy firearms using explosive ammo. Brains create thermonuclear weapons. Brains create super viruses. Brains create super soldiers either robotically, cybernetically (not yet but will), genetically (not yet but will), or a mix of all three.

Brawn just stimulates his body in a way it develops more muscle mass as he consumes more protein and has no hope in hell of beating a bear in a fist fight. And even then it is the Brains that develop performance enhancing drugs.

And in d&d this is remarkably implemented. The wizard does everything what a Brain is supposed to do. Which is everything. And the fighter does what a Brawn is supposed to do. Which is having no hope in hell of challenging the Brain in anyway at all. Just like in real life.

So it's only natural that fighters drop off after the wizard gets his doctorate in magic, just like how bullies drop off after graduating school.

So some people have mentioned since wizards are fantastically competent in all fields of study, so fighters should also be fantastically have super strength. That's fine, but that doesn't change the fact that wizards can create or enslave an army of fantasy creatures who are innately superior to humans in every way, which means nothing changes unless Humans are in fact biologically the most powerful race in the setting, which they are not.


Meanwhile brawns built the machines, built the planes, assembled the machines, set the roads, raised the buildings and forged the materials you build everything out of. We don't really create super viruses as much as discover what nature already has left for us and we fail to really replicate even the scariest stuff nature can do.

Creating machine guns pales in comparison just what nature do on a smaller scale. I will give you that brains are definitely more apt at destroying nature than brawns ever was.

[NigelWalmsley]

The Fighter does not keep up with the Wizard in combat at comparable optimization. He just does not do that. You can eventually optimize a Fighter enough that he's useful in combat, but that's only because monsters are kept largely static. At typical levels of optimization, the Fighter does not keep up with printed optimization past mid levels, while the Wizard does.

But combat isn't even really the problem. Yes, the Fighter needs to be easier to build effectively. That's totally true, and the class is genuinely insultingly bad as printed. But you can build a Fighter who does things in combat that matter. The problem is that the Fighter straight up does not get non-combat abilities.


{Scrub the post, scrub the quote}

{Scrubbed}

[Aotrs Commander]

Of course wizards are stronger at high level; you wouldn't expect Aragorn to have access to more raw power and utility than Gandalf, no matter how much experience he got.

Eeh... Gandalf isn't really (ironically) the best example of a wizard, since he's really not the typical D&D wizard at all (I mean, demigod, to start with) - hell, Middle-Earth just does NOT fit into D&D at all well generally (Rolemaster was a much better fit for it, honestly) and the LotR characters were definitely not the same level like an adventuring party usually is. (If we were to take RM at their word, the level spread ran from something like 8 to 60 or something...! Of course, in RM high level doesn't mean "safe" from low level, sicne with a good roll, a 1st level dude can still kill you, so there isn't the same marked power differential ANYWAY.)

Let's remember that it was not the Wizards, but a couple (plus one) of what were ostensibly fighters (one of them a human like Aragorn), who were the ones to stand up to Sauron at the height of his power and take him down and even it was an Absurd-level Elven Fighter (Fingolfin) who went one-on-one with frickin' Morgoth.

So, uh, yeah, I would very much expect Aragorn at the same equivilent level of experience as Gandalf to be able to have a good shot at solo-fighting a Balrog; but as noted, magic in LotR is very much subtle (not weak, just subtle).



Speaking of Rolemaster, there's a hilarious inversion for you. Played straight core RAW RM2, and your first level mage (IF he manages to learn a spell list at all, given he's spending skill points to have a CHANCE to learn ONE spell list he's allowed to try) is likely going to be able to either boil the kettle or make a flashlight and that's it for the day; and it takes him three rounds to do that, during which time, the fighter had had three attacks (double that, typically, if you hapen to be playing with post-industrial weapons). It takes the casters a lot of levels to get to the point where they can actually contribute, and the point at which the break the game is usually well out of the point the vast majority of anyone who has ever played Rolemaster, one suspects.

And Rolemaster? Prides itself on its realism. (Well, it's a little more rooted in realism in theory; in practise, it tends to be hilariously skewy at times. I find, though, RM is much better suited to skill-heavy paradigms (such as exploration-heavy) where RM's plethora of skills work in its favour. It's not nearly so good as a "open door, kill monster" and it also ironically mostly completely lacks much in the way of social skills, at least in the same sense as D&D 3.0 onwards has.)



On the flip-side, if Elendil and Gilgalad had fought Sauron using RM stats, he'd have CREAMED them in short order, since, oh, look, Sauron can cast 360 levels of spells simultaneously per round and he knows all spells (to 360th level, bear in mind the spell lists generally stop at 50 and even the highest, most broken, no-one-would-ever-use-these-spells-in-a-real-game-spells cap out at 125). I shudder to think how many automatic E criticals Sauron could have pumped out with, if I recall right, his tens of thousands of power points...!

[Psyren]

At least in a lot of games I've played, Investigation/Information gathering.

Gotcha - as getting information would either require Social Interaction or Exploration, I don't consider that to be a separate pillar. D&D 5e uses the pillars model and only defines 3.



IMO every class should interact with every pillar in a unique fashion. Not necessarily to the same level of efficacy, but have the ability to bring something unique to the table.

As a quick example, if the Fighter had the ability to size up the combat prowess of people he sees, that would give him some level of in-class interaction with Social Interaction and Investigation. It is valuable information to know that, ex., the Grand Vizier is hiding the fact that they are a very deadly combatant.

You don't need to redesign the fighter class for such a niche application though - the game system already has all the tools you need. A vizier hiding their combat skills would be some application of Bluff or Disguise countered by Sense Motive or Perception, and if you want the Fighter to be especially good at this niche, they get a fat circumstance bonus, or you simply don't require them to roll at all. All doable without any new class features or abilities.

[DragonclawExia]

Eeh... Gandalf isn't really (ironically) the best example of a wizard, since he's really not the typical D&D wizard at all (I mean, demigod, to start with) - hell, Middle-Earth just does NOT fit into D&D at all well generally (Rolemaster was a much better fit for it, honestly) and the LotR characters were definitely not the same level like an adventuring party usually is. (If we were to take RM at their word, the level spread ran from something like 8 to 60 or something...! Of course, in RM high level doesn't mean "safe" from low level, sicne with a good roll, a 1st level dude can still kill you, so there isn't the same marked power differential ANYWAY.)

Let's remember that it was not the Wizards, but a couple (plus one) of what were ostensibly fighters (one of them a human like Aragorn), who were the ones to stand up to Sauron at the height of his power and take him down and even it was an Absurd-level Elven Fighter (Fingolfin) who went one-on-one with frickin' Morgoth.

So, uh, yeah, I would very much expect Aragorn at the same equivilent level of experience as Gandalf to be able to have a good shot at solo-fighting a Balrog; but as noted, magic in LotR is very much subtle (not weak, just subtle).



Speaking of Rolemaster, there's a hilarious inversion for you. Played straight core RAW RM2, and your first level mage (IF he manages to learn a spell list at all, given he's spending skill points to have a CHANCE to learn ONE spell list he's allowed to try) is likely going to be able to either boil the kettle or make a flashlight and that's it for the day; and it takes him three rounds to do that, during which time, the fighter had had three attacks (double that, typically, if you hapen to be playing with post-industrial weapons). It takes the casters a lot of levels to get to the point where they can actually contribute, and the point at which the break the game is usually well out of the point the vast majority of anyone who has ever played Rolemaster, one suspects.

And Rolemaster? Prides itself on its realism. (Well, it's a little more rooted in realism in theory; in practise, it tends to be hilariously skewy at times. I find, though, RM is much better suited to skill-heavy paradigms (such as exploration-heavy) where RM's plethora of skills work in its favour. It's not nearly so good as a "open door, kill monster" and it also ironically mostly completely lacks much in the way of social skills, at least in the same sense as D&D 3.0 onwards has.)



On the flip-side, if Elendil and Gilgalad had fought Sauron using RM stats, he'd have CREAMED them in short order, since, oh, look, Sauron can cast 360 levels of spells simultaneously per round and he knows all spells (to 360th level, bear in mind the spell lists generally stop at 50 and even the highest, most broken, no-one-would-ever-use-these-spells-in-a-real-game-spells cap out at 125). I shudder to think how many automatic E criticals Sauron could have pumped out with, if I recall right, his tens of thousands of power points...!

As someone who tried to replicate the LOTR storyline Campaign, it was...bizarre, so to speak.


It started when, according to the general consensus of Aragorn's Level we tried the Level 6/+2 Dunedain LA, 4 Level 1 Hobbits with Rogue/Commoner run in the Eriador sequence.



But there was numerous encounters that just wasn't possible. Case in point, the Ringwraiths which we modified from Wraiths were essentially impossible without "serious" DM adjustments to the Wraiths weakness to Fire.


The Moria Sequence, due to the sheer number of mooks we tried to replicate also ended up a disaster. (We wanted to "fill" Balin's Tomb which meant 100+ Goblins to mimic the movies against 5 Low levels and 4 npcs)



The basic problem was the CR Rating of multiple "CR Appropriate" enemies in 3.5 was deceptively much higher than the guide we wanted to follow.


The LOTR is just...it's so completely alien in power scaling to Dungeon and Dragons. We abandoned it after Moria, as we basically couldn't find a way to mix LOTR and 3.5 in a way that felt accurate to both.

We swore that everyone except Boromir must have had innate Protection from Arrows and Contingency Spells secretly stacked too.


Though maybe trying to mix both LOTR Book Lore, Movie Aesthetics, and 3.5 Mechanics was a fools errand to begin with...



Sorry, was I off-topic? Anyways, I don't mind Wizards being better than Fighters. It's sorta a western fantasy trope, so I've gotten used to it. I would like it if the power scaling wasn't so Doctor Manhattan relative to Hawkeye.


But I mostly play under Level 10, where it keeps it at Dumbledore to Conan, so I've never had too many problems with it.

[Ramza00]

It started when, according to the general consensus of Aragorn's Level we tried the Level 6/+2 Dunedain LA, 4 Level 1 Hobbits with Rogue/Commoner run in the Eriador sequence.



But there was numerous encounters that just wasn't possible. Case in point, the Ringwraiths which we modified from Wraiths were essentially impossible without "serious" DM adjustments to the Wraiths weakness to Fire.


It is not realistic (points to the first post), but fantasy is often not realistic.

Just a rough idea I haven't actually stated out characters and opposing encounters.
But if you wanted to do Lord of the Rings you should have the Hobbits be 4th level characters with 3 levels of NPC and then 1 level of PC. And during the journey from Hobbiton to the Misty Mountain they should be able to retrain those 3 levels of NPC into actual PC levels after challenges along the way. Representing the lost of innocence / a world of idyllic peace to the world of nations, war, and conflict.

Aragorn should be level 6, maybe with an additional level adjustment.
Gandalf should be level 8 but still only use 3rd level spells at most. Some form of multiclassing occured

[Segev]

When people say, "Fighters should be able to be Thor," they're saying that the class build mechanics should get them there. And I agree.

If you have to take a particular race, you're just unbalancing the races. If said race has LA and RHD, you're saying that a wizard can start at level 1 and progress to 20, but a fighter has to be replaced past a certain level with a more appropriate character for that level.

When 3e unified the exp progressions, it made the implicit claim that a given level character is equal in power to another character of that same level. (In 2e and earlier, the implicit claim was that roughly equal XP is roughly equal power, and that some classes gained new powers at lower XP because they had more granular chunks of power they could acquire.)

If Thor is more powerful than Conan despite having the same levels, because Thor's RHD and LA pay for better powers than Conan's class levels do, that's a problem.


In case it isn't obvious, I'm in the camp that says fighters shouldn't be linear, and should be buffed in design to catch up with casters for versatility. They're actually fine for "power" in the sense of numbers. It's ability to apply those numbers.

Alternatively, nerfing wizards not by stripping them of their cool, versatile spells, but by making it so that actually doing damage or taking a hit is best done by turning to their physical companions. God wizards should NEED parties, not just find them optimal tools.

[Aotrs Commander]

As someone who tried to replicate the LOTR storyline Campaign, it was...bizarre, so to speak.

I think - and not unrelated to the thread topic - LotR is not actually low-level, it's actually pretty high level, it just doesn't have the overt magic that D&D does. (Which is why RM is a good model for it, to be honest, it's pretty easy to not worry too much about casters in RM.) The magic in play is just so fundementally unlike D&D the twain don't mesh. (I think you would find it just as hard to replicate the Belgariad, for instance and the way magic works there.)

I(f you really wanted to try, you'd probably have to just straight disallow casters aside from half-casters like rnagers and paladins (there's an arguement, Gandalf being mechanically a (flavour-stripped) paladin, not a wizard...! Be honest though, does it not actually fit reasonably well?))

But just because batman wizard paradigm doesn't exist, it doesn't mean everything is automatically E6 level.

But it is not entirely unreasonable for a player to want to have Gilgalad/Elendil/Fingolfin sort of paradigm in D&D, so going "well, you have to suck because you didn't want to play what ostensibly amounts to a shonen anime protagonist (because, let's be brutally honest, that's fundementally the sort of ludicrousness a high-level primary caster IS)" - and spoken as a person who pretty frequently does for the caster-type - is being kind of an asshat.



Now, I am among the first to say "fighter class wasn't good enough;" one of the very first major changes I made to 3.5 was to give fighters a freat every level. (As of the latest revision of 3.Aotrs and the folding in of large chunks of 3.5 thereinto, I basically gave the fighter everything the PF fighter has AND a feat at every level, plus an extra one at 1st level for good measure. Still left them with 2 skill points though.) But I also only regard class as a metagame construct, so I expect Fighter 20 to really be something used by someone that really doesn't want a lot of extra complexity and is quite happy to Roll Dice Until Enemy Dead (or for NPCs); otherwise, splashing around in stuff to get the mechanical outcome you want is encouraged. (With help from the DM and other players who know the rules better always cheerfully on hand to help you do that if you're not so good yourself.) The point being that you can have Fighter 20 and not expect to be rendered useless or vastly overshadowed. (And the furthest we ran one game was to low-Epic, which contained a Fighter 20 (pre-PF update) and Monk, though admittedly she splashed the last five levels or so into Swordsage at the time; they were both still pretty murderous in the paradigm of that campaign.)

[Blackhawk748]

Always saw Gandalf as a Bard with a great Racial Package. Made way more sense to me.

And should a Wizard be more versatile? Sure, that's kind of the point to be honest, but they need to pay for that somehow, typically by lack of depth and 3.5 doesn't do that very well.

I found Spheres of Power seemed to hit it best for me. Mages tend to specialize and they are good at their specialty. Or they can go full generalist, but they pay for that.

Either way, the Fighter gets buffed, cuz sweet Lord does it need it. More skills, more skill points, more feats that aren't directly combat related for them, hell special Fighter Techniques. Something

[gkathellar]

{scrubbed}


In case you didn't notice, real life wizards are anyone in the intellectual fields, mainly technology and science.

Nah, that's just an idea nerds throw around to make themselves feel superior.

[OrbanSirgen]

Gandalf should be level 8 but still only use 3rd level spells at most. Some form of multiclassing occured

Considering his proficiency with a longsword, I would say a level or two of fighter or some other martial class...

[Morty]

I appreciate this thread's honesty. "Wizards are nerds and therefore superior" tends to be implicit, but unstated. It's refreshing to see it spelled out like this.

[patchyman]

First, let’s start off by recognizing that “how useful is the nearest real life (?) counterpart to a class” is a terrible metric to justify the relative power of fantasy classes, and even worse as a design goal.

Second, I question your assumptions that just because real life scientists, engineers and inventors are intelligent, they would obviously be wizards in a fantasy game. The webcomic that hosts this forum, for instance, has a fighter whose intelligence rivals that of the wizard character, and plenty of intelligent people are also very devout, work in the entertainment industry, in the military or elsewhere.

Third, even using this terrible metric, D&D fails miserably. After all, real life clergymen are notoriously terrible in an adventuring context.

[Segev]

After all, real life clergymen are notoriously terrible in an adventuring context.

And now I'm picturing an elderly, infirm Pope popping into Faerun and suddenly being spry, sharp-eyed and sharper-eared, and having combat prowess to rival special forces soldiers. "What? I'm a 15th level cleric!" he explains.

[Rynjin]

Gotcha - as getting information would either require Social Interaction or Exploration, I don't consider that to be a separate pillar. D&D 5e uses the pillars model and only defines 3.

I consider them different, largely because different skills come into play. At least in my view, Exploration is more about literal exploration and terrain traversal; that's where the ability to reach the deepest seas and climb the highest mountains and survive in the wilderness come into play.

Likewise, while you can gather some info with social interaction abilities, it's usually a different skillset or list of spells that do that. I wouldn't say Legend Lore and Divination are spells that are particularly "exploratory" or "social". They're purely investigative.


You don't need to redesign the fighter class for such a niche application though - the game system already has all the tools you need. A vizier hiding their combat skills would be some application of Bluff or Disguise countered by Sense Motive or Perception, and if you want the Fighter to be especially good at this niche, they get a fat circumstance bonus, or you simply don't require them to roll at all. All doable without any new class features or abilities.

Even if you do that...the Fighter still doesn't get to participate.

They only get 2 skills per level. And neither Perception nor Sense Motive as a class skill, for that matter.

And then it wraps around again to "no unique input", because anybody can do it, and usually better. The Cleric is again going to be inherently better than the Fighter at this supposed niche just because their Wis is higher.

[Tiktakkat]

Makes the game more realistic.

Real life wizards make robots. Robots are better soldiers than human soldiers.

Well no, they are not.
Mostly because there are no real life robot soldiers.
But if there were, then still no, because the robot is programmed by a wizard who has no clue about how to be a soldier.


Real life wizards make Power Armor. Wizard in Power Armor is better than a human soldier.

Well no, they are not.
Mostly because there is no real life power armor.
But if there was, then still no, the human soldier in Power Armor would be better than a wizard in Power Armor.


Real life wizards make tanks, gunships, battleships, and fully automate them with drone or ai technology. They're better than a human soldier.

Well no, they are not.
Mostly because there is no full automation with AI technology.
As for drone technology, still no, because drones are not operated by wizards, but by human soldiers.


Real life wizards use genetic augmentations to turn themselves into super soldiers. Mutant super soldiers are better than human soldiers.

Well no, they are not.
Mostly because there are no genetically augmented super soldiers.
Even if they were, then the wizard is not a wizard, but a mutant soldier.


Real life wizards make automated mass production complexes manned by drones and robots that lets him build and churn out machinery of epic proportions quickly and by himself. Human soldiers have no idea where to even start.

Well no, they do not.
Mostly because wizards just design stuff, they do not finance and build mass production complexes.
And most of those are not manned by drones and robots but by people.
And it is not the wizard doing any sort of fighting, but the drones and robots.
But mostly, on top of all of that, human soldiers have quite a few ideas as to where to even start. The number of technological discovers made by active and retired soldiers, both in the military and civilian fields, is significant. Enough to put them on part with the percentage of wizards compared to non-wizards in civilian life.


In case you didn't notice, real life wizards are anyone in the intellectual fields, mainly technology and science. And a human soldier is someone who spends his life increasing his muscle mass or reflexes through training.

I noticed. Your premises are all simply wrong, or forced in a manner that requires wizards to be significantly more than just STEM researchers and engineers. They have to be rogues for financing and soldiers for tactical knowledge and ability as well, completely undermining any distinction between them and "single-classed" soldiers. In "reality", real-life wizards are magewrights, not wizards.
And of course it is also egregiously dismissive of the knowledge and abilities required to be a soldier, particularly in modern times. While you may not think so, learning how to be a good fighter is significantly more than having big muscles and fast reflexes. If that were that case, then any professional sports team would be able to destroy a modern army simply by showing up and flashing their statistics.


People have seemed to have missed my point so I'll be a little more explicit.

In real life, brain beats brawn. By lightyears. Brawn cannot even hope to compare to brains. Brains create fully automated heavy firearms using explosive ammo. Brains create thermonuclear weapons. Brains create super viruses. Brains create super soldiers either robotically, cybernetically (not yet but will), genetically (not yet but will), or a mix of all three.

Brawn just stimulates his body in a way it develops more muscle mass as he consumes more protein and has no hope in hell of beating a bear in a fist fight. And even then it is the Brains that develop performance enhancing drugs.

I got your point. And as I said, it is simply wrong. Your arguments are fatally flawed due to your severe bias, which proceeds from the false premise that fighting is all about Brawn and has nothing to do with Brains.
Nobody who fights would ever expect to beat a bear in a fist fight. They would always use their Brains and bring along a weapon capable of taking down a bear, use more Brains to avoid getting close enough for the bear to use its Brawn, and then still more Brains to take the bear down. Along the way they would also use Brains to maintain their weapon, Brains to figure out where to find the bear in the first place, Brains to select and bring along the proper equipment, and Brains in general because that is how you fight.


And in d&d this is remarkably implemented. The wizard does everything what a Brain is supposed to do. Which is everything. And the fighter does what a Brawn is supposed to do. Which is having no hope in hell of challenging the Brain in anyway at all. Just like in real life.

Well no, it is not.
Wizards do not do everything that a Brain is supposed to do. You made it clear that a Brain is supposed to sit in a laboratory, making stuff. If D&D implemented this, then anyone playing a wizard would only be allowed to use that wizard in a game once every ten adventures at most.
Likewise the fighter is not doing what a Brawn is supposed to do. He does not get any direct features to increase his tactical ability and knowledge. Increased BAB and a bunch of feats in no way adequately covers this.


So it's only natural that fighters drop off after the wizard gets his doctorate in magic, just like how bullies drop off after graduating school.

Except the wizard should not be getting his doctorate in magic by running around in dungeons. He should be stuck in a lab, doing research, and making items for the fighters to use.
And, again despite your bias, Brawn does not make one a bully. That is going from bias to just plain offensive.


So some people have mentioned since wizards are fantastically competent in all fields of study, so fighters should also be fantastically have super strength. That's fine, but that doesn't change the fact that wizards can create or enslave an army of fantasy creatures who are innately superior to humans in every way, which means nothing changes unless Humans are in fact biologically the most powerful race in the setting, which they are not.

Those just increase the flaws in the argument.
Wizards should not be fantastically competent in all fields of study. That is not how real life scientists and engineers operate. They have specialties.
Nor, as I noted, is fighting all about super strength. Fighters should get way more than mere strength at high levels. Among them, the ability to lead and gain the loyalty without having to create or enslave fantasy creatures who are innately superior to humans in every way. Those fantasy creatures should be flocking to the fighters, looking for security from those nasty wizards! And then, since they are superior to humans in every way, they should easily defeat those wizards, whose limited specialties can in no way stand up to the superior abilities of the fantasy creatures, particularly when directed by the astounding strategic and tactical acumen of the fighters.

[OrbanSirgen]

Those "real-life" examples given are not wizards... They are experts and/or artificers...

[Zarrgon]

Makes the game more realistic.


So wizards using magic make a fictional game more realistic?

[Psyren]

I consider them different, largely because different skills come into play. At least in my view, Exploration is more about literal exploration and terrain traversal; that's where the ability to reach the deepest seas and climb the highest mountains and survive in the wilderness come into play.

Likewise, while you can gather some info with social interaction abilities, it's usually a different skillset or list of spells that do that. I wouldn't say Legend Lore and Divination are spells that are particularly "exploratory" or "social". They're purely investigative.

That's fine, we can agree to disagree. I'll stick with the D&D definitions. (https://dnd.wizards.com/articles/unearthed-arcana/3pillarxp)


Even if you do that...the Fighter still doesn't get to participate.

They only get 2 skills per level. And neither Perception nor Sense Motive as a class skill, for that matter.

And then it wraps around again to "no unique input", because anybody can do it, and usually better. The Cleric is again going to be inherently better than the Fighter at this supposed niche just because their Wis is higher.

So did you just... skip over the parts where I said the Fighter would get a bonus to this or not need to roll at all? You can make them better easily if this niche application is important to you.


When people say, "Fighters should be able to be Thor," they're saying that the class build mechanics should get them there. And I agree.

And I don't. If you want to be a martial deity while also being a standard human, I genuinely think you're playing the wrong game. We had a very lengthy argument about this (https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?600999-Critiquing-the-quot-Guy-At-The-Gym-quot-Fallacy) in the roleplaying board that I won't rehash here, but suffice to say that I don't think the origins of fictional characters like Odysseus, Achilles, Hercules, Ajax et al., are "human fighters" in D&D terms; they've got something else in their corner that D&D would represent mechanically as being external to the fighter class itself, whether it's a different race, a template, Mythic power, divine rank etc.



If you have to take a particular race, you're just unbalancing the races. If said race has LA and RHD, you're saying that a wizard can start at level 1 and progress to 20, but a fighter has to be replaced past a certain level with a more appropriate character for that level.

But you don't have to replace anything - assuming level-appropriate challenges and wealth, the fighter might not be on par with the wizard but they should be on par with whatever the party is fighting (at least in PF). If he's not, then either the encounter level or the wealth/itemization is to blame, both of which represent a failure to apply the rules of the game properly. And beating the monster is what matters, this isn't a PvP game.



When 3e unified the exp progressions, it made the implicit claim that a given level character is equal in power to another character of that same level.

I find this "Level A should = Level A" claim to be far too simplistic to be useful in practice. There are many more factors besides level that determine a character's power, even within the same class; compare a wizard 20 using normal optimization to a wizard 20 who prepares nothing but Read Magic in every slot - same level and even same class, yet drastically different power and problem-solving ability. The cited XP progression rubric certainly thinks they're equals, but you and I know better; blindly adhering to that as evidence of intended parity is beyond flawed.



Alternatively, nerfing wizards not by stripping them of their cool, versatile spells, but by making it so that actually doing damage or taking a hit is best done by turning to their physical companions. God wizards should NEED parties, not just find them optimal tools.

This is pretty much exactly what 5e did so I don't mind. You can do that in PF too, by banning the most powerful spells and using things like Simplified Spellcasting and Automatic Bonus Progression to drastically cut down on caster ammunition.

[Rynjin]

So did you just... skip over the parts where I said the Fighter would get a bonus to this or not need to roll at all? You can make them better easily if this niche application is important to you.



I just found it weird that you think introducing an entirely new subsystem and then giving one class the ability to completely ignore the mechanical elements of it is a more elegant solution than just giving that class a specific ability.

It's the same thing overall but the latter is less roundabout and more focused.

[Psyren]

I just found it weird that you think introducing an entirely new subsystem and then giving one class the ability to completely ignore the mechanical elements of it is a more elegant solution than just giving that class a specific ability.

It's the same thing overall but the latter is less roundabout and more focused.

I'm not introducing anything new - I'm using two existing rules - opposed skill check to discover when someone is hiding/disguising something about themselves, and a circumstance bonus to differentiate a character that should have an advantage on said check. The DMG and CRB both cover this quite clearly.

Rather, you're the one who wants to homebrew a specific class feature for this niche case when none is needed.

[NigelWalmsley]

I find this "Level A should = Level A" claim to be far too simplistic to be useful in practice. There are many more factors besides level that determine a character's power, even within the same class; compare a wizard 20 using normal optimization to a wizard 20 who prepares nothing but Read Magic in every slot - same level and even same class, yet drastically different power and problem-solving ability.

So you disagree that it is a problem that characters of equal level can be of dramatically different power levels because... characters of equal level can be of dramatically different power levels? I mean, that's an argument, but it's not one that seems like it makes a whole lot of sense.

[Rynjin]

I'm not introducing anything new - I'm using two existing rules - opposed skill check to discover when someone is hiding/disguising something about themselves, and a circumstance bonus to differentiate a character that should have an advantage on said check. The DMG and CRB both cover this quite clearly.

Debatable, but ultimately not worth my mental energy to bother with on this part any more.


Rather, you're the one who wants to homebrew a specific class feature for this niche case when none is needed.


It was an idea, thrown out as one way Fighters could be redesigned to have broader use, yes. "As a quick example" was my exact wording, to show what I mean when I say each character should have a unique way to interact with the world. Attacking the exact idea doesn't really serve a purpose here, because it's not even a complete mechanic outline.

The only point is that things can (and should have been) done to give the Fighter some kind of utility (and for that matter identity) besides "guy who fights", which fits every other "guy who fights" in the game just as well.

I don't think the idea of "somebody might not want to have any class features" is particularly good either. If they don't want them, they can feel free to not use them. The opposite can't be said for somebody who wants something that doesn't exist.

[sandmote]

I'm not introducing anything new - I'm using two existing rules - opposed skill check to discover when someone is hiding/disguising something about themselves, and a circumstance bonus to differentiate a character that should have an advantage on said check. The DMG and CRB both cover this quite clearly.

Rather, you're the one who wants to homebrew a specific class feature for this niche case when none is needed. So instead of writing "you get a class bonus on such skills," you want to put a mental asterisk next to the type of roll reading "you get a circumstance bonus because of your class on such skills?"

Edit: I'm asking because I don't see why the answer to my question is "no."

[King of Nowhere]

Makes the game more realistic.

Real life wizards make robots. Robots are better soldiers than human soldiers.
Real life wizards make Power Armor. Wizard in Power Armor is better than a human soldier.
Real life wizards make tanks, gunships, battleships, and fully automate them with drone or ai technology. They're better than a human soldier.
Real life wizards use genetic augmentations to turn themselves into super soldiers. Mutant super soldiers are better than human soldiers.
Real life wizards make automated mass production complexes manned by drones and robots that lets him build and churn out machinery of epic proportions quickly and by himself. Human soldiers have no idea where to even start.

In case you didn't notice, real life wizards are anyone in the intellectual fields, mainly technology and science. And a human soldier is someone who spends his life increasing his muscle mass or reflexes through training.


I may point out, though, that robots are piloted by someone with reflexes. power armor, tanks, gunships, mass produced stuff, all those things are used by soldiers. most real life "wizards" wouldn't know how to use the guns they can make.

hence, by that reasoning, wizards should buff their teammates and not do stuff alone.
also notice that real life "wizards" are useless in a vacuum. they are only effective in a group.
I'm one of them, I can do cool stuff with chemistry. but drop me on a desert island, and all my knowledge is useless. yes, i could make a lot of useful stuff, if i had the reagents and an equipped lab. extracting reagents from plant and mineral sources is not my field of expertise, nor is making some glassware by melting sand. I probably wouldn't even be able to start a fire.
my brother is also a wizard, specialized in electronics. he can do cool stuff with a computer, but put him on a desert island, without electrical components or electricity, and his expertise is also useless. though he went with the boy scouts in his youth, so he'd at least have a better chance than me with the fire.
so, real life wizards work very differently from fantasy ones. not much point drawing comparisons.

you may also notice that intellectual people generally do not lurk in dungeons zapping monsters with fancy devices. if they do, they do not gain experience points that will make them better at building gadgets.

[Gruftzwerg]

you may also notice that intellectual people generally do not lurk in dungeons zapping monsters with fancy devices. if they do, they do not gain experience points that will make them better at building gadgets.

"I can't seem to find a solution to this scientific problem..
Maybe I should kill some stuff first to get more knowledgeable ^^"

Just imagining this make me laugh and freak out/afraid at the same time.

[The Insanity]

I'm confused. Can't you just make the Wizard higher level than the Fighter if you feel it MUST be better? There's no reason to make the classes unbalanced with each other.

[NigelWalmsley]

I'm confused. Can't you just make the Wizard higher level than the Fighter if you feel it MUST be better? There's no reason to make the classes unbalanced with each other.

Yes. You could do that. You should, in fact, do that. We have a mechanism for regulating the power level of characters. It's called character level. You can make an imbalanced system from a balanced one trivially. Doing the reverse is much harder (for the same reason that if you make random changes to your car, it's far more likely that you'll break it than turn it into a Ferrari). As a result, it's clearly better for the system to be balanced by default than imbalanced by default.

[Zarrgon]

I don't think the origins of fictional characters like Odysseus, Achilles, Hercules, Ajax et al., are "human fighters" in D&D terms; they've got something else in their corner that D&D would represent mechanically as being external to the fighter class itself, whether it's a different race, a template, Mythic power, divine rank etc.


Interesting. Think I'll have to agree here.

Even I have said a fighter archtype is someone like Thor or Hercules, but now I'm thinking that was wrong. Even Captain America would not be a fighter. Really, you'd need to go all the way down to Hawkeye. A lot of classic heroes might fit the title of fighter: John Carter, Flash Gordon, Buck Rogers and up to Rambo, Sam and Dean Winchester, Jason Borne or John Whick.

Though I see the culture thing too. Plenty of people love the story of the everyman fighter type: there is nothing special about them in a physical or magical sense. They are pure human, just tough. A typical Clint Eastwood character, or Bruce Willis character.

But a lot of people also like the beyond normal human being: Hulk, Thor, Hercules, He-Man, and Neo. So it's easy to get the two confused.

In D&D the Hulk is not a fighter with class levels, he is a half troll/half giant/monster of legend.

[The Vagabond]

People have seemed to have missed my point so I'll be a little more explicit.

In real life, brain beats brawn. By lightyears. Brawn cannot even hope to compare to brains. Brains create fully automated heavy firearms using explosive ammo. Brains create thermonuclear weapons. Brains create super viruses. Brains create super soldiers either robotically, cybernetically (not yet but will), genetically (not yet but will), or a mix of all three.

Brawn just stimulates his body in a way it develops more muscle mass as he consumes more protein and has no hope in hell of beating a bear in a fist fight. And even then it is the Brains that develop performance enhancing drugs.

And in d&d this is remarkably implemented. The wizard does everything what a Brain is supposed to do. Which is everything. And the fighter does what a Brawn is supposed to do. Which is having no hope in hell of challenging the Brain in anyway at all. Just like in real life.

So it's only natural that fighters drop off after the wizard gets his doctorate in magic, just like how bullies drop off after graduating school.

So some people have mentioned since wizards are fantastically competent in all fields of study, so fighters should also be fantastically have super strength. That's fine, but that doesn't change the fact that wizards can create or enslave an army of fantasy creatures who are innately superior to humans in every way, which means nothing changes unless Humans are in fact biologically the most powerful race in the setting, which they are not.

While it is an accurate point you're making, I can't help but fundamentally disagree with your assessment here, for a number of reasons.

(1) The vast majority of power doesn't come with knowledge, but with experience. There is a general rule of thumb in business that 70% of knowledge should come from experience, 20% from peers, and only 10% from a formal education. While you could certainly train a "Wizard" to be a very solid soldier, the fundamental problem is that it would drain time and put the asset in danger, when you could instead cross-train a pre-existing soldier with the aptitude for the field to serve as a consultant. And while you could certainly put a laser gun into the hand of a scientist, throwing that scientist into the field is a quick way to see them die, as they do not have the reflexes that allow a soldier to deal with their projects.

(2) The overwhelming majority of modern projects that compete with a man who shoved a sharp rock on the edge of a stick required immense time and manpower investment to develop. Most military products have dozens if not hundreds of employees currently partaking in the development process. The manhatten project took 130,000 people to develop.

(3) The vast majority of these products require immense infrastructure to implement. It takes 28 tons of steel to build a tank from world war 2, requiring hundreds of miners and workers to mine. While we have taken steps to remove the manpower requirement, that simply has shifted the requirements and raised the scale to meet the increasing demands. So we go from tossing fire and water down a mineshaft to let men hit the iron with picks to blowing up entire mountains to get to the metal. That doesn't stop the fact that people are the ones doing it, and while many of these people might be phased out with technology soon, that was a process of at least a hundred years of development.

(4) More than anything, these projects required time. The current robots at Boston Dynamics, which are only just begining to reach the usability stage, have been in progress since 2004. In that time, military strategy has changed and shifted.

If you live in america, chances are you have consumed something like Iron Man, Die Hard, or Captain America. In each of these, there's an undercurrent of One Man who can do what it takes, how One Man! can solve the problem, stop corruption, or make a suit of power armor. But ultimately, reality doesn't let one man do any of these things. And while this fantasy is fun, it's also directly counter to making a game for multiple people to play. condensing the power of (1) up to 140 years of cumulative experience (2) Multiple billions of dollars of infrastructure and classes, (3) Up to 5 years of practice and experimentation, and (4) The experience of multiple soldiers into one individual pushes the edge of disbelief, to the point where, after removing the One Man! trope, it breaks like a thousand pieces of glass.

Honestly, this is mostly rambling at this point, as it's far too late to have this argument, but my point is that, as Americans in the west, we tend to idolize the idea of the individual who can do everything, when that's what really stretches the lines of credulity. Wizards can hand-wave away such pesky things as infastructure, society, wealth, and time through magic, while martials have no such tool to handle these problems without breaking suspensions of disbelief.

[ebarde]

Realistically speaking fighters straight up shouldn't be in the game, cause there's no way someone with no inherent special abilities would ever kill a dragon for example. Thing is DnD is not supposed to be realistic, it operates on an anime or superhero logic where if you train enough you´re comparable to demigods. Just look the mythologies the game was based on, while many of it's heroes have some sort of explanation to their combat prowess, a lot of them could slaughter entire armies cause they were just that good.

If you wanna play DnD realistically(or at least as realistically as one can be when it comes to magic) don't bother with any martial class as they will be outclassed as soon as people start shooting fire out of their hands or rewriting reality. So why should the fighter's flavor be based around this logic, when it's logical conclusion is the class being useless?

[magicalmagicman]

Some of you made some great points. Some of you went on tangents about something else.

I'm satisfied with the responses so continue to discuss away. Some of you are close to convincing me. Don't have the time to respond properly, but great job. Well argued.

[Psyren]

I don't think the idea of "somebody might not want to have any class features" is particularly good either. If they don't want them, they can feel free to not use them. The opposite can't be said for somebody who wants something that doesn't exist.

By that logic, every class should just have every class feature then. After all, they can always choose to just not use the ones they don't want.

Less facetiously, limitations are as much a part of class identity as capabilities are. The issue with the wizard is that its limitations are too easily circumvented, especially in 3.5, something that 5e took into account when it came time to design theirs. Stacking numerous buffs on yourself is much harder, maintaining them while frontlining is much more difficult, and your slots are far more precious, among other things.


So instead of writing "you get a class bonus on such skills," you want to put a mental asterisk next to the type of roll reading "you get a circumstance bonus because of your class on such skills?"

Edit: I'm asking because I don't see why the answer to my question is "no."

Not quite - because the skill is being used in a specific way that makes sense for the fighter. Like his example of a fighter being able to tell someone is a highly-trained martial and trying to hide it - because there's no dedicated skill just for that, you'd likely use the same skill that you would use to, say, spot a trap, secret door, or hidden magical glyph - but if you just grant a flat class bonus to the skill then you're buffing all those other things too. That's why I think the circumstance bonus (or "mental asterisk" as you call it) is more reasonable, because the GM gets the freedom to decide if it applies to a given situation or not.


Interesting. Think I'll have to agree here.

Even I have said a fighter archtype is someone like Thor or Hercules, but now I'm thinking that was wrong. Even Captain America would not be a fighter. Really, you'd need to go all the way down to Hawkeye. A lot of classic heroes might fit the title of fighter: John Carter, Flash Gordon, Buck Rogers and up to Rambo, Sam and Dean Winchester, Jason Borne or John Whick.

Though I see the culture thing too. Plenty of people love the story of the everyman fighter type: there is nothing special about them in a physical or magical sense. They are pure human, just tough. A typical Clint Eastwood character, or Bruce Willis character.

But a lot of people also like the beyond normal human being: Hulk, Thor, Hercules, He-Man, and Neo. So it's easy to get the two confused.

In D&D the Hulk is not a fighter with class levels, he is a half troll/half giant/monster of legend.

Cap would not be a pure fighter, no; at the very least he'd have some kind of permanent alchemical bonuses going on. You made a good start with the rest I'd say.

Hawkeye is much closer to pure fighter in D&D terms - but note that he's not expected to keep up with spellcasters and gods purely on his own, he uses gadgets (aka WBL.)

[Psychoalpha]

IMO every class should interact with every pillar in a unique fashion. Not necessarily to the same level of efficacy, but have the ability to bring something unique to the table.

I'd settle for 'ability to bring something even moderately useful to the table', even. Bards and Rogues do this, as do most casters by default more or less, and if a player doesn't WANT to engage those parts of the class that's up to them, but if a player DOES want to engage they can.


(I think you would find it just as hard to replicate the Belgariad, for instance and the way magic works there.)

That's because the Belgariad is basically a Mage game where all the mages have all the spheres, just varying levels of Arete (or whatever crappy nMage used).


And I don't. If you want to be a martial deity while also being a standard human, I genuinely think you're playing the wrong game. We had a very lengthy argument about this in the roleplaying board that I won't rehash here, but suffice to say that I don't think the origins of fictional characters like Odysseus, Achilles, Hercules, Ajax et al., are "human fighters" in D&D terms; they've got something else in their corner that D&D would represent mechanically as being external to the fighter class itself, whether it's a different race, a template, Mythic power, divine rank etc.

Except that's true of virtually every mythic example of a fictional character, martial or otherwise. Meanwhile, casters don't require something external to their class to be a mythic character by high level.

If, as Zarrgon says, the highest you can aspire to be as a martial character without external input is Hawkeye while the caster can be a Doctor Strange or Iron Man type without requiring that external input, I see that as a problem with martials and not with casters. Then again, I'd happily replace Fighters with Warblades and Paladins with Crusaders any day of the week. :p


something that 5e took into account when it came time to design theirs

5E is almost everything I despise about proposed solution to the imbalances and complexity of 3.x, so I'll have to take your word for it.

[Ignimortis]

In D&D the Hulk is not a fighter with class levels, he is a half troll/half giant/monster of legend.

Nope. He's just a barbarian. You can fluff your rage however you want, including "hulking out", although you'd have to pick up that feat that makes you Large when you rage, but that's about it. Basic Hulk set literally comes online at level 1, it's just that crossover version of Hulk where he can't break all the bones in a human body with a single punch or lift a few tons. Over time, you can certainly make your "Hulk barbarian" do that, because 40+ STR actually does let you lift a few tons, and that's quite achievable in 3.5.

[OrbanSirgen]

As a quick example, if the Fighter had the ability to size up the combat prowess of people he sees, that would give him some level of in-class interaction with Social Interaction and Investigation. It is valuable information to know that, ex., the Grand Vizier is hiding the fact that they are a very deadly combatant.

I just would like to point out that page 102 of Complete Adventurer has pretty much that exact use for Sense Motive vs an opponent's Bluff for comparing their CR to your level/HD...

[Kelb_Panthera]

The Fighter does not keep up with the Wizard in combat at comparable optimization. He just does not do that. You can eventually optimize a Fighter enough that he's useful in combat, but that's only because monsters are kept largely static. At typical levels of optimization, the Fighter does not keep up with printed optimization past mid levels, while the Wizard does.

If you presume that a "fighter" is a human (or other essentially zero effect race) and that his gear is comprised mostly or entirely of +X to Y bonus items so as to maximize the role the fighter class plays in the overall fighter character, sure. That's just dumb though.

The equivalent would be if you built a wizard by picking the most powerful race you could think of (presumably including substantial HD and LA) kitting it out with the most effective gear you can cobble together and then picking your spells randomly out of a hat.

Yes, a GM -could- restrict your race choice and/or be really stingy with loot and shopping options but he could just as easily restrict spell selection or just straight-up ban wizards. Either we're talking about the system as-is or we're not. If we are then race isn't restricted and WBL is a thing and they -are- part of any given character. That race is of minimal importance and WBL is of only moderate to a wizard doesn't mean you get to just pretend they don't exist and then say fighter sucks by ignoring them.

If you want to argue that wizards ability to function in circumstances where those are restricted while class and spells aren't is a powerful feature of the class, I can't really argue against that. No one that's being honest and reasonable can. You can't argue that such circumstances should be taken as the default and then say you're just talking about the system itself though.


That lengthy preamble out of the way now, you don't have to optimize super heavily to make a fighter that can hold his own in combat at any level. Even -just- making smart gear choices goes a pretty good ways. Pick a decent race, don't overspecialize, grab some gear to let you do the things you can't with race or class; done. If you optimize -hard- then you can deal with most things that aren't just an equally optimized caster.



But combat isn't even really the problem. Yes, the Fighter needs to be easier to build effectively. That's totally true, and the class is genuinely insultingly bad as printed. But you can build a Fighter who does things in combat that matter. The problem is that the Fighter straight up does not get non-combat abilities.

That's only a problem if you A) want to do stuff out of combat beyond interact with the rest of your party (not everyone does) and B) you, for some reason, expect all aspsects of your character's ability to be contained within their class.

Seriously, even a wizard isn't -entirely- contained within his class features. The spellbook alone invalidates that idea but, even beyond that, you will -not- survive past low levels on slots alone. Scrolls, wands, pearls, and metamagic rods are all varying degrees of necessary above and beyond basic +X to Y defensive gear. A race with an int bonus rarely goes amiss as long as it comes with minimal LA and no RHD, even if that does only amount to one or two extra spell slots and a similar number of extra points on save DCs most of the time.


Most mythic figures are kinda *****. But that's not the part of them that people want to emulate in D&D. When someone wants to play a character with powers that are "like Zeus", they mean they want to have storm magic that lets them fight titans. They don't mean they want to be able to turn into animals to sexually assault women.

Emulating mythical and pop-culture figures is eminently doable. It's the insistance on doing so with class, only class, and nothing but class that mucks everything up. Thor is a fighter. He's just also a "god" that wields powerful magic arms and armor. If you want to play Thor and you pick human (no template) for your race, you've already deviated from concept.

[Psyren]

Except that's true of virtually every mythic example of a fictional character, martial or otherwise. Meanwhile, casters don't require something external to their class to be a mythic character by high level.

Magic IS external to your character. It can be interacted and interfered with - spells can be disrupted, buffs dispelled, components removed or made impractical, and magic itself can be impeded or disabled. The ability to interfere with magical solutions in exclusive ways, or to make magical solutions less practical than mundane ones, is all a system needs - and D&D has plenty.



If, as Zarrgon says, the highest you can aspire to be as a martial character without external input is Hawkeye while the caster can be a Doctor Strange or Iron Man type without requiring that external input, I see that as a problem with martials and not with casters. Then again, I'd happily replace Fighters with Warblades and Paladins with Crusaders any day of the week. :p

And yet Doctor Strange needs Iron Man and Hawkeye to solve several problems. It's not difficult.

And sure, if you want to dump regular martials in favor of initiators go nuts, but I hardly see it as being necessary.



5E is almost everything I despise about proposed solution to the imbalances and complexity of 3.x, so I'll have to take your word for it.

They solved it by admitting that it can't be solved, at least not perfectly. Casters are generally stronger, but if you try to steal the martials' spotlight you end up being nowhere near as effective as you could be otherwise. In the end, that's what I wanted.

[AntiAuthority]

There's no inherent reason for any class to be superior to another based on realism when we're talking about a fantasy game, you could easily say the opposite is true because "A real-life soldier would destroy a street magician or engineer in a real fight, so it makes sense that Fighters are stronger than Wizards."

But I have two serious two question about this OP. If Wizards are supposed to be superior to Fighters and we're comparing them to real life counterparts...

1. Who wins in a fight between a Navy SEAL and engineer?

2. Why don't we just send in street magicians and engineers onto the battlefield since real life soldiers are apparently inferior?

Also, the examples you listed of real life wizards... Those people are usually nowhere near real battlefields and aren't really capable of defending themselves in a fight against a trained soldier or fighter. They'd usually be completely at the mercy of a random thug who breaks into their house and has a gun, while a real life Fighter would have much better chances of defending themselves... If we want to be keep the real life wizard comparison, Wizards are either an NPC class or they stay faaaaaar away from real combat and sit in shops making weapons and equipment for Fighters to go out and fight wars with, and never see any real violence up close and personal except through scrying/remote viewing (basically recordings/live feeds for a rough comparison). Congratulations, Wizards are now strictly a support class that stay far away from any dangerous encounters -_-.


Thing is, yes, real life Wizards are powerful, they have money (but so do professional fighters) and can create things, while real life Fighters are good at breaking things either under their own power or with the tools the real life Wizard gives them... But 3.5E Wizards are able to create and destroy at a comparable level as the guys that specialize in the art of destroying. It's not really common for intellectuals that usually sit behind desks to also have crazy fighting abilities...


Unless I'm missing the part where Bill Gates could square up Conner McGregor and win... Vladimir Putin is the obvious outlier here, but the guy's clearly taking levels in Fighter or some martial class (look at his work outs and how the KGB were likely trained), so I wouldn't say he counts as to what a real-life Wizard should be capable of doing. EDIT: On second thought, as a later post of mine shows (https://forums.giantitp.com/showsinglepost.php?p=24387340&postcount=76)... Putin isn't really an outlier, so much as what a Real Life Fighter has turned into from historic examples, instead of just being a Wizard with Fighter levels.

[ebarde]

I honestly really disagree that fighters vs wizards can never be solved, tons of other systems did it. The problem is that DnD at this point probably will always suffer from sins of the father, which kinda results in the fighter still being the class that hits stuff and not much else, even though the game has evolved to a point where social encounters and exploration sometimes occupy sometimes a majority of the session time. My fix would honestly make the fighter not a hit stuff hard kinda guy, and more like a master of the art of War that is proficient both on the battlefield and also in a leadership and negotiator position.

You can say skills do this, and to some extent I guess you'd be right but like...realistically speaking your party is always gonna have a skill monkey or at least someone more skill oriented, or a spellcaster that with a single spell can make whatever problem the party is facing go away.

I also think fully accepting that the martial classes should be just as absurd as any spellcasters would go a long way

[AntiAuthority]

I honestly really disagree that fighters vs wizards can never be solved, tons of other systems did it. The problem is that DnD at this point probably will always suffer from sins of the father, which kinda results in the fighter still being the class that hits stuff and not much else, even though the game has evolved to a point where social encounters and exploration sometimes occupy sometimes a majority of the session time. My fix would honestly make the fighter not a hit stuff hard kinda guy, and more like a master of the art of War that is proficient both on the battlefield and also in a leadership and negotiator position.

You can say skills do this, and to some extent I guess you'd be right but like...realistically speaking your party is always gonna have a skill monkey or at least someone more skill oriented, or a spellcaster that with a single spell can make whatever problem the party is facing go away.

I also think fully accepting that the martial classes should be just as absurd as any spellcasters would go a long way

Agreed, let martial classes do crazy stuff like shatter boulders and intimidate enemies so much they have a mental breakdown/heart attack. Or be a competent military leader who could disarm conflict before it begins.

[Kelb_Panthera]

Agreed, let martial classes do crazy stuff like shatter boulders and intimidate enemies so much they have a mental breakdown/heart attack. Or be a competent military leader who could disarm conflict before it begins.

...

Warrior classes -can- do those things. Just not generally all at once.

I thoroughly lament the fact that all of the knowledge of optimizing non-casters has been lost to time and message board wipes when I see stuff like this. All that made it to the present is chargers. :smallfrown:

[ebarde]

I mean, depends on edition. And to do that you always have to jump through a bunch of hoops, dip into stuff and honestly it rarely feels worth it

[AntiAuthority]

...

Warrior classes -can- do those things. Just not generally all at once.

I thoroughly lament the fact that all of the knowledge of optimizing non-casters has been lost to time and message board wipes when I see stuff like this. All that made it to the present is chargers. :smallfrown:

I'm not too focused on optimization myself, so don't take my lack of knowledge as a sign of the usual here lol. But I was more agreeing that if one class gets to be absurd with what they can do, everyone should be able to instead of being held to realism.

[Peat]

I think most of the points about the shortcomings of real life 'wizards' in terms of producing what the OP says they produce has been pointed out but I'd just add/reiterate that D&D isn't about who can make the biggest advances in the science of killing in the next five years, its who can stay alive in a series of small deathtraps of various natures. If this were to be realistic, then pretty much nobody without serious levels of both brain and brawn would be going in there, as the brain without brawn would all be in labs and the brawn without brain would all lack the relevant skills.

As for what everyone has said about this being a game about a non-realistic world - yes. And the short version is that it is the designers' choice to have a world where the wizards have very few limitations and are about as powerful as can be compared to the general gamut of source material, where as fighters have a lot of limitations and (in terms of native class power) are pretty middle of the road compared to the general gamut of source material, not any dictates of realism. And while there's a bunch of caveats to that and how it works in the actual game due to how the game is designed, there's a reason a lot of people are annoyed by it. And truth be told, "use a different system" probably is the best answer.

[AntiAuthority]

Thinking about the premise of this thread more... It doesn't quite work. Even real life warriors tend to have some form of a formal education and can get to a high position of power. And no, I don't think anyone in the real world would qualify as a Fighter, much like I don't think anyone in the real world would qualify as a Wizard because PC classes aren't real, and any such being would be superhuman by our standards, but I'll continue to use the word for comparison's sake.

Spartans were taught science and math.

Alexander the Great was a Real Life Fighter who was a brilliant tactician, skilled warrior, had an education in science and politics and was a king with a vast empire.

Samurai received high quality educations by the standards of their time, such as learning about Confucianism and Chinese history.

Soldiers in the US military were offered benefits of having the military pay for their college education as part of why they should join the military. Even then, they're also trained mentally as well to handle the stress of war and cooperate with their comrades, which can serve them in their civilian lives.

Then there are US soldiers who go on to work as Secretary of Defense, as the majority of them were basically Real World Fighters as they mostly served in the armed forces.

Continuing from the last one, nearly half of the US Presidents were in the armed forces at some point, along with George Washington being first US President, so they'd qualify as Real Life Fighters.

If anything, Real Life Fighters tend to have brains + brawn + charisma, as they tended to have skills outside of just stabbing and shooting people that can lead them to positions of power like founding/leading a country or something along those lines.

With this in mind, it doesn't quite make sense that Fighters are portrayed as dumb as they are in the game (so few Skill Points when plenty of warriors throughout history had skills and knowledge outside of just cutting people), and they should have more power to reflect the reality that warriors in the real world can and do have intelligence and can wind up in positions of power, so they should be on a relatively equal field as Real Life Wizards.

If Wizards are the people making inventions, Fighters are the people using those inventions to deadly effect, leading armies, keeping up morale, winning wars, keeping the peace, founding countries and leading the people in times of said peace with the knowledge they gained. But once again, this is a fantasy game, there's no inherent reason for one class to be superior to another based on realism.

[DragonclawExia]

I think - and not unrelated to the thread topic - LotR is not actually low-level, it's actually pretty high level, it just doesn't have the overt magic that D&D does. (Which is why RM is a good model for it, to be honest, it's pretty easy to not worry too much about casters in RM.) The magic in play is just so fundementally unlike D&D the twain don't mesh. (I think you would find it just as hard to replicate the Belgariad, for instance and the way magic works there.)

I(f you really wanted to try, you'd probably have to just straight disallow casters aside from half-casters like rnagers and paladins (there's an arguement, Gandalf being mechanically a (flavour-stripped) paladin, not a wizard...! Be honest though, does it not actually fit reasonably well?))

But just because batman wizard paradigm doesn't exist, it doesn't mean everything is automatically E6 level.

But it is not entirely unreasonable for a player to want to have Gilgalad/Elendil/Fingolfin sort of paradigm in D&D, so going "well, you have to suck because you didn't want to play what ostensibly amounts to a shonen anime protagonist (because, let's be brutally honest, that's fundementally the sort of ludicrousness a high-level primary caster IS)" - and spoken as a person who pretty frequently does for the caster-type - is being kind of an asshat.



Now, I am among the first to say "fighter class wasn't good enough;" one of the very first major changes I made to 3.5 was to give fighters a freat every level. (As of the latest revision of 3.Aotrs and the folding in of large chunks of 3.5 thereinto, I basically gave the fighter everything the PF fighter has AND a feat at every level, plus an extra one at 1st level for good measure. Still left them with 2 skill points though.) But I also only regard class as a metagame construct, so I expect Fighter 20 to really be something used by someone that really doesn't want a lot of extra complexity and is quite happy to Roll Dice Until Enemy Dead (or for NPCs); otherwise, splashing around in stuff to get the mechanical outcome you want is encouraged. (With help from the DM and other players who know the rules better always cheerfully on hand to help you do that if you're not so good yourself.) The point being that you can have Fighter 20 and not expect to be rendered useless or vastly overshadowed. (And the furthest we ran one game was to low-Epic, which contained a Fighter 20 (pre-PF update) and Monk, though admittedly she splashed the last five levels or so into Swordsage at the time; they were both still pretty murderous in the paradigm of that campaign.)

Honestly, you might be right. Maybe there was an innate Protection from Arrows buff we didn't know from some kind of Magic we can't possibly comprehend.


Maybe Gandalf casted that without us knowing. Then Galadriel recasted it on everyone except Boromir (Because LoL, Human.)


I'm not sure what's going on as far Magic goes in the LOTR. Maybe it's all Nonverbal with no hand movements. All Mental Stuff like Psionics. Maybe there's alot of Racial Bonuses for the Dunedain and Hobbits that's far more powerful than we accounted for.

The only character that probably would have felt like a normal 3.5 D&D character was poor Level 5 Boromir. Though after reading the books, we're not sure how he was going to keep speaking after being shot with 20 arrows. We never got that far anyway to find out anyway.


Honestly though, I'm not gonna try again. It was an interesting novelty, but as is, I don't really don't think D&D and LOTR should be used as comparison in anyway or form. They're just too different.

[Aotrs Commander]

Honestly, you might be right. Maybe there was an innate Protection from Arrows buff we didn't know from some kind of Magic we can't possibly comprehend.


Maybe Gandalf casted that without us knowing. Then Galadriel recasted it on everyone except Boromir (Because LoL, Human.)


I'm not sure what's going on as far Magic goes in the LOTR. Maybe it's all Nonverbal with no hand movements. All Mental Stuff like Psionics. Maybe there's alot of Racial Bonuses for the Dunedain and Hobbits that's far more powerful than we accounted for.

The only character that probably would have felt like a normal 3.5 D&D character was poor Level 5 Boromir. Though after reading the books, we're not sure how he was going to keep speaking after being shot with 20 arrows. We never got that far anyway to find out anyway.


Honestly though, I'm not gonna try again. It was an interesting novelty, but as is, I don't really don't think D&D and LOTR should be used as comparison in anyway or form. They're just too different.

A lot of it would be best modelled not as active abilities, but passives, I think. So, very little active casting going on at all. (But probably a lot of UMD...!) Hell, there's almost an arguement you could make that HeroQuest and the earliest editions of D&D had it right; on Middle-Earth, your race IS your Class, and everyone is essentially having Monster Classes.



I think the argument for Boromir not being 5th level is that he DID tank loads of arrows, and still lived long-enough to make his final speech. That right there, is beyond human normal (or E6...!) and that was the one dude that actually DIED...!

[GloatingSwine]

And yet Doctor Strange needs Iron Man and Hawkeye to solve several problems. It's not difficult.


In noninteractive fiction, yes.

In D&D it's very hard to consistently and regularly build problems that Doctor Strange can't fix without Hawkeye.

And since for logistical reasons of all being around the table and trying to get the game done in a reasonable amount of time everyone is generally always together working on the same problems, that's what you need to do.

(This is where the comparison to noninteractive fiction falls over, because that can easily have characters working separately on problems with similar stakes* because it doesn't have the constraint of real people sitting around the same table having to do it).


* This is the problem with "put extra things in for the fighter to fight", because that doesn't affect the overall stakes of the encounter, even if the wizard is really squishy if those things got next to them the fighter is still just playing bodyguard to the person on whom the actual stakes rest.

[NigelWalmsley]

I don't think the arrow thing proves much. Boromir gets hit by a bunch of arrows, but he's wearing armor at the time. "You get hit, but it does only superficial damage" is a reasonable model of "attack misses by less than armor bonus" in D&D, so it seems possible that only a much smaller number of the arrows actually did any damage to him.I think the number of hits he takes is exaggerated in the movie vs what the text actually says, but I'm not sure. Also, he survives long enough to say some dying words, but I don't think there's any real indication he could recover. That's a twist on the death and dying rules, but I don't think it really makes him higher level.

[Blackhawk748]

When it comes to Mythical figures who aren't gods, yet who do super badass stuff everyone seems to have forgotten Beowulf (who kills a troll barehanded and kills a dragon when he's old as dirt.) And pretty much everyone in Romance of the Three Kingdoms.

Many of them could be called Fighters or Fighter/Barbarians and yet, you couldn't make them with that cuz the Fighter has so few abilities that let them do things like, say... Lead an army

[Aotrs Commander]

I don't think the arrow thing proves much. Boromir gets hit by a bunch of arrows, but he's wearing armor at the time. "You get hit, but it does only superficial damage" is a reasonable model of "attack misses by less than armor bonus" in D&D, so it seems possible that only a much smaller number of the arrows actually did any damage to him.I think the number of hits he takes is exaggerated in the movie vs what the text actually says, but I'm not sure. Also, he survives long enough to say some dying words, but I don't think there's any real indication he could recover. That's a twist on the death and dying rules, but I don't think it really makes him higher level.

(Pierced by) "many," is what the text says, in the two places I could find. "Many" indicates more than the three the movie used (as you don't usually say "many" when you been "three," - and they defintiely don't on the speech-patterns of LotR), so the movie was, if anything, under-playing the book.

You could make an arguement (especially given the aforementioned speech-patterns) that "many" is likely less than "dozens" or "scores" so it might be fair to say it likely would have seemed like less than twelve to the hobbits (they would not, of course, have been counting), but that's still far more than enough to kill a regular human outright.

[AntiAuthority]

When it comes to Mythical figures who aren't gods, yet who do super badass stuff everyone seems to have forgotten Beowulf (who kills a troll barehanded and kills a dragon when he's old as dirt.) And pretty much everyone in Romance of the Three Kingdoms.

Many of them could be called Fighters or Fighter/Barbarians and yet, you couldn't make them with that cuz the Fighter has so few abilities that let them do things like, say... Lead an army

Adding onto this, there's also Thjalfi from Norse Mythology, who managed to do pretty well in a footrace against the personification of thought itself... He's not really a warrior, just some farmer's son Thor and Loki brought with them on their journey.

And Diomedes, who injured a demi-god and made Aphrodite (said demi-god's mother) come to rescue him then (possibly with the help of Athena, not too sure if she actually helped his damage or was just there for moral support, as I remember one version being Athena did it so that Diomedes could see the invisible gods that were his enemies) scared off Ares by injuring him.

And finally, there's Ferdia from Celtic Mythology who wasn't a god, but had nigh impenetrable, thorny skin. He was trained alongside Cu Chulainn, becoming his foster brother, and... Was apparently the only man capable of having a 1 on 1 duel with the incredibly strong, fast, agile, precise, blessed demi-god for several hours, and overtook him at one point. If I'm remembering correctly, it seems Cu Chulainn only won because of his magic spear...

I don't think divine lineage matters too much, you don't see 100% mortal, mythological wizards (or even full gods) being able to pull off the same stuff you see high level magic users pull off. A Level 20 Wizard is not a mythological Greek God. A Wizard can replicate Zeus' feats (shape shifting, baleful polymorph) at Level 10, a Level 20 Wizard would be OP by the standards of Greek Gods if given enough prep time. Odin would probably get laughed at for sacrificing his eye when a Wizard could just craft magic items (or cast Wish + Permanency) to boost their Wisdom... Or the Wizard would just try to possess the guardian of the well because, "I'm not gouging my eye out for this stupidity." Or just jumped into another body (with two eyes) after receiving the knowledge. You don't see stories about completely mortal Level 20 Wizards in mythology, because they would overshadow the gods.

It stands to reason that a mortal Level 10 Fighter, at the same scale, would be capable of replicating Hercules' feats (splitting a continent, lifting the sky that a Titan was holding up, etc.), while a Level 20 Fighter... I'm not aware there's any examples of Level 20 Fighters in mythology that are completely mortal... Or divine for that matter.

Characters from (real world) mythologies don't seem to have the same level of power as a quadratic, Level 20 character (martial or magic) in 3.5E. They'd be too OP.

[Psyren]

In D&D it's very hard to consistently and regularly build problems that Doctor Strange can't fix without Hawkeye.

It's not hard at all:

1) The GM has full freedom to design encounters, they don't have to be perfectly symmetrical or easy for the party. Think of the Avengers fighting in New York - Iron Man, Thor AND the incumbent Sorcerer Supreme were present, yet they still wouldn't have won that fight without Hawkeye and Black Widow for a variety of reasons - sheer numbers, tougher enemies that needed teamwork, enemy caster leader that needed to be countered/neutralized, specialized tasks that needed to happen during the fight, and so on.

2) Magic itself has asymmetrical counters, meaning you can make things harder for casters without making them impossible for martials. The most obvious of these is antimagic, but I personally view this as the least creative. Long before you get there, you have things like dispels, counterspells, silence, negating components, or even environmental concerns like the need to be quiet making verbal components impractical (few casters silence every spell unless they're psychic/psionic for example.)


* This is the problem with "put extra things in for the fighter to fight", because that doesn't affect the overall stakes of the encounter, even if the wizard is really squishy if those things got next to them the fighter is still just playing bodyguard to the person on whom the actual stakes rest.

Part of your job as the GM is to rotate the spotlight so that everyone has a chance to shine in various ways. That includes deciding where the "stakes rest." Maybe in one encounter, it is appropriate that the wizard has the stakes, and they're chanting a ritual while the other party members run interference for them. Maybe in another, the rogue is fiddling with complicated ancient machinery (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0867.html), and everyone else has to protect them. In yet another, everyone (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0951.html) has (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0950.html) something (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0949.html) important (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0953.html) to do (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0955.html) for the group to succeed. Designing encounters is your job - be creative.

[Crichton]

Many of them could be called Fighters or Fighter/Barbarians and yet, you couldn't make them with that cuz the Fighter has so few abilities that let them do things like, say... Lead an army

A) D&D isn't (primarily) a game about leading armies, and nothing in the Fighter class entry would lead you to believe that it's a class intended to have that capability, so why are you expecting it to? But even so, a Fighter absolutely can do that, just like any other class can. That's what the Leadership feat is all about.

B) Does what you're describing sound even a little similar to this little snippet? "Sometimes it is not enough to be a conquering warrior, a champion of all that’s right, an experienced sellsword, or an elite foot soldier. Sometimes the circumstances require a solid commander of soldiers and situations."

If so, you're not looking for a Fighter. You're looking for a Marshall, which is where that bit of text comes from.



I think in all the back and forth in this thread, people forget that the Fighter isn't the only martial class out there. There are a lot of them, with widely varied capabilities, so why all the emphasis on the idea that the Fighter should be able to do all the things?

I admit the Fighter is a poorly implemented class that could be done a whole lot better, but frankly, it does what it advertises: it Fights. It could (and should) be built to do that better than it is, but it's not like it ever makes the claim that it can do more than that.



I'm not gonna dive in to the wider discussion of this thread though, because frankly I find it bit silly to argue over, but I will offer this:

The game offers a huge variety of differing classes, which have a massively broad spectrum of power and versatility levels.

That's on purpose, so that we as players and DMs can play a wide variety of campaign types.

To claim that the system is broken or dysfunctional because one of the most powerful and most versatile and most (literally) fantastic classes is more powerful and versatile than one of the most mundane and realistic classes is pretty silly. Of course it's more powerful and versatile! Of course a magic user can do things a soldier can't do.

If that's not something you want in your campaign, the game system offers you plenty of tools to make that happen.
It's your campaign, you get to set the parameters.

But others want to play campaigns where the characters reach reality-bending levels of power and scoff at the laws of physics, or whatever. The game system offers the tools to do that, too.

To claim that one is 'over' powered or the other is 'under' powered is a purely subjective thing; a judgment call; a decision for the power level you want your campaign to be at.

It's not a perfect game system -we can all agree on that- but it is one that intentionally offers a wide range of options, and claiming that some of those options are 'too good' on an absolute, objective level is to claim that the game should only ever allow the playstyle that you yourself deem 'right' or 'worthy' and I don't have time for that kind of 'my way or the highway' style of gatekeeping.



TL;DR version - It's your campaign, you get to set the parameters for your campaign. But it's our (the entire community) game system, so you (any one individual) don't get to decide what's 'over' or 'under' powered for everyone else's campaign or playstyle

[AntiAuthority]

To claim that the system is broken or dysfunctional because one of the most powerful and most versatile and most (literally) fantastic classes is more powerful and versatile than one of the most mundane and realistic classes is pretty silly. Of course it's more powerful and versatile! Of course a magic user can do things a soldier can't do.


There's not really much logic for a class to be superior to another because magic. It's pretty subjective and depends on the tastes of the designers, not an objective truth. This a fantasy, what makes sense to your sense of fantasy is not the same as what makes sense to me.

Magic doesn't exist in the real world (until proven otherwise, then I'll retract this statement), so there's no reason to say something that doesn't exist is inherently superior to something that doesn't exist. If ,"Fighters are mundane because they're mundane in the real world", I could easily apply the same logic to, "Wizards should only be able to perform elaborate illusions through smoke and mirrors because that's all they can do in the real world."

Or do you believe street magicians are inherently superior to and more powerful than trained soldiers because one of them knows magic?

One of them is getting upgraded with fantastic abilities (streets magicians), the other (soldiers) isn't because people don't want it to and is arguably nerfed compared to a real life warrior in ways (not many skills, can only attack 4 times in 6 seconds with a weapon (https://youtu.be/_2VE8BljLyc?t=41)). There's no reason to restrict a fantasy class of a fantasy race to the realms of reality beyond a personal preference, and that's ok. That's your opinion. My opinion is that martial characters should be fantastic as well, breaking free from the restraints of reality like every other class and race in the game. Humans reading spell books won't let anyone in the real world become/surpass Zeus (like a Wizard can), neither will a human perfecting the art of battle let anyone in the real world become/surpass Thor (like a properly scaled Fighter would)... But these aren't set in our worlds, so there's no real reason to to use realism as a defense for why X should be better than Y.

[sandmote]

By that logic, every class should just have every class feature then. After all, they can always choose to just not use the ones they don't want.

Less facetiously, limitations are as much a part of class identity as capabilities are. The issue with the wizard is that its limitations are too easily circumvented, especially in 3.5, something that 5e took into account when it came time to design theirs. Stacking numerous buffs on yourself is much harder, maintaining them while frontlining is much more difficult, and your slots are far more precious, among other things. I think there's an ambiguous "any" in Rynjin's comment. I'm pretty sure it was "any," meaning "at least some," rather than "any," meaning "whichever ones you want." You know, considering the preceding sentence:


The only point is that things can (and should have been) done to give the Fighter some kind of utility (and for that matter identity) besides "guy who fights", which fits every other "guy who fights" in the game just as well.
It wouldn't really give the fighter much of an identity for the fighter to just steal someone else's.


Not quite - because the skill is being used in a specific way that makes sense for the fighter. Like his example of a fighter being able to tell someone is a highly-trained martial and trying to hide it - because there's no dedicated skill just for that, you'd likely use the same skill that you would use to, say, spot a trap, secret door, or hidden magical glyph - but if you just grant a flat class bonus to the skill then you're buffing all those other things too. That's why I think the circumstance bonus (or "mental asterisk" as you call it) is more reasonable, because the GM gets the freedom to decide if it applies to a given situation or not. First, the "mental asterisk," is in reference to how you keep track of where the bonus applies. That's why the bonus itself is mentioned in the text of the "mental asterisk:"


"you get a circumstance bonus because of your class on such skills?"
Although I suppose "on such skills," might be better written an "on these types of rolls." Wasn't a distinction between the two cases as I described them though, so its not like this changes what I'm asking about.

Still, you're saying a specific class should get a quantified bonus on something, and I don't see how it stops being homebrew if it's the DM going "here's the written rule for how that works," instead of "know you get a general bonus on the subject." As adjunct rule if the player thinks of it it mid-game? Sure; an adjunct ruling, and likely based on character background rather than class. But as an understood bonus innate to a particular class beforehand? I don't see how it avoids being homebrew.

I'd also like to note "X bonus to Y skill only for Z use already exists. The SRD has this for half the skill synergy table, i addition to case like the following two examples:


+2 racial bonus on Appraise checks that are related to stone or metal items.

At 1st level, a ranger may select a type of creature from among those given on Table: Ranger Favored Enemies. The ranger gains a +2 bonus on Bluff, Listen, Sense Motive, Spot, and Survival checks when using these skills against creatures of this type.
So it isn't as if a bonus must apply to all uses of a given skill. It would just be "At Nth level, a fighter gains a +X bonus on Gather Information, Listen, and Spot checks made to determine a creature's CR/fighting ability/ect." Unless you make it due to the player's backstory, in which case it's not tied to a being a fighter.


Magic IS external to your character. It can be interacted and interfered with - spells can be disrupted, buffs dispelled, components removed or made impractical, and magic itself can be impeded or disabled. The ability to interfere with magical solutions in exclusive ways, or to make magical solutions less practical than mundane ones, is all a system needs - and D&D has plenty. Here, I'll add emphasis:


Except that's true of virtually every mythic example of a fictional character, martial or otherwise. Meanwhile, casters don't require something external to their class to be a mythic character by high level.
Sure, class features can be considered external to your character. Although if you add a homebrew rule preventing fighters from being interfered with in the equivalent manner for their class, that sounds like a useful change to me.


2) Magic itself has asymmetrical counters, meaning you can make things harder for casters without making them impossible for martials. The most obvious of these is antimagic, but I personally view this as the least creative. Long before you get there, you have things like dispels, counterspells, silence, negating components, or even environmental concerns like the need to be quiet making verbal components impractical (few casters silence every spell unless they're psychic/psionic for example.) Hypothetically... sure. In practice the relative amount of effort needed to do this for casters is significantly higher then the effort needed to temporarily knock the martials out of the spotlight, which basically amounts to "don't give the caster extra puzzles they need to deal with."



Independent of Psyren, a lot of the argument I see for why the wizard isn't already miles ahead of the fighter assume the fighter gets opportunities to pick racial or other non-class options the wizard doesn't. If you're comparing the classes to each other, I'm pretty sure it falls into the Oberoni fallacy to say there isn't an issue because the wizard can be restricted from choosing an equally strong race.

For the argument wizards should be miles ahead of the fighter... first, experts aren't wizards and the real world experts aren't people you'd prefer to have adventuring instead of the soldiers. This is independent of the fact magicalmagicman's listed examples weren't done by a single person. The closest we've ever come are likely the early scientists/pilosphers/ect (many of whom were also credited with the work their later students and a bunch of people passed down the information from their students) or the designers of early assembly lines (and were still coming up with a way to have a bunch of people do something else more effectively, instead of even having to do it themselves). You still don't want them in a battle role, cause their "wizarding," doesn't help very much. And you'd probably gave a good argument for most of them being an artificer (ex: Archimedes), a fighter (ex: Aristocles), or something else (ex: expert) than a wizard.

I think this bit should be looked at a bit more:

If you live in america, chances are you have consumed something like Iron Man, Die Hard, or Captain America. In each of these, there's an undercurrent of One Man who can do what it takes, how One Man! can solve the problem, stop corruption, or make a suit of power armor. But ultimately, reality doesn't let one man do any of these things. And while this fantasy is fun, it's also directly counter to making a game for multiple people to play. condensing the power of (1) up to 140 years of cumulative experience (2) Multiple billions of dollars of infrastructure and classes, (3) Up to 5 years of practice and experimentation, and (4) The experience of multiple soldiers into one individual pushes the edge of disbelief, to the point where, after removing the One Man! trope, it breaks like a thousand pieces of glass.

Honestly, this is mostly rambling at this point, as it's far too late to have this argument, but my point is that, as Americans in the west, we tend to idolize the idea of the individual who can do everything, when that's what really stretches the lines of credulity. Wizards can hand-wave away such pesky things as infastructure, society, wealth, and time through magic, while martials have no such tool to handle these problems without breaking suspensions of disbelief.
Unlike a dragon's breath, a martial is denied being magical because they aren't magic. IRL, no one breaths a 60' cone of acid, but we still don't treat such thing as magic in the setting. But for someone reason, wizards are "supposed to be," better than fighters because the wizards get to be both magical and magic, but some people can't suspend their disbelief to allow fighters to be either and won't let the people who can do this have a character that's useful by default.

Conveniently while writing, someone wrote out the opposing argument:

To claim that the system is broken or dysfunctional because one of the most powerful and most versatile and most (literally) fantastic classes is more powerful and versatile than one of the most mundane and realistic classes is pretty silly. Of course it's more powerful and versatile! Of course a magic user can do things a soldier can't do.
The feeling is "the fighter is mundane," or even "martials in general are mundane." You can make some assumptions; you pretty much need to be able to respond without asking "and what does that mean," for every word said. But "martials are restricted to the mundane," doesn't work at higher levels. Martials can do magical things anyway (look at how fast they can swing a weapon and what attacks they can survive) so saying "that, that is magic, so you can't do it," is necessarily cherry picking.

Note: "that, that is magic," and "that, that isn't something a character of X class could do" aren't equivalent. Cleaving through 6 people with one greatsword in as many seconds is something the fighter can do, but isn't mundane. Martial classes need some form of utility, non-damage features to keep up, because they aren't purely mundane either.

[digiman619]

I'd personally argue that while some abilities should be clearly magic, they shouldn't be spells. Incantations and rituals make more sense for big stuff like raising people from the dead, rather than just a 5th level spell slot or whatever, as there are some dumb 5th level spells that are apparently just as powerful as raising the dead.

[Psyren]

I think there's an ambiguous "any" in Rynjin's comment. I'm pretty sure it was "any," meaning "at least some," rather than "any," meaning "whichever ones you want." You know, considering the preceding sentence:

It wouldn't really give the fighter much of an identity for the fighter to just steal someone else's.

Opposed skill checks are a game mechanic, not an "identity." They're a system every class can use, and one that isn't unique to any of them.


First, the "mental asterisk," is in reference to how you keep track of where the bonus applies. That's why the bonus itself is mentioned in the text of the "mental asterisk:"

Although I suppose "on such skills," might be better written an "on these types of rolls." Wasn't a distinction between the two cases as I described them though, so its not like this changes what I'm asking about.

Still, you're saying a specific class should get a quantified bonus on something, and I don't see how it stops being homebrew if it's the DM going "here's the written rule for how that works," instead of "know you get a general bonus on the subject." As adjunct rule if the player thinks of it it mid-game? Sure; an adjunct ruling, and likely based on character background rather than class. But as an understood bonus innate to a particular class beforehand? I don't see how it avoids being homebrew.

I'd also like to note "X bonus to Y skill only for Z use already exists. The SRD has this for half the skill synergy table, i addition to case like the following two examples:



So it isn't as if a bonus must apply to all uses of a given skill. It would just be "At Nth level, a fighter gains a +X bonus on Gather Information, Listen, and Spot checks made to determine a creature's CR/fighting ability/ect." Unless you make it due to the player's backstory, in which case it's not tied to a being a fighter.

Your bold portion is exactly the reason why I'm against specifically codifying it - because I don't want to enumerate beforehand every possible knowledge or perceptive situation where a fighter's training should give them an edge, as well as how big or small that edge should be. Even you didn't, because you resorted to "etc" rather than continue exhaustively listing such situations. However many there are, they're nuanced enough that an on-the-fly judgement is perfectly fine; one thing 5e did right is making players and GMs much more comfortable with making and accepting that sort of judgement for efficiency of play. My only real issue with 5e in this regard is that they combined it with bounded accuracy, which I heavily dislike.



Sure, class features can be considered external to your character. Although if you add a homebrew rule preventing fighters from being interfered with in the equivalent manner for their class, that sounds like a useful change to me.

I'm not saying class features are external, rather being able to use them in every situation is. You can have all the spell slots in the world, and they won't do jack if you're not on a plane with the Magic trait - but you still have the "spellcasting" class feature.


Hypothetically... sure. In practice the relative amount of effort needed to do this for casters is significantly higher then the effort needed to temporarily knock the martials out of the spotlight, which basically amounts to "don't give the caster extra puzzles they need to deal with."

I disagree with that. Any enemy with half a brain is going to know that the magic users are the more dangerous threat in the party and will plan for that - whether it's having casters of their own who can counter and dispel things, archers who can try to harry them from afar, or even just using sneaky tactics so they can catch the caster unprepared. And there are plenty of monsters who simply rely on their own innate defenses to handle magical threats too, like SR - defenses that a canny caster can certainly overcome, but every spell they prepare to do that is one they're not preparing for some other challenge. Make that tradeoff matter and you'll find that the martial classes' stock value increases.


Independent of Psyren, a lot of the argument I see for why the wizard isn't already miles ahead of the fighter assume the fighter gets opportunities to pick racial or other non-class options the wizard doesn't. If you're comparing the classes to each other, I'm pretty sure it falls into the Oberoni fallacy to say there isn't an issue because the wizard can be restricted from choosing an equally strong race.

For the argument wizards should be miles ahead of the fighter... first, experts aren't wizards and the real world experts aren't people you'd prefer to have adventuring instead of the soldiers. This is independent of the fact magicalmagicman's listed examples weren't done by a single person. The closest we've ever come are likely the early scientists/pilosphers/ect (many of whom were also credited with the work their later students and a bunch of people passed down the information from their students) or the designers of early assembly lines (and were still coming up with a way to have a bunch of people do something else more effectively, instead of even having to do it themselves). You still don't want them in a battle role, cause their "wizarding," doesn't help very much. And you'd probably gave a good argument for most of them being an artificer (ex: Archimedes), a fighter (ex: Aristocles), or something else (ex: expert) than a wizard.

1) Oberoni Fallacy doesn't apply here, because I'm not trying to argue that the system is balanced. Rather, I'm saying it IS unbalanced in the casters' favor, but that is a far less important consideration than verisimilitude - therefore I don't have a problem with it (and judging by 5e's success and 4e's failure, neither do most people.)

2) I'm not the one arguing for "miles ahead" - just "ahead." I think 5e, and PF with all its supplemental material, hit the sweet spot (or at least came damn close) - casters are ahead of martials in several respects, but martials can still contribute to the group's overall success without being warped into pseudo-casters themselves.

[Segev]

But you don't have to replace anything - assuming level-appropriate challenges and wealth, the fighter might not be on par with the wizard but they should be on par with whatever the party is fighting (at least in PF). If he's not, then either the encounter level or the wealth/itemization is to blame, both of which represent a failure to apply the rules of the game properly. And beating the monster is what matters, this isn't a PvP game.But if a level-appropriate challenge for a fighter is much harder for that fighter than a level-appropriate challenge for a wizard is for the wizard, we have a problem.

If the party as a whole is facing a "level-appropriate challenge," but the wizard is carrying the team, there's a problem. We're not playing BMX Bandit and Angel Summoner.

While Achilles and Hercules and Thor are brought up as examples, there are other examples of characters who are superhuman, but started as human, and got superhuman through nothing but grit and training. Sanji and Zoro from One Piece can do things on par with those Greek heroes, and they've got nothing but technique and pure training. Same with Krillin, in fact. You can argue that "chi is magic," and that's fine, but I'm arguing that higher-level characters should be unlocking such things if they're what's needed to make them actually be high-level.

Heck, Batman and Robin can put their fists and boots into concrete walls and leave divots when kicking over superhumans. And both can take hits from superhumans, bounce their backs off of the wall or floor, and kip back up to fight again (after perhaps groaning about how much that hurt). And they're "normal humans."

But arguing that a fighter basically has to live by the Guy and the Gym's rules because them's the breaks if you don't start with a level adjustment race is...flawed. And the claim that "they're keeping up with level-appropriate challenges" is questionable. Are they, really, or are they a little kid pressing buttons on a controller with no batteries, sitting next to Papa Wizard who has a real controller who's actually winning the fights?

I actually argue that, in practice, you're right, but that's because the overpowered nature of wizards is overblown by theorycraft, and that they don't come off as that brokenly omnicapable in all things all the time when brought to a table and played.




I find this "Level A should = Level A" claim to be far too simplistic to be useful in practice. There are many more factors besides level that determine a character's power, even within the same class; compare a wizard 20 using normal optimization to a wizard 20 who prepares nothing but Read Magic in every slot - same level and even same class, yet drastically different power and problem-solving ability. The cited XP progression rubric certainly thinks they're equals, but you and I know better; blindly adhering to that as evidence of intended parity is beyond flawed.You're also utterly missing my point.

If they're not equals, then they shouldn't have the same XP requirements. That's my point. There are lots of metrics, yes, but you should be able to find a point where you can say, "Within this band of levels, a fighter is roughly as powerful as a wizard within this band of levels." If those bands of levels don't overlap significantly between the two classes, you should seriously be adjusting the XP requirements to make it so that at least the statements could be made about bands of XP.

[Psyren]

But if a level-appropriate challenge for a fighter is much harder for that fighter than a level-appropriate challenge for a wizard is for the wizard, we have a problem.

We only have a problem if the CR for that encounter is based on what an optimized wizard can do, but no CR in the monster manual was designed that way. When they say for example that a Hill Giant is CR 7, they're saying that a party of four level 7 PCs with level 7 wealth can handle a number of such encounters per day, even if those level 7 PCs are all Fighters. That's all the number means. That a party of level 4 wizards or druids might also be able to handle it is irrelevant.


Sanji and Zoro from One Piece can do things on par with those Greek heroes, and they've got nothing but technique and pure training. Same with Krillin, in fact.

Yes, most rpg concepts break down once you start using shonen anime characters as benchmarks, so that's not saying anything. There are more suitable systems than D&D to play an anime character.



You're also utterly missing my point.

If they're not equals, then they shouldn't have the same XP requirements. That's my point. There are lots of metrics, yes, but you should be able to find a point where you can say, "Within this band of levels, a fighter is roughly as powerful as a wizard within this band of levels." If those bands of levels don't overlap significantly between the two classes, you should seriously be adjusting the XP requirements to make it so that at least the statements could be made about bands of XP.

I do understand your point, but not why it matters. If both the party of level 7 fighters and the party of level 7 wizards can deal with a hill giant, why does it matter that it's easier or harder for one than the other? I genuinely don't care as long as both can win.

[AntiAuthority]

While Achilles and Hercules and Thor are brought up as examples

About that... I don't believe in any mythologies there are mortal spell casters that go from "regular human" to "able to become Zeus." For Wizards, it's ok because magic, but Fighters are being held to that standard for some bizarre reason that comes down to personal preference, like it's an objective fact.

Also, Wizard in 3.5E don't just become like mythological deities, they have the potential to become like a hypothetical super deity. Like a Zeus (who covers shape shifting himself and others, using lightning bolts and turning himself into none solids) that can absorb the abilities (spells from other books) from other gods to learn how to throw fire or craft enchanted weapons like Hephaestus. Imagine if Odin had the abilities of a Level 20 Wizard, he wouldn't have to give up his eye and he could have just created enchanted weapons for himself instead of letting Dwarves do it for him or reanimate the dead bodies of his slain enemies (such as Frost Giants) to fight under his command as undead. If a Wizard can surpass mythological gods, letting Fighters be able to do the same thing is logical (surpassing Hercules and Thor) if they're being scaled properly at the same levels.



Sanji and Zoro from One Piece can do things on par with those Greek heroes, and they've got nothing but technique and pure training. Same with Krillin, in fact. You can argue that "chi is magic," and that's fine, but I'm arguing that higher-level characters should be unlocking such things if they're what's needed to make them actually be high-level.

Heck, Batman and Robin can put their fists and boots into concrete walls and leave divots when kicking over superhumans. And both can take hits from superhumans, bounce their backs off of the wall or floor, and kip back up to fight again (after perhaps groaning about how much that hurt). And they're "normal humans."

But arguing that a fighter basically has to live by the Guy and the Gym's rules because them's the breaks if you don't start with a level adjustment race is...flawed. And the claim that "they're keeping up with level-appropriate challenges" is questionable. Are they, really, or are they a little kid pressing buttons on a controller with no batteries, sitting next to Papa Wizard who has a real controller who's actually winning the fights?

I actually argue that, in practice, you're right, but that's because the overpowered nature of wizards is overblown by theorycraft, and that they don't come off as that brokenly omnicapable in all things all the time when brought to a table and played.


To add to "human characters who got stronger through training" bit...

Roshi blew up the moon in Dragon Ball and he's far weaker than Krillin is in Dragon Ball.

Krillin's Destructo Disk can cut through beings many times more powerful than himself in canon.

Tien is a human (maybe... I've seen claims he's either descended from aliens or his third eye is to reflect enlightenment) and he managed to hold off Semi-Perfect Cell.

Rock Lee in Naruto trains with body weights heavy enough to make an arena shake when he drops them.

Baki the Grappler is full of human martial artists that started off as normal humans and don't to use firearms because their bodies (and knives) are much deadlier weapons with proper training. From soldiers being able to defeat armored military vehicles without guns and without being seen (the strongest among them screamed loud enough to cause visible shock waves and stun the protagonist temporarily, can dodge an attack and move back into place so fast it appears attacks go through him, leap high into the air/over a pond and punch the protagonist through a tree that's roughly as thick as the protagonist is tall at that point), a cloned (not modified, just a clone) samurai of a real person being able to cleave through armored vehicles, to a bulletproof caveman that used to kill dinosaurs with his bare hands and resists having his abs penetrated by 9mm bullets or a strike from the aforementioned clone samurai (the caveman is more or less a pre-historic version of what the modern martial artists are), a karate master capable of punching/kicking faster than sound, an assassin capable of throwing the protagonist into the ground hard enough to cause electronic devices all over the world to malfunction, prisoners that are able to laugh off getting electrocuted or hanged... And then there's the protagonist who defeats a size able chunk of these guys. The protagonist and his father sit above these people, with the protagonist being smashed from a sky scraper into a car and only getting knocked out for a bit before fighting his father. Baki broke the world record for running in his school during a physical exam... So... He and real martial artists are clearly on a level above Usain Bolt.

Baki's father, Yujiro Hanma, is in a league of his own, being the world's strongest creature. He toyed with a young/prime Muhammad Ali in a street fight, defeated the USA in Vietnam at the age of 16, walks off getting struck by lightning (as in he doesn't seem to notice it and carries on with his stroll), is stated to be able to dodge lightning, swims up at 22 mph for 2 hours while doing the most difficult stroke he can in a strong current (for comparison's sake, whales can go faster by about 6 mph but only in short bursts, as compared to Yujiro's 2 hours and the world record is nowhere near this...), killed a giant elephant that can shrug off a military attack (the elephant consumed about 21 and a half tons of food a day and had hooves bigger than a grown man's body), is said to have strength comparable to a nuclear bomb, punched out an (at least city sized) earthquake, is powerful enough to force the USA into a deal where they do whatever he wants (including making George W. Bush his taxi driver). There's also some not "punching feats" that involve him getting angry enough to make a building shake, glaring at a plant until it dies and unlocking (it's mentioned to be because of his dedication to fighting and taking it to another level) the ability to see people's weaknesses/diseases before they're even aware they have them. By the way, he and his son are capable of fighting each other so fast that normal civilians only saw their dust and could only hear the sounds of their punches, and it goes without saying they were wrecking the environment. He could clearly take over the world if he wanted to, he just doesn't care about that. His ultimate technique, I suppose you could call it that, is his ability to copy enemy attacks and use them himself in a much more effective manner than the person he copied the ability from, meaning that he will adapt to whatever fight he's in.

[JNAProductions]

We only have a problem if the CR for that encounter is based on what an optimized wizard can do, but no CR in the monster manual was designed that way. When they say for example that a Hill Giant is CR 7, they're saying that a party of four level 7 PCs with level 7 wealth can handle a number of such encounters per day, even if those level 7 PCs are all Fighters. That's all the number means. That a party of level 4 wizards or druids might also be able to handle it is irrelevant.

I do understand your point, but not why it matters. If both the party of level 7 fighters and the party of level 7 wizards can deal with a hill giant, why does it matter that it's easier or harder for one than the other? I genuinely don't care as long as both can win.

Cut the middle bit because it's not relevant to my point.

The expectation is that a party of four PCs of level X can handle about four encounters of EL X in a day.

The issue is when a party of four PCs of level X (say, an eleventh level Druid, Wizard, Cleric, and Psion) can handle many more than four encounters in a day of EL 11, or can handle EL 18 encounters easily. It means that, according to the system, what's SUPPOSED TO BE a good challenge is not.

[DragonclawExia]

A lot of it would be best modelled not as active abilities, but passives, I think. So, very little active casting going on at all. (But probably a lot of UMD...!) Hell, there's almost an arguement you could make that HeroQuest and the earliest editions of D&D had it right; on Middle-Earth, your race IS your Class, and everyone is essentially having Monster Classes.



I think the argument for Boromir not being 5th level is that he DID tank loads of arrows, and still lived long-enough to make his final speech. That right there, is beyond human normal (or E6...!) and that was the one dude that actually DIED...!

Ack, well, at the rate we were going if we got to that part we probably would of just done the movie version and used 3 arrows instead of going the book route and made him into a human porcupine.



LOTR really might have crazy racial level adjustments, even for the Hobbits. Maybe LOTR Elves get like +7 overall LA or something.


Really, we don't know. Maybe they all had effective levels in 10-15 from those racial LA, and just their class levels were low.

Maybe Boromir actually still had a LA from being a LOTR Human. Even Eomer and Theoden was pulling weird stuff, and there's no way they could be more than fifth level fighters.

[sandmote]

Opposed skill checks are a game mechanic, not an "identity." They're a system every class can use, and one that isn't unique to any of them. The "identity" of the example would include (but not be limited to) "master of martial training," with some exploration and social features to back it up.


Your bold portion is exactly the reason why I'm against specifically codifying it - because I don't want to enumerate beforehand every possible knowledge or perceptive situation where a fighter's training should give them an edge, as well as how big or small that edge should be. Even you didn't, because you resorted to "etc" rather than continue exhaustively listing such situations. However many there are, they're nuanced enough that an on-the-fly judgement is perfectly fine; one thing 5e did right is making players and GMs much more comfortable with making and accepting that sort of judgement for efficiency of play. My only real issue with 5e in this regard is that they combined it with bounded accuracy, which I heavily dislike. I didn't enumerate it because I didn't trust I'd get a response other than "that's not a good version," without addressing "the DM announced they'll adjunct bonuses at a specific thing for a specific class beforehand but it isn't homebrew"

But okay, sure;


Read the Target.
At 3rd level, a fighter is well trained enough to recognize training in others. The fighter gains a +1 bonus on Gather Information, Listen, Sense Motive, and Spot checks when using these skills to judge a creature's combat abilities. These bonuses rise to +2 when the fighter reaches 6th level, to +3 when she reaches 9th level, to +4 when she reaches 12th level, to +5 at 15th, and to +6 at 18th level.

As a full round action, he can attempt a Sense Motive check to judge a creature, learning one item from the Fighter Sense table, opposed by the target's Disguise check. At 7th level the fighter an learn two factors from the Fighter Sense table on a single successful sense motive check, and at 17th level the fighter can learn three factors from the Fighter Sense table on a single successful sense motive check. Once you have attempted to learn a particular treat of a creature, you cannot attempt to learn that trait of the creature until you gain a level in this class.

Table: Fighter Senses

Strength score
Dexterity score
Constitution score
Base attack bonus
Dexterity save
Fortitude save
Armor Class, Touch, and Flat Footed AC
Max hit points (to the nearest 10 hit points)
Total class levels, if any



Irrelevant of the details of the way the feature works, this first tell the DM what conditions to adjunct the ability under, and tells the player what they can do. For the same reason the system doesn't say "dwarves are good at appraising metal, adjunct if they get a bonus for it," or "rangers have favored enemies, they get nonspecific bonuses against those."


I'm not saying class features are external, rather being able to use them in every situation is. You can have all the spell slots in the world, and they won't do jack if you're not on a plane with the Magic trait - but you still have the "spellcasting" class feature. Sure, for "every situtation," sure. Any response on why this applies to wizards but not anyone else? You know:



Although if you add a homebrew rule preventing fighters from being interfered with in the equivalent manner for their class, that sounds like a useful change to me.

Hypothetically... sure. In practice the relative amount of effort needed to do this for casters is significantly higher then the effort needed to temporarily knock the martials out of the spotlight, which basically amounts to "don't give the caster extra puzzles they need to deal with."


I disagree with that. Any enemy with half a brain is going to know that the magic users are the more dangerous threat in the party and will plan for that - whether it's having casters of their own who can counter and dispel things, archers who can try to harry them from afar, or even just using sneaky tactics so they can catch the caster unprepared. And there are plenty of monsters who simply rely on their own innate defenses to handle magical threats too, like SR - defenses that a canny caster can certainly overcome, but every spell they prepare to do that is one they're not preparing for some other challenge. Make that tradeoff matter and you'll find that the martial classes' stock value increases. Okay, going through the example:


Have an enemy exclusively to counter the caster.
Something that applies to melee characters
Something that applies to martials
Give enemies an ability to exclusively counter the caster

The actual general rule doesn't just repeat what I said, so I'll respond to that.

Spell slots are the main limit of the caster. The limit only lasts as long as they need to worry about spell slots. The problem being the amount of effort needed to make that tradeoff matter.


1) Oberoni Fallacy doesn't apply here, because I'm not trying to argue that the system is balanced. Rather, I'm saying it IS unbalanced in the casters' favor, but that is a far less important consideration than verisimilitude - therefore I don't have a problem with it (and judging by 5e's success and 4e's failure, neither do most people.)

2) I'm not the one arguing for "miles ahead" - just "ahead." I think 5e, and PF with all its supplemental material, hit the sweet spot (or at least came damn close) - casters are ahead of martials in several respects, but martials can still contribute to the group's overall success without being warped into pseudo-casters themselves. Tell me what you think this means:

Independent of Psyren...


We only have a problem if the CR for that encounter is based on what an optimized wizard can do, but no CR in the monster manual was designed that way. When they say for example that a Hill Giant is CR 7, they're saying that a party of four level 7 PCs with level 7 wealth can handle a number of such encounters per day, even if those level 7 PCs are all Fighters. That's all the number means. That a party of level 4 wizards or druids might also be able to handle it is irrelevant. There's also a problem if the same CR is of low difficulty for 7 wizards but extremely difficult for a party of equally optimized fighters.


Yes, most rpg concepts break down once you start using shonen anime characters as benchmarks, so that's not saying anything. There are more suitable systems than D&D to play an anime character. Cherry picking what you're willing to suspend your disbelief for breaks down once your fighter reaches a high level. At which point you're flip-flopping between being fine with someone matching shonen anime characters (ex: damage output and hit points) is some places and insisting they're limited to IRL human capabilities everywhere else.


I do understand your point, but not why it matters. If both the party of level 7 fighters and the party of level 7 wizards can deal with a hill giant, why does it matter that it's easier or harder for one than the other? I genuinely don't care as long as both can win. Apply this in general rather than exclusively for single examples. The CR range for what challenges but still loses to the party is going to diverge drastically between the two party compositions. And that equally applies to encounters per day, as JNA mentioned.

[Segev]

We only have a problem if the CR for that encounter is based on what an optimized wizard can do, but no CR in the monster manual was designed that way. When they say for example that a Hill Giant is CR 7, they're saying that a party of four level 7 PCs with level 7 wealth can handle a number of such encounters per day, even if those level 7 PCs are all Fighters. That's all the number means. That a party of level 4 wizards or druids might also be able to handle it is irrelevant.So we could rate a single kobold, naked and caught in the open, as CR 10 because a party of 4 level 10 wizards can take it on and win?

Or is there some element of challenge required before we consider that a thing is worthy of its CR?

It's not even that I disagree with your base thesis that wizards and fighters at the table generally are reasonably well-balanced for playing the game at the same level. It's that you're making such poor arguments for the position that it feels like you don't really believe it, or are setting up a straw man so that people who oppose it can have an easier time demolishing it. And I know you're better at analysis than this, so seeing this quality of argumentation from you frustrates me.

If a CR 7 creature is meant to be about 1/4 of what a CR 7 party can take on in a single day, it DOES matter if a CR 7 party made up of a particular class can take it on while expending next to no resources. That's a problem.

Under most conditions, that's not the case, I think, in PF, though.


Yes, most rpg concepts break down once you start using shonen anime characters as benchmarks, so that's not saying anything. There are more suitable systems than D&D to play an anime character.I strongly disagree. Not that there are other RPGs to play anime in, but that D&D shouldn't look to handle them. The trouble with high level D&D is precisely that we set our sights too low if the high level character isn't a full caster.


I do understand your point, but not why it matters. If both the party of level 7 fighters and the party of level 7 wizards can deal with a hill giant, why does it matter that it's easier or harder for one than the other? I genuinely don't care as long as both can win.If a party of level 7 fighters and a party of level 7 wizards can both deal with a kobold, is that kobold CR 7?

If a party of level 7 fighters can handle a CR 7 hill giant, and a party of level 20 fighters can handle a CR 7 hill giant, why does it matter that the fighter I want to bring into your level 7 party is level 20?

[DragonclawExia]

So we could rate a single kobold, naked and caught in the open, as CR 10 because a party of 4 level 10 wizards can take it on and win?

Or is there some element of challenge required before we consider that a thing is worthy of its CR?

It's not even that I disagree with your base thesis that wizards and fighters at the table generally are reasonably well-balanced for playing the game at the same level. It's that you're making such poor arguments for the position that it feels like you don't really believe it, or are setting up a straw man so that people who oppose it can have an easier time demolishing it. And I know you're better at analysis than this, so seeing this quality of argumentation from you frustrates me.

If a CR 7 creature is meant to be about 1/4 of what a CR 7 party can take on in a single day, it DOES matter if a CR 7 party made up of a particular class can take it on while expending next to no resources. That's a problem.

Under most conditions, that's not the case, I think, in PF, though.

I strongly disagree. Not that there are other RPGs to play anime in, but that D&D shouldn't look to handle them. The trouble with high level D&D is precisely that we set our sights too low if the high level character isn't a full caster.

If a party of level 7 fighters and a party of level 7 wizards can both deal with a kobold, is that kobold CR 7?

If a party of level 7 fighters can handle a CR 7 hill giant, and a party of level 20 fighters can handle a CR 7 hill giant, why does it matter that the fighter I want to bring into your level 7 party is level 20?
Probably because you are fundamentally right on the fairness and lack of adequate challenge aspect.


I think it might just be a tradition thing at this point. People who play 3.5 especially are used to this trope, and we all consciously rationalize or purposefully play in a way that minimizes the obvious problems this causes. But deepdown, we all know this isn't fair or perfectly balanced and sometimes not even fun for those involved.


But we got used to the Wizards being better and it is true it's one of the unique things about D&D over other Western Fantasy Systems. And most definitely Eastern Fantasy settings, where Fighters can be no less of a Demi-God than Wizards.


I don't know. Maybe we started to get Stockholm Syndrome or something. We should probably just move on to 5.0 instead of clinging to the past. Maybe we're just stubborn old goats at this point unable to change our habits.


It's just become the Elephant in the Room we just sorta got used to.

[Segev]

Probably because you are fundamentally right on the fairness and lack of adequate challenge aspect.


I think it might just be a tradition thing at this point. People who play 3.5 especially are used to this trope, and we all consciously rationalize or purposefully play in a way that minimizes the obvious problems this causes. But deepdown, we all know this isn't fair or perfectly balanced and sometimes not even fun for those involved.


But we got used to the Wizards being better and it is true it's one of the unique things about D&D over other Western Fantasy Systems. And most definitely Eastern Fantasy settings, where Fighters can be no less of a Demi-God than Wizards.


I don't know. Maybe we started to get Stockholm Syndrome or something. We should probably just move on to 5.0 instead of clinging to the past. Maybe we're just stubborn old goats at this point unable to change our habits.


It's just become the Elephant in the Room we just sorta got used to.
See, though, I don't entirely agree that wizards are inherently that much more powerful in actual play. Bringing all the might to bear in real, playable characters in actual game situations never seems to materialize. I have seen both wizards and non-casters played by people frustrated at their own impotence with the character in question. What I haven't seen is a wizard dominate the table just by being a wizard.

I have been a wizard who a non-caster felt inadequate next to, but as much as he's a good friend, he was making a lot of self-limiting choices for "style" that severely weakened his character's options. A crossbow ace who was resistant to any and all solutions to his specific problems - particularly reloading - because they were 'too magical.' And more than half the time, I outshown him because I rolled skills he didn't have, not because of magical spells. Though planar binding did come up as a problem; I'd used it to summon some backup companions for the rest of the party, and he didn't want one. I mainly wanted a lantern archon because they're good messengers.

I have also been the wizard who can't keep up with the rest of the party. I couldn't ever have the right spell, and if I did, it was something I needed more of than I had prepared. Divination was never a solid and reliable option. And the party would actively scoff at the idea of retreating to let me prepare better, because the warriors and rogues are raring to go and have more than enough skills and hp to power through the obstacles with me bringing up the rear and occasionally contributing a Lore:Arcana roll.

It comes down to the specific situations in the game, really.


What frustrates me about Psyren's arguments are that they're internally inconsistent unless all monsters of a given CR or lower are a "fair challenge" for a party of that level. And if it's perfectly fair to bring a level 12 vigilante into a party of level 1 PCs. Because he can handle a CR 1 encounter just fine, too.

[OrbanSirgen]

I don't think divine lineage matters too much, you don't see 100% mortal, mythological wizards (or even full gods) being able to pull off the same stuff you see high level magic users pull off. A Level 20 Wizard is not a mythological Greek God. A Wizard can replicate Zeus' feats (shape shifting, baleful polymorph) at Level 10, a Level 20 Wizard would be OP by the standards of Greek Gods if given enough prep time. Odin would probably get laughed at for sacrificing his eye when a Wizard could just craft magic items (or cast Wish + Permanency) to boost their Wisdom... Or the Wizard would just try to possess the guardian of the well because, "I'm not gouging my eye out for this stupidity." Or just jumped into another body (with two eyes) after receiving the knowledge. You don't see stories about completely mortal Level 20 Wizards in mythology, because they would overshadow the gods.

It stands to reason that a mortal Level 10 Fighter, at the same scale, would be capable of replicating Hercules' feats (splitting a continent, lifting the sky that a Titan was holding up, etc.), while a Level 20 Fighter... I'm not aware there's any examples of Level 20 Fighters in mythology that are completely mortal... Or divine for that matter.

Characters from (real world) mythologies don't seem to have the same level of power as a quadratic, Level 20 character (martial or magic) in 3.5E. They'd be too OP.

I would just like to point out that in the 3.5 Deities and Demigods, Zeus is Fighter 20/Barbarian 20/Cleric 10, and Odin is Fighter 20/Wizard 20...

[AntiAuthority]

I would just like to point out that in the 3.5 Deities and Demigods, Zeus is Fighter 20/Barbarian 20/Cleric 10, and Odin is Fighter 20/Wizard 20...

That's why I specified real world mythologies. Not their 3.5 stats, but the characters in the mythologies themselves. D&D 3.5E casters are so above the powers of real world mythological deities. D&D 3.5E casters (including 3.5E Odin and Zeus, obviously, since they could just craft their own magic weapons and control virtually all elements) surpass their mythological counterparts/inspirations (mythological Zeus was limited to lightning and shape shifting, he had no way of learning how to control fire or water like Poseidon while mythological Odin could have just cast Detect Poison and ate something besides mead since he was so paranoid about being poisoned or something, created Simulacrums of enemies to aid in his battle against Ragnarok or just revived the dead monsters he and his kin slayed to aid in Ragnarok or controlled the will of a powerful entity and add its power to his own). 3.5E magic would have made the mythological gods' lives a lot easier is all I'm saying...

Genuine question, but if Zeus is a cleric, is he drawing spells from himself? I don't imagine the king of Olympus being willing to bow down to a higher power than himself, so... I don't know why this popped up into my head lol. I get it's just a class, but dude's a god, does he basically say, "Oh by the great and glorious me, in all of my perfection, grant me a miracle so that I may smite down mine own enemies?" lol

[Peat]

Genuine question, but if Zeus is a cleric, is he drawing spells from himself? I don't imagine the king of Olympus being willing to bow down to a higher power than himself, so... I don't know why this popped up into my head lol. I get it's just a class, but dude's a god, does he basically say, "Oh by the great and glorious me, in all of my perfection, grant me a miracle so that I may smite down mine own enemies?" lol

Sounds like an appropriate level of ego for Zeus tbf. I can see him making super sarcastic full of himself smack talk prayers to himself.

[DragonclawExia]

See, though, I don't entirely agree that wizards are inherently that much more powerful in actual play. Bringing all the might to bear in real, playable characters in actual game situations never seems to materialize. I have seen both wizards and non-casters played by people frustrated at their own impotence with the character in question. What I haven't seen is a wizard dominate the table just by being a wizard.

I have been a wizard who a non-caster felt inadequate next to, but as much as he's a good friend, he was making a lot of self-limiting choices for "style" that severely weakened his character's options. A crossbow ace who was resistant to any and all solutions to his specific problems - particularly reloading - because they were 'too magical.' And more than half the time, I outshown him because I rolled skills he didn't have, not because of magical spells. Though planar binding did come up as a problem; I'd used it to summon some backup companions for the rest of the party, and he didn't want one. I mainly wanted a lantern archon because they're good messengers.

I have also been the wizard who can't keep up with the rest of the party. I couldn't ever have the right spell, and if I did, it was something I needed more of than I had prepared. Divination was never a solid and reliable option. And the party would actively scoff at the idea of retreating to let me prepare better, because the warriors and rogues are raring to go and have more than enough skills and hp to power through the obstacles with me bringing up the rear and occasionally contributing a Lore:Arcana roll.

It comes down to the specific situations in the game, really.


What frustrates me about Psyren's arguments are that they're internally inconsistent unless all monsters of a given CR or lower are a "fair challenge" for a party of that level. And if it's perfectly fair to bring a level 12 vigilante into a party of level 1 PCs. Because he can handle a CR 1 encounter just fine, too.

I'm not exactly sure what he meant about that, really. I know that CR is a problem because it's more likely to be weighted to a Baseline of Fighters, but when it actually is Weighted to High-Tier Casters it makes a mess of things.

Its alot worse when bringing Fighter Tier Level Characters to a Caster Tier Weighted Battle. Though I would hope the DM would check and make sure the CR 10 obscure infant abomination of the stars is actually suitable for level 10 fighters to whack their clubs at.


As I said before though, as long as I tried to keep my games to under Level 10 and the Casters aren't going all Pickle Rick on everyone else the Wizard and Fighter dichotomy isn't TOO bad.


And I both got used and sorta enjoy the style. I mean, the inherit limitations of the Casters like you said means that their not ALWAYS the showstealer. And Eastern Fantasy Tropes isn't what influenced D&D originally anyway.


There's alot from Tabletop Wargames and some influence from Conan the Barbarian, Jack Vance, LOTR.

But when I think D&D, I don't think of role playing a Monk punching the God of Death or something.



...Well, maybe an Adult Dragon at most.

[NigelWalmsley]

I'd personally argue that while some abilities should be clearly magic, they shouldn't be spells. Incantations and rituals make more sense for big stuff like raising people from the dead, rather than just a 5th level spell slot or whatever, as there are some dumb 5th level spells that are apparently just as powerful as raising the dead.

I think it varies a lot. Also it depends on what you mean by spells. I think the game definitely should have Vasty Rituals of Might Power where people chant and sacrifice goats and then it rains fire. That's on point for the genre, and it's something that has typically be underrepresented in D&D and various related games. But the question of if those thing should be spells depends a lot of what exactly you mean by spell.

For example, I think you can make a pretty good case that at least some of those things should be related to your class somehow. If you're a Necromancer, you should get the ability to raise up shambling hordes of the dead and send them to terrorize villagers (or use them as expendable meatshields while dungeon crawling if you're a PC). If you're a Druid, you should get the ability to call on the spirits of the forest for guidance. If you're a Paladin, you should get the ability to summon angelic warriors to fight alongside you. And the other characters shouldn't necessarily get those abilities. Of course, not everything is like that, and some things should be available to a variety of classes, or every class.

Keeping other aspects of spells, like daily limits is also probably a good idea. The spell slot framework Wizards and other casters operate under seems like basically what you'd like people to use for portioning out utility magic. Unlike Fireball, there's a pretty huge difference between getting Fabricate three times per day and getting it at will.

You probably wouldn't want to keep the thing where Cloudkill trade off directly with Teleport, but that's not really the default setup in D&D to begin with. The Paladin's Remove Disease isn't fungible with smiting, and the Rogue's trapfinding can't be cashed in for Sneak Attack. It's just that casters get the vast majority of the utility options, and they are set up that way.


What frustrates me about Psyren's arguments are that they're internally inconsistent unless all monsters of a given CR or lower are a "fair challenge" for a party of that level. And if it's perfectly fair to bring a level 12 vigilante into a party of level 1 PCs. Because he can handle a CR 1 encounter just fine, too.

Once you give up on the notion that things are balanced by level, I don't understand where you stop. Presumably there's some limit where the imbalance is "too big", but I don't think you can define that in a principled way if you've given up on "character level is a meaningful measure of character power". It's just "what does Psyren like" which -- and I say this without any judgement -- probably works great for Psyren. But you obviously can't make a workable system off that.

[Psyren]

Once you give up on the notion that things are balanced by level, I don't understand where you stop. Presumably there's some limit where the imbalance is "too big", but I don't think you can define that in a principled way if you've given up on "character level is a meaningful measure of character power". It's just "what does Psyren like" which -- and I say this without any judgement -- probably works great for Psyren. But you obviously can't make a workable system off that.

D&D 3.5, 5e and Pathfinder aren't "workable?" Someone should tell roll20, clearly tens of thousands of people are doing it wrong and aren't actually having any fun. Pretty impressive con when you think about it.

I'll respond to the rest later.

[Blackhawk748]

A) D&D isn't (primarily) a game about leading armies, and nothing in the Fighter class entry would lead you to believe that it's a class intended to have that capability, so why are you expecting it to? But even so, a Fighter absolutely can do that, just like any other class can. That's what the Leadership feat is all about.

The fluff bit in front of Fighter lists "Conquering Warlord" as one of the people to be a Fighter. So Ghengis Khan fits that description. ANd yes, Leadership is a thing, that gets you dudes. And thats it. It gives you no ability to use them as an army (the Fighter has no relevant Knowledge Skills) or ways to push them onwards (the Fighter has no Perform Oratory or similar ability to make great speeches beyond rolling base Charisma)

Yes the Marshal exists, and they boost one squad of guys.

Also historically, Fighters back in older editions got a castle eventually, so they were totally expected to go do Knightly things, which the base Fighter can't do as he lacks all of the skills for proper Court interaction.

[Kelb_Panthera]

Independent of Psyren, a lot of the argument I see for why the wizard isn't already miles ahead of the fighter assume the fighter gets opportunities to pick racial or other non-class options the wizard doesn't. If you're comparing the classes to each other, I'm pretty sure it falls into the Oberoni fallacy to say there isn't an issue because the wizard can be restricted from choosing an equally strong race.

I feel like this is probably directed more at me than most, so here we go.

You've misunderstood something. It's not that the wizard doesn't get an equal opportunity to spend his gold and choose his race that closes the gap. It's that WBL and racial options that are compatible and conducive to maximizing wizard capability just don't go as far as those for a non-caster do.

If you consider items that expand a character's options, a wizard doesn't really have many options and the ones he does have are largely redundant to his class features. He can pick up wands, staves, runestaves, expand his spellbook, and pick up any number of items that produce magical effects but only the last of those even offers him things he can't already do and precious few of them at that. Most of his wealth really only -can- be spent on making him better at what he already does or mitigating the cost of doing it.

Race, forget about it. Any race that gives a substantial ability of any kind is gonna mean eating either RHD, LA, or both. It's almost never worth the lost clas levels for a caster.

A warrior build, on the other hand, can use his wealth to gain a whole myriad of new capabilities as well a augment his existing ones. Picking a race with RHD and/or LA really only costs a few points of BAB and maybe a handful of HP or or save bonus. The racial features can easily be worth the tradeoff or delay of class features.

The simple fact is that the overall build weight of race and wealth just isn't the same between classes not only in what they need to function but in what they have to offer.

[NigelWalmsley]

D&D 3.5, 5e and Pathfinder aren't "workable?" Someone should tell roll20, clearly tens of thousands of people are doing it wrong and aren't actually having any fun. Pretty impressive con when you think about it.

No, they're not based on the paradigm of "balance is decided ad hoc based on what seems appropriate". They're designed on the paradigm that characters of equivalent level are equivalently useful. They fail to achieve that, but that doesn't mean they aren't trying to do that. That's why e.g. CR exists at all.

[Psyren]

Back!


No, they're not based on the paradigm of "balance is decided ad hoc based on what seems appropriate". They're designed on the paradigm that characters of equivalent level are equivalently useful. They fail to achieve that, but that doesn't mean they aren't trying to do that. That's why e.g. CR exists at all.

As a very rough ballpark guideline that you're expected to apply common sense adjudication and table variation to, sure. Not as an immutable law of mathematical design.

"7 = 7, sort of" is close enough in practice that tends of thousands of people are playing these games right now. Good enough for me.


So we could rate a single kobold, naked and caught in the open, as CR 10 because a party of 4 level 10 wizards can take it on and win?

Or is there some element of challenge required before we consider that a thing is worthy of its CR?
...
If a party of level 7 fighters and a party of level 7 wizards can both deal with a kobold, is that kobold CR 7?

If a party of level 7 fighters can handle a CR 7 hill giant, and a party of level 20 fighters can handle a CR 7 hill giant, why does it matter that the fighter I want to bring into your level 7 party is level 20?

Of course there's some - but where you continue to fail is in assuming the game has, or needs, such an anal degree of precise calibration to function. We do know how they came up with CR calculations - initially by using a standard party of tank fighter, stabby rogue, blaster wizard and healbot cleric, and then by basically eyeballing it and using items to patch up any cracks. It's not precise, it's not meant to be precise, and the parties they playtested with are nowhere near the top or bottom of the optimization spectrum - and yet for the vast majority of people who spend more time playing the game than complaining about it online, it works.


It's not even that I disagree with your base thesis that wizards and fighters at the table generally are reasonably well-balanced for playing the game at the same level. It's that you're making such poor arguments for the position that it feels like you don't really believe it, or are setting up a straw man so that people who oppose it can have an easier time demolishing it. And I know you're better at analysis than this, so seeing this quality of argumentation from you frustrates me.

Bold is not actually my thesis. My thesis is that regardless of how imbalanced two PC classes might be at a given level, most tables arrive at an equilibrium on their own because the level numbers are "close enough." The minority that can't, and end up complaining about the ceilings and floors of a given class or classes online, don't matter nearly as much as the masses that have fun with the inequality because it enables a more believable world - verisimilitude in other words. I also point out that since 3.5, that "close enough imbalance" has only gotten more balanced over time - but crucially, never achieving perfect balance.

As for your perspective of my posts, I assure you I do believe this thesis. If it doesn't meet your standards for some reason, I encourage you to imagine something that does instead as you scroll past, I promise it won't keep me up at night :smalltongue:



If a CR 7 creature is meant to be about 1/4 of what a CR 7 party can take on in a single day, it DOES matter if a CR 7 party made up of a particular class can take it on while expending next to no resources. That's a problem.

No it's not, and no it doesn't. At least, it doesn't matter nearly to the degree you think it does.



I strongly disagree. Not that there are other RPGs to play anime in, but that D&D shouldn't look to handle them. The trouble with high level D&D is precisely that we set our sights too low if the high level character isn't a full caster.

Oh please, even something as relatively benign as Tome of Battle ignited a firestorm of "too anime" among the 3.5 base, ended up being the most controversial splat ever made for the edition to this day (well, maybe second to BoED), and sparked complaints so ubiquitous that they ended up being acknowledged by WotC on their website. And you want actual anime characters added to the edition? Pull the other one :smallbiggrin:


The "identity" of the example would include (but not be limited to) "master of martial training," with some exploration and social features to back it up.

Sure - and as I stated previous, that's a niche that doesn't need its own dedicated mechanic when a modified skill check will do. You can certainly make one ("Martial Sight?") if you want, I'm just stating my opinion on the matter.


I didn't enumerate it because I didn't trust I'd get a response other than "that's not a good version," without addressing "the DM announced they'll adjunct bonuses at a specific thing for a specific class beforehand but it isn't homebrew"

*snip*

I'll be honest... It doesn't actually matter to me whether or not you consider applying circumstance modifiers to the existing skill check system qualifies as "homebrew" or not. What matters to me is that you and Rynjin have the tools to create situations where the fighter gets to shine if that is truly your concern, whatever you choose to label those tools - use them.



Sure, for "every situtation," sure. Any response on why this applies to wizards but not anyone else? You know:
...
Okay, going through the example:


Have an enemy exclusively to counter the caster.
Something that applies to melee characters
Something that applies to martials
Give enemies an ability to exclusively counter the caster



At the risk of repeating myself - countering your team's spellcaster(s) is something that a smart enemy would do, and thus makes sense in-universe. Casters are artillery - either you have a plan to at least try and deal with them, or you're likely to lose, it's not a radical concept. And you're correct, some of those tactics (like archers and ambushes) CAN be applied to martials too - but it's still asymmetrical if they prioritize the guy in robes, which again they would be fools (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0928.html) not to (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0712.html).

Now, I'm not saying every enemy has to be smart - there's plenty of room in the rogues' gallery for beasts and zombies and oozes and golems and such. Those can be the ones (well, maybe not golems) where the casters can run roughshod without fear of asymmetric tactics.



Spell slots are the main limit of the caster. The limit only lasts as long as they need to worry about spell slots. The problem being the amount of effort needed to make that tradeoff matter.

What "effort?" :smallconfused: Either you have more encounters or fewer spell slots, both of which have been done for you many times over. There are tables you can roll on and variant spell systems you can use (like this one) if you want caster ammunition to matter more.



Tell me what you think this means:

Is there some rule that I'm only allowed to apply to the parts of your post that address me directly? :smallconfused:
You invoked the "fallacy" incorrectly and I replied.



Cut the middle bit because it's not relevant to my point.

The expectation is that a party of four PCs of level X can handle about four encounters of EL X in a day.

The issue is when a party of four PCs of level X (say, an eleventh level Druid, Wizard, Cleric, and Psion) can handle many more than four encounters in a day of EL 11, or can handle EL 18 encounters easily. It means that, according to the system, what's SUPPOSED TO BE a good challenge is not.

No system is going to be perfect at that - so what? You can also have a druid, wizard, cleric and psion whose players are in fact quite bad at building casters, or simply prepared their spells for the wrong set of challenges, and get stomped by just one equal-EL encounter too. But those very discrepancies enable depth and system mastery; your choices during the game matter, not just your choice of class at the beginning of it, and the CR system doesn't account for any of those. Using it as evidence of intended utopian equality between classes of the same level is neither a realistic nor useful position.

[JNAProductions]

No system is going to be perfect at that - so what? You can also have a druid, wizard, cleric and psion whose players are in fact quite bad at building casters, or simply prepared their spells for the wrong set of challenges, and get stomped by just one equal-EL encounter too. But those very discrepancies enable depth and system mastery; your choices during the game matter, not just your choice of class at the beginning of it, and the CR system doesn't account for any of those. Using it as evidence of intended utopian equality between classes of the same level is neither a realistic nor useful position.

So it's actually worse, because a group of four level X PCs may or may not be able to do at all what the system expects, both by being too powerful or too weak?

[DragonclawExia]

D&D 3.5, 5e and Pathfinder aren't "workable?" Someone should tell roll20, clearly tens of thousands of people are doing it wrong and aren't actually having any fun. Pretty impressive con when you think about it.

I'll respond to the rest later.

Probably because if you go purely by numbers and non-DM fiat and randomly pick CR under the assumption it's perfectly balanced like a machine, yeah.

It wouldn't be workable.



A big reason it's as functional as it is when you play is because people who enjoy it go out of their way to impose limitations on themselves or do extra review work to make sure the CR is actually appropriate.


Purely in a randomized mechanical situation, it's...not gonna be pretty. I could go into details, but I'm not the best at theorizing how an actual non-biased AI would try to play or optimize a 3.5 D&D session.



I just know DMs can't carelessly pick CR appropriate Monsters when setting up an encounter, Top tier Casters can't even make up more than 25% of the group if theres even one Low Tier Martial Class in the group. The Caster tend to have to intentionally hold back and not optimize too perfectly in order for other classes to contribute meaningfully.



Basically, the system doesn't actually work mechanically without the Good-Will of the community propping it back up.

[Peat]

Basically, the system doesn't actually work mechanically without the Good-Will of the community propping it back up.

That's not an uncommon situation for mechanically complex RPGs representing high power games though - in fact, I don't know of one where this isn't the case. It's a bit frustrating it runs through such obvious faultlines, but I think it goes with the territory.


Separately, I'd also add that mechanically, the thing that always frustrated me most about Fighters wasn't power levels in combat, but having the ability to mechanically influence the game outside of combat.

[Lucas Yew]

Because both archetypes are common player options, and it's a game?

And the entire Wuxia genre becomes moot if OP's statement is absolute.
(And no, qi wielding masters are not (purely dedicated) spellcasters by the wuxia genre's definition, no matter how the culmination of their esoteric training lets them rip intercosmic portals with a carefully controlled qi sword slash whatnot)

----(Edit: Addon)----


And, sometimes (to generalize) D&D nerds who have Int > Str, as much as they might want to roleplay a high-Int character outplanning, out-optioning, and out-gaming the game itself, also might want to HULK SMASH and.. that should probably work in what is basically a sword-and-sorcery "kill orcs, save the prince/ss, turn back the undead horde, and take their stuff" kinda game.

Actually, this is much closer to my real core thoughts on the LFQW. To describe it more grim, it feels like a particularly ugly form of wish fulfillment, or rather a wish denial against jocks (not that I'm one, I'm physically a pure nerd by American standards).

[Aotrs Commander]

Probably because if you go purely by numbers and non-DM fiat and randomly pick CR under the assumption it's perfectly balanced like a machine, yeah.

There is no set of RPG or wargames rules (or similar computer game, for that matter) anywhere where you CAN have it be perfectly balanced though, so that's not really a good point. (No, not even 4E, which homogenised itself to the point of absurdity.) You CANNOT HAVE a mathmatically balanced system of that complexity (especially in an RPG, where the possibility space is literally unlimited). Wargames, even really popular ones (not necessarily ones that are any good) focused on competative battles can't manage to make a mathmatically balanced points system beyond reasonable broad strokes, and they have a VASTLY smaller possibility space.

The arguement that "you can't make it perfectly mathmatically balanced" doesn't really bear any weight when that is, fundementally, an impossibility; the best you can EVER manage is a general level of estimated probability space and expect some level of participant-level correction (be it "balance the encounter to the party," or (arguambly worse) a continuous balance see-saw as stats/army lists ect are continuously changed every release/edition/patch to nerf/buff whatever seems to be the dominant strategy).

3.5/PF are not great on the caster/noncaster balance; but 3.5 was much, much worse and I don't think Paizo went quite far enough with fighters specifically; but there's a big gap between "needs more work closing the gap" and "can be perfectly balanced."




Actually, this is much closer to my real core thoughts on the LFQW. To describe it more grim, it feels like a particularly ugly form of wish fulfillment, or rather a wish denial against jocks (not that I'm one, I'm physically a pure nerd by American standards).

That thought has crossed my mind as well, to be brutally honest.

[DragonclawExia]

There is no set of RPG or wargames rules (or similar computer game, for that matter) anywhere where you CAN have it be perfectly balanced though, so that's not really a good point. (No, not even 4E, which homogenised itself to the point of absurdity.) You CANNOT HAVE a mathmatically balanced system of that complexity (especially in an RPG, where the possibility space is literally unlimited). Wargames, even really popular ones (not necessarily ones that are any good) focused on competative battles can't manage to make a mathmatically balanced points system beyond reasonable broad strokes, and they have a VASTLY smaller possibility space.

The arguement that "you can't make it perfectly mathmatically balanced" doesn't really bear any weight when that is, fundementally, an impossibility; the best you can EVER manage is a general level of estimated probability space and expect some level of participant-level correction (be it "balance the encounter to the party," or (arguambly worse) a continuous balance see-saw as stats/army lists ect are continuously changed every release/edition/patch to nerf/buff whatever seems to be the dominant strategy).

3.5/PF are not great on the caster/noncaster balance; but 3.5 was much, much worse and I don't think Paizo went quite far enough with fighters specifically; but there's a big gap between "needs more work closing the gap" and "can be perfectly balanced."





That thought has crossed my mind as well, to be brutally honest.

Uhh...yeah. It's not possible, and it's especially difficult in 3.5. Players deal with it and the inherit balance because they enjoy all the good things that come with it.


So they'll deal with the imbalance because most people who play it still enjoy how the mechanics work with the Warrior/Wizard imbalance and the fantasy it provides.



I'm not saying it has to be perfectly balanced, because like you said, it's not possible. The imbalances are just something you work around if you want to play it. Which many people do as it is now.

[NigelWalmsley]

"7 = 7, sort of" is close enough in practice that tends of thousands of people are playing these games right now. Good enough for me.

And good enough for all the people you're arguing with (or at least many of them). But that doesn't mean it can't be better, or that the intention wasn't to have "7 = 7". Letting the perfect be the enemy of the good is stupid, but so is letting the good be the enemy of the perfect. 3e and PF are good games. But they could be better games.

[AntiAuthority]

Sounds like an appropriate level of ego for Zeus tbf. I can see him making super sarcastic full of himself smack talk prayers to himself.

This just popped into my head lol.

Zeus: By the great and powerful me, I beseech mine aid to defeat this blasphemous abomination that dare threaten the peace of my great land! With my lightning bolts of unparalleled beauty, please give me the strength I need to smite this Titan that has forgotten his place! With strength unparalleled by-

Typhon:... You good man? Are we fighting or what?

Zeus:... With the strength capable of overwhelming every other god and being in existence, I will lay down mine hands upon this hubristic-

Athena: I'm sorry, he just does this in fights, just let him finish.


Separately, I'd also add that mechanically, the thing that always frustrated me most about Fighters wasn't power levels in combat, but having the ability to mechanically influence the game outside of combat.


About that... There's no historical precedent for real world warriors being as inept outside of fighting as the Fighter is in D&D. Unless by "Fighter" we mean "street thug with low IQ" then sure.




Because both archetypes are common player options, and it's a game?

And the entire Wuxia genre becomes moot if OP's statement is absolute.
(And no, qi wielding masters are not (purely dedicated) spellcasters by the wuxia genre's definition, no matter how the culmination of their esoteric training lets them rip intercosmic portals with a carefully controlled qi sword slash whatnot)


Including Wuxia, yes, it's both spiritual and physical training... A Wuxia warrior is basically a properly done D&D Fighter scaled up to fantastic levels lol.

Even outside of Wuxia, historically... Real world warriors had other skills besides just cutting people, and had to be thinkers in the ways of war, be able to live off the fat of the land, understand history, math, science, etc. which would qualify them as "Wizards" by OP's example, since intelligence was a sign of leadership in real world warriors and OP is arguing intelligence beats muscle mass.


Actually, this is much closer to my real core thoughts on the LFQW. To describe it more grim, it feels like a particularly ugly form of wish fulfillment, or rather a wish denial against jocks (not that I'm one, I'm physically a pure nerd by American standards).

I agree with this, there really isn't a reason for 3E Fighters to be as unskilled as they are. They're less skilled than real world warriors, don't get nifty abilities as class features and seem less like "an intelligent warrior who has a group of supplemental skills to fall back on outside of combat" (like Spartans, Samurai, etc.) and more in line with "brainless brute."

OP seems to be of the same mindset that "brain beats brawn" which isn't wrong (not 100% right either, as a smart person might end up working a dead end job while a less intelligent athlete could go on to become a professional player)... But OP also seems to think Fighters are 100% brawn in real life, which... Isn't true from a historical, mythological or fictional standpoint. There's no reason to keep them down as much as they are beyond personal preference, especially when one class gets scaled up to be fantastic in every category and the other... Not so much, as they're even nerfed in some areas.

[Blackhawk748]

I agree with this, there really isn't a reason for 3E Fighters to be as unskilled as they are. They're less skilled than real world warriors, don't get nifty abilities as class features and seem less like "an intelligent warrior who has a group of supplemental skills to fall back on outside of combat" (like Spartans, Samurai, etc.) and more in line with "brainless brute."

It's even weirder when you recall the Barbarian (who should more accurately portray the Brute Archetype) is right over there, has a higher HD, more skills and more useful general features. Yes, the Fighter gets feats, but in Core, they run out of those very, very fast.

Hell, let's remove the Wizard from the discussion and see where the Fighter sits in comparison to his competition, the Paladin and the Barbarian (we could put the Ranger in here, but I'd say that's more in the Rogue design space).

The Barbarian is more durable, has skills that match his archetype (of the hardy warrior of the frontier) and has more useful features. The Paladin has all the skills expected of someone who would be the Knight equivalent (Knowledge and Social skills) a reason to have Charisma beyond boosting said skills, and a mess of class features that are useful.

The Fighter has the smallest skill list, the lowest number of skills, no class features, and (in Core) not enough feats to even make it worth it to go past level 6. Really the Fighter should be existing in between the Paladin and the Barbarian, probably having 4 skill points per level, a skill list that is a cross between the Paladin's and Barbarian's and several features that revolve around a specific fighting style of the Fighters choice, or something to that effect, making it the Weapon Master class that it seemed to by trying to go for.

Once we get that out of the way we can start trying to figure out how to balance Magic against the Martials

[AntiAuthority]

It's even weirder when you recall the Barbarian (who should more accurately portray the Brute Archetype) is right over there, has a higher HD, more skills and more useful general features. Yes, the Fighter gets feats, but in Core, they run out of those very, very fast.

Actually, the Fighters get Feats thing kind of breaks the "realism" argument. Fighters need to learn how to trip, possibly untrained, enemies through a feat without risking getting attacked. Kids can trip other kids without getting tripped, but this trained warrior can't... WTF? lol


Hell, let's remove the Wizard from the discussion and see where the Fighter sits in comparison to his competition, the Paladin and the Barbarian (we could put the Ranger in here, but I'd say that's more in the Rogue design space).

The Barbarian is more durable, has skills that match his archetype (of the hardy warrior of the frontier) and has more useful features. The Paladin has all the skills expected of someone who would be the Knight equivalent (Knowledge and Social skills) a reason to have Charisma beyond boosting said skills, and a mess of class features that are useful.

The Fighter has the smallest skill list, the lowest number of skills, no class features, and (in Core) not enough feats to even make it worth it to go past level 6. Really the Fighter should be existing in between the Paladin and the Barbarian, probably having 4 skill points per level, a skill list that is a cross between the Paladin's and Barbarian's and several features that revolve around a specific fighting style of the Fighters choice, or something to that effect, making it the Weapon Master class that it seemed to by trying to go for.

Once we get that out of the way we can start trying to figure out how to balance Magic against the Martials.


I have an idea, I don't think people will like it, but it's an idea that ties back into the "Fighters need to be Realistic" argument.

If Fighters were Realistic, they'd (also) get these...


More Skill Points (they were very intelligent, as I've said before)

Certain Combat Feats (things trained fighters would have like Power Attack, Deadly Aim, Improved Trip) as class features from their training.

Automatically improving dodge bonuses/higher AC as a class feature (notice how hard it for trained martial artists to hit each other?)

Good Reflex Saves (once again, notice how hard it is to hit a trained martial artist/soldier? Especially when they let their training take over so they don't have to waste time thinking about what to do in a dangerous situation.)

Good Will Saves (Navy SEALs have to go through Hell Week, which is designed to break them down mentally and see if they can process orders while exhausted... The ones that pass are capable of following orders in high stress situations... Not to mention plenty of martial artists go through katas or whatever you want to call them to instill discipline)

Rage as a class feature (Even disciplined soldiers in real life get adrenaline rushes that can give them the edge in a fight)

Class Skills such as Perception (being able to notice an enemy trying to blend into the environment like snipers, being able to discern your allies from enemies in the heat of battle, being able to spot traps in the environment), Stealth (plenty of soldiers throughout history know how to camouflage themselves and modern day soldiers will as well), Diplomacy/Persuasion (gaining allies through a tactical advantage/convincing someone to stop fighting because of how practical it would be), others I'm probably forgetting.

Sneak Attack (if a trained soldier or martial artist doesn't know how to intentionally aim for vital spots, but the thief does, something is very wrong)

Inflict Save or Suck (or Die) effects on enemies hit with Sneak Attack. Such as inhibiting movement via cutting muscles/causing bruising/breaking bones, inflicting pain that stuns enemies (like getting punched in the kidney) or causing excessive bleeding by aiming for the right spot for continual damage. Maybe even slash their throats, puncture their eyes (and reach the brain) or just stab them in the heart if those parts are unguarded, forcing the enemy to do a Reflex Save to dodge the attack and a Fortitude Save to not instantly die.

The ability to create traps.

The ability to learn attacks through looking through a book on fighting techniques (they exist) or be able to replicate the move after seeing it in action/hearing of it, meaning they have a potentially limitless pool of attacks to draw on.

The ability to poison weapons (unless they're going for that honorable warrior thing...)

Evasion (being able to dodge damage entirely to continue fighting, while their comrades get messed up by stray shrapnel...)

The ability to predict what your opponent is about to do in a fight as part of an AC bonus OR an automatic counter with the chance of you maiming/dismembering/putting them into a hold if you manage to predict their attack. We could do both depending on how you want to run with it.


These are all things real human warriors can do. The 3.5E Fighter can't do all of these, or doesn't get them for free, while they logically would if we're sticking to the realism defense. To me, it feels like the 3.5E Fighter, Barbarian and Rogues are all what you'd get if you split the capabilities of a real world soldier/warrior/fighter into three classes. This is what a realistic Fighter would look like, if put into 3.5E, instead of the unskilled brute the game seems to be suggesting they are from a mechanical level. This is me without scaling up what real world warriors are capable of to fantastic levels like a Wizard either lol.

This is also a way to balance martial with magic, as well, as it gives them more options and the ability to learn new techniques but I can understand why people might not like one class being able to step on the toes of others, even if it is the realistic depiction of what a IRL Warrior would be capable of mechanically...

[lylsyly]

Actually, AntiAuthority has it right. I spent 13.5 years in the U.S. Army as a combat soldier. My diplomacy, persuasion and leadership skills were thru the roof as was my marksmanship with multiple weapons and understanding of tactics and strategy. Along the way I earned Bachelors Degrees in both Astronomy and Business Administration. The D&D Fighter is a weak comparison to reality.

Just my 2 cp, YMMV....

[Blackhawk748]

Well if we did what many suggest for 3.5 and condense various Feat Chains and turn other things (like Power Attack and Weapon Finesse) into just things that anyone can do, Fighters suddenly can use all of those feats to actually be good at several weapons, which would give them a niche over the other Martials.

Add in Fighter Techniques (or whatever you want to call them) that let you specialize more at various aspects such as Leadership, Tanking, Wilderness Survival, or Court intrigue etc. and Fighters could actually do what they were supposed to do. This would also eliminate the need for the Knight, Swashbuckler and Samurai base classes as those options would be represented properly by the Fighter.

[DragonclawExia]

Actually, the Fighters get Feats thing kind of breaks the "realism" argument. Fighters need to learn how to trip, possibly untrained, enemies through a feat without risking getting attacked. Kids can trip other kids without getting tripped, but this trained warrior can't... WTF? lol




I have an idea, I don't think people will like it, but it's an idea that ties back into the "Fighters need to be Realistic" argument.

If Fighters were Realistic, they'd (also) get these...


More Skill Points (they were very intelligent, as I've said before)

Certain Combat Feats (things trained fighters would have like Power Attack, Deadly Aim, Improved Trip) as class features from their training.

Automatically improving dodge bonuses/higher AC as a class feature (notice how hard it for trained martial artists to hit each other?)

Good Reflex Saves (once again, notice how hard it is to hit a trained martial artist/soldier? Especially when they let their training take over so they don't have to waste time thinking about what to do in a dangerous situation.)

Good Will Saves (Navy SEALs have to go through Hell Week, which is designed to break them down mentally and see if they can process orders while exhausted... The ones that pass are capable of following orders in high stress situations... Not to mention plenty of martial artists go through katas or whatever you want to call them to instill discipline)

Rage as a class feature (Even disciplined soldiers in real life get adrenaline rushes that can give them the edge in a fight)

Class Skills such as Perception (being able to notice an enemy trying to blend into the environment like snipers, being able to discern your allies from enemies in the heat of battle, being able to spot traps in the environment), Stealth (plenty of soldiers throughout history know how to camouflage themselves and modern day soldiers will as well), Diplomacy/Persuasion (gaining allies through a tactical advantage/convincing someone to stop fighting because of how practical it would be), others I'm probably forgetting.

Sneak Attack (if a trained soldier or martial artist doesn't know how to intentionally aim for vital spots, but the thief does, something is very wrong)

Inflict Save or Suck (or Die) effects on enemies hit with Sneak Attack. Such as inhibiting movement via cutting muscles/causing bruising/breaking bones, inflicting pain that stuns enemies (like getting punched in the kidney) or causing excessive bleeding by aiming for the right spot for continual damage. Maybe even slash their throats, puncture their eyes (and reach the brain) or just stab them in the heart if those parts are unguarded, forcing the enemy to do a Reflex Save to dodge the attack and a Fortitude Save to not instantly die.

The ability to create traps.

The ability to learn attacks through looking through a book on fighting techniques (they exist) or be able to replicate the move after seeing it in action/hearing of it, meaning they have a potentially limitless pool of attacks to draw on.

The ability to poison weapons (unless they're going for that honorable warrior thing...)

Evasion (being able to dodge damage entirely to continue fighting, while their comrades get messed up by stray shrapnel...)

The ability to predict what your opponent is about to do in a fight as part of an AC bonus OR an automatic counter with the chance of you maiming/dismembering/putting them into a hold if you manage to predict their attack. We could do both depending on how you want to run with it.


These are all things real human warriors can do. The 3.5E Fighter can't do all of these, or doesn't get them for free, while they logically would if we're sticking to the realism defense. To me, it feels like the 3.5E Fighter, Barbarian and Rogues are all what you'd get if you split the capabilities of a real world soldier/warrior/fighter into three classes. This is what a realistic Fighter would look like, if put into 3.5E, instead of the unskilled brute the game seems to be suggesting they are from a mechanical level. This is me without scaling up what real world warriors are capable of to fantastic levels like a Wizard either lol.

This is also a way to balance martial with magic, as well, as it gives them more options and the ability to learn new techniques but I can understand why people might not like one class being able to step on the toes of others, even if it is the realistic depiction of what a IRL Warrior would be capable of mechanically...

Basic Fighters are rather poorly thought out, which is why their are a host of alternative options. For a balanced experience, you basically have to ignore pretty much every Core Class and use more through obscure classes like Warblade, Swordsages and Healers.


It does seem like the Basic Fighter is undertrained to actual fighting men, with the truly skilled warriors being...anything else. A Navy Seal equivalent in a 3.5 world would then be something like said Warblade rather then a Generic Fighter.

[Dienekes]

AntiAuthority has a lot of it right from what I know of history as well.

Just for example, a medieval knight during the High Middle Ages was expected to know horsemanship, obviously, and not just the riding but the training and rearing of horses and other animals, weapons training, understand the laws of the land they presided over, the balancing of accounts, proper hunting techniques, a working knowledge of Latin, usually at least two other native languages, and a smattering of Biblical philosophy, how to forage, a lot of tactical know how, not to mention the high emphasis on etiquette. Most the movers and shakers of Europe were knights. These upper echelon added various other managerial, diplomatic, artistic, and architectural knowledge as well.

But I think this all comes down to how D&D developed as a game. Fighting Man is one of the original classes before skills were even a thing. And just about everything that was outside the realm of just hitting things got shuffled off into DM fiat or, as was increasingly common, was turned into a spell. And we see that carry over into 3.5 and honestly still in 5e I’ll occasionally see a spell and think “How is this not just a Survival check? I know scouts who can do this.” And while I respect Gygax and co. For what they built you can find quotes where he disregards the notion of making melee fighting more complex because he thought real warriors only make killing blows against each other. Which is not how swordfighting works at all, but in fairness he didn’t know. But by 3.5 you’d think someone would have at least asked.

The end result is we got some classes that focus on these newfangled skills, but can also fight of course. Some classes that are stuck only fighting designed by people who have no idea what they’re talking about, with maybe a gimmick if their lucky. And then the mage classes, who have received this bloated list of spells that no longer really resemble any one fantasy version of the mage, but has somehow taken all of them, plus the old stuff that should have becomes skills, plus whatever new stuff the designers thought was cool. And made it easier to do because that’s more fun.

And yeah, it’s a bit of a mess. Still fun, of course, but definitely a mess.

[King of Nowhere]

Actually, the Fighters get Feats thing kind of breaks the "realism" argument. Fighters need to learn how to trip, possibly untrained, enemies through a feat without risking getting attacked. Kids can trip other kids without getting tripped, but this trained warrior can't... WTF? lol




I have an idea, I don't think people will like it, but it's an idea that ties back into the "Fighters need to be Realistic" argument.

If Fighters were Realistic, they'd (also) get these...


More Skill Points (they were very intelligent, as I've said before)

Certain Combat Feats (things trained fighters would have like Power Attack, Deadly Aim, Improved Trip) as class features from their training.

Automatically improving dodge bonuses/higher AC as a class feature (notice how hard it for trained martial artists to hit each other?)

Good Reflex Saves (once again, notice how hard it is to hit a trained martial artist/soldier? Especially when they let their training take over so they don't have to waste time thinking about what to do in a dangerous situation.)

Good Will Saves (Navy SEALs have to go through Hell Week, which is designed to break them down mentally and see if they can process orders while exhausted... The ones that pass are capable of following orders in high stress situations... Not to mention plenty of martial artists go through katas or whatever you want to call them to instill discipline)

Rage as a class feature (Even disciplined soldiers in real life get adrenaline rushes that can give them the edge in a fight)

Class Skills such as Perception (being able to notice an enemy trying to blend into the environment like snipers, being able to discern your allies from enemies in the heat of battle, being able to spot traps in the environment), Stealth (plenty of soldiers throughout history know how to camouflage themselves and modern day soldiers will as well), Diplomacy/Persuasion (gaining allies through a tactical advantage/convincing someone to stop fighting because of how practical it would be), others I'm probably forgetting.

Sneak Attack (if a trained soldier or martial artist doesn't know how to intentionally aim for vital spots, but the thief does, something is very wrong)

Inflict Save or Suck (or Die) effects on enemies hit with Sneak Attack. Such as inhibiting movement via cutting muscles/causing bruising/breaking bones, inflicting pain that stuns enemies (like getting punched in the kidney) or causing excessive bleeding by aiming for the right spot for continual damage. Maybe even slash their throats, puncture their eyes (and reach the brain) or just stab them in the heart if those parts are unguarded, forcing the enemy to do a Reflex Save to dodge the attack and a Fortitude Save to not instantly die.

The ability to create traps.

The ability to learn attacks through looking through a book on fighting techniques (they exist) or be able to replicate the move after seeing it in action/hearing of it, meaning they have a potentially limitless pool of attacks to draw on.

The ability to poison weapons (unless they're going for that honorable warrior thing...)

Evasion (being able to dodge damage entirely to continue fighting, while their comrades get messed up by stray shrapnel...)

The ability to predict what your opponent is about to do in a fight as part of an AC bonus OR an automatic counter with the chance of you maiming/dismembering/putting them into a hold if you manage to predict their attack. We could do both depending on how you want to run with it.


These are all things real human warriors can do. The 3.5E Fighter can't do all of these, or doesn't get them for free, while they logically would if we're sticking to the realism defense. To me, it feels like the 3.5E Fighter, Barbarian and Rogues are all what you'd get if you split the capabilities of a real world soldier/warrior/fighter into three classes. This is what a realistic Fighter would look like, if put into 3.5E, instead of the unskilled brute the game seems to be suggesting they are from a mechanical level. This is me without scaling up what real world warriors are capable of to fantastic levels like a Wizard either lol.

This is also a way to balance martial with magic, as well, as it gives them more options and the ability to learn new techniques but I can understand why people might not like one class being able to step on the toes of others, even if it is the realistic depiction of what a IRL Warrior would be capable of mechanically...
well, some of those things are exaggerated (soldiers certainly should have search and spot as class skills to deal with ambushes and traps, but i don't see the common riflemen to have diplomacy, or much understanding of tactics besides "follow orders and trust your superiors to know what they are doing"), but I agree with the general sentiment.
I would houserule them in, if that didn't require changing the whole system. As in, giving boost to AC, when coupled with all AC boosting items, would result in values too high, and a lot of other problems.

Well if we did what many suggest for 3.5 and condense various Feat Chains and turn other things (like Power Attack and Weapon Finesse) into just things that anyone can do, Fighters suddenly can use all of those feats to actually be good at several weapons, which would give them a niche over the other Martials.

this was all well and good in real life, where every weapon has its niche: spears are good in formation, especially against mounted opponents. maces are good against heavy armor. Axes are good against medium armor, and swords are good at general utility. So there was value in learning several different weapons.
but in d&d all those distinctions got lost, so a fighter taking feats to specialize in different weapons isn't really gaining anything, and is just throwing feats away. Not to mention, a medieval knight could easily have sword, mace and lance in his horse saddles. for a d&d fighter, having a +10 version of each weapon is not very practical

[digiman619]

this was all well and good in real life, where every weapon has its niche: spears are good in formation, especially against mounted opponents. maces are good against heavy armor. Axes are good against medium armor, and swords are good at general utility. So there was value in learning several different weapons.
but in d&d all those distinctions got lost, so a fighter taking feats to specialize in different weapons isn't really gaining anything, and is just throwing feats away. Not to mention, a medieval knight could easily have sword, mace and lance in his horse saddles. for a d&d fighter, having a +10 version of each weapon is not very practical

It's more that we've spent centuries learning how to counter actual weaponry, so we as a whole know how it's done. Magic hasn't had such scrutiny for obvious reasons, so there's no built-in desire to step it back for realism.

[AntiAuthority]

The D&D Fighter is a weak comparison to reality.


Yeah, 3.5E Fighters look more like Rock Em Sock Em Robots in terms of utility and really shouldn't be pointed at as an example of what a realistic class can do.




Well if we did what many suggest for 3.5 and condense various Feat Chains and turn other things (like Power Attack and Weapon Finesse) into just things that anyone can do, Fighters suddenly can use all of those feats to actually be good at several weapons, which would give them a niche over the other Martials.

Add in Fighter Techniques (or whatever you want to call them) that let you specialize more at various aspects such as Leadership, Tanking, Wilderness Survival, or Court intrigue etc. and Fighters could actually do what they were supposed to do. This would also eliminate the need for the Knight, Swashbuckler and Samurai base classes as those options would be represented properly by the Fighter.

I agree that certain feats don't make much sense as something you gain from leveling up, and making a lot of them free would fix some issues (Power Attack is literally just throwing a hard punch, not the pinnacle of martial arts mastery).


And thinking about making the Fighter better... I was wondering something. Barbarians get Rage + Fast Movement, Rogues get Sneak Attack, Paladins get Smite Evil + Divine Health... What should a Fighter get that signifies they've taken several levels in Fighter? Something only a Fighter can do. That's just what I can't figure out beyond "master of martial weapons" when other classes can use all martial weapons too. That's where my mind went towards improving the 3.5E Fighter anyway.





Basic Fighters are rather poorly thought out, which is why their are a host of alternative options. For a balanced experience, you basically have to ignore pretty much every Core Class and use more through obscure classes like Warblade, Swordsages and Healers.


It does seem like the Basic Fighter is undertrained to actual fighting men, with the truly skilled warriors being...anything else. A Navy Seal equivalent in a 3.5 world would then be something like said Warblade rather then a Generic Fighter.

Agreed, the Core Fighter isn't exactly good at anything except bashing things. They fit the description of a dimwitted monster or bandit rather than a trained soldier...

And yeah, Warblades seem way more balanced and a better representation of what a trained warrior would be capable of in 3.5E.





But I think this all comes down to how D&D developed as a game. Fighting Man is one of the original classes before skills were even a thing. And just about everything that was outside the realm of just hitting things got shuffled off into DM fiat or, as was increasingly common, was turned into a spell. And we see that carry over into 3.5 and honestly still in 5e I’ll occasionally see a spell and think “How is this not just a Survival check? I know scouts who can do this.” And while I respect Gygax and co. For what they built you can find quotes where he disregards the notion of making melee fighting more complex because he thought real warriors only make killing blows against each other. Which is not how swordfighting works at all, but in fairness he didn’t know. But by 3.5 you’d think someone would have at least asked.

The end result is we got some classes that focus on these newfangled skills, but can also fight of course. Some classes that are stuck only fighting designed by people who have no idea what they’re talking about, with maybe a gimmick if their lucky. And then the mage classes, who have received this bloated list of spells that no longer really resemble any one fantasy version of the mage, but has somehow taken all of them, plus the old stuff that should have becomes skills, plus whatever new stuff the designers thought was cool. And made it easier to do because that’s more fun.


Gygax may not have known about real life knights or such (Internet's a great thing to have in modern times), but I remember reading one of D&D 3E's designers talking about Ivory Tower design. It mentions some choices are deliberately better than others... I'm fairly certain martials are one of the "others" in that scenario, but eh. So probably not exactly a mistake on 3.5E's part at that point. The designer seemed to regret the design philosophy later, I don't understand why people are defending something the designer admitted was a mistake in his eyes, but whatever...

About mages... They're basically the opposite of what I noticed martial classes are. Instead of one archetype being split into several classes (Fighter, Rogue, Barbarian), mages instead get to become several archetypes as one class. I believe a balanced martial character that's balance with magic characters (D&D magic characters anyway) would be the result of several martial archetypes being merged into one class and being able to surpass mythological deities.

This would be someone with the nigh invulnerability of Baldur/Achilles/Sun Wukong, the strength of Thor/Hercules/Sun Wukong, the speed of Hermes, the training/precision of Cu Chulainn, the ability to grow several times their size from Sun Wukong, the senses of Sun Wukong and Cu Chulainn, the tactical genius of the greatest mythological warriors, the immortality of Sun Wukong, the endurance of Gilgamesh/Enkidu/Beowulf and throw in the ability to go into a Warp Spasm from Cu Chulainn too. And the magic items like a belt that doubles their strength, an invulnerable lion's skin for protection, divine weapons, weapons several tons, weapons that erupt into a bunch of barbs when they pierce someone's skin and maybe being blessed in some way or another if you feel like it lol. Seriously, imagine the carnage of someone like Hercules with nearly impenetrable skin, give them a belt that doubles their strength, the ability to grow several times their height and then they turn into a horrifying berserker monster that can't tell friend from foe and attacking everything in sight at impossible speeds while barely needing any rest... This is what I'd expect to be playing at higher levels if magic users are able to replicate the feats of several mythological gods at once with prep time. This character would have many more powers and weapons, from various religions, but I'd have to go into sources outside of mythology if I wanted to get more specific, as I don't recall the Norse or Greek Gods being capable of teleportation like a Wizard or just opening portals into different planes of existence, so it'd look powers like something you'd see in a comic book or anime than what you'd find in mythology...





I would houserule them in, if that didn't require changing the whole system. As in, giving boost to AC, when coupled with all AC boosting items, would result in values too high, and a lot of other problems.


I can understand for balancing reasons, but an AC that increases with level would reflect better reflexes as the character grows more experienced with dodging... If we're still trying to use realism from our world as a reason to limit the abilities of a character, then it's perfectly reasonable to also use realism from our world as a way to give that character more abilities... Just picking the first but not the second is just a code for "Keep martials down in the dirt where they belong, inferior to their magic overlords" instead of some attempt to keep them realistic like they're claiming (with a fantasy class that doesn't exist and doesn't have to follow the same rules as our world, but whatever...)

[Psyren]

And good enough for all the people you're arguing with (or at least many of them). But that doesn't mean it can't be better, or that the intention wasn't to have "7 = 7". Letting the perfect be the enemy of the good is stupid, but so is letting the good be the enemy of the perfect. 3e and PF are good games. But they could be better games.

There's always room for improvement, sure, but parity between magic-users and martials is not even close to a meaningful priority. 5e's runaway success despite not bothering to solve that is proof.


So it's actually worse, because a group of four level X PCs may or may not be able to do at all what the system expects, both by being too powerful or too weak?

Depth involves the possibility of failure by making suboptimal choices, yes. Even 4th edition, as shallow an experience as it was, allowed for that much. The only way to eliminate it completely is to play something where character-building and gear/spell-selection isn't an option at all.


There is no set of RPG or wargames rules (or similar computer game, for that matter) anywhere where you CAN have it be perfectly balanced though, so that's not really a good point. (No, not even 4E, which homogenised itself to the point of absurdity.) You CANNOT HAVE a mathmatically balanced system of that complexity (especially in an RPG, where the possibility space is literally unlimited). Wargames, even really popular ones (not necessarily ones that are any good) focused on competative battles can't manage to make a mathmatically balanced points system beyond reasonable broad strokes, and they have a VASTLY smaller possibility space.

The arguement that "you can't make it perfectly mathmatically balanced" doesn't really bear any weight when that is, fundementally, an impossibility; the best you can EVER manage is a general level of estimated probability space and expect some level of participant-level correction (be it "balance the encounter to the party," or (arguambly worse) a continuous balance see-saw as stats/army lists ect are continuously changed every release/edition/patch to nerf/buff whatever seems to be the dominant strategy).

3.5/PF are not great on the caster/noncaster balance; but 3.5 was much, much worse and I don't think Paizo went quite far enough with fighters specifically; but there's a big gap between "needs more work closing the gap" and "can be perfectly balanced."

Bingo, someone gets it.


That thought has crossed my mind as well, to be brutally honest.

Whether or not it's some form of "narrative retribution" against jocks, I don't think D&D was the genesis of that. The superiority of magic over not-magic has been a part of many more kinds of fiction than D&D.

[JNAProductions]

Why should failure be possible in character creation?

Edit: I won’t say it’s bad for there to be well built and poorly built characters, but there shouldn’t be such a massive gap between them. An okay character should be able to play in a group of well-built characters. But that’s not the case in 3.5. Likewise, a single high-OP character can utterly outshine an entire group of only decently built characters.

That is, to me, bad design. ESPECIALLY given what Wizards was trying to do with 3rd.

[AntiAuthority]

Why should failure be possible in character creation?

Edit: I won’t say it’s bad for there to be well built and poorly built characters, but there shouldn’t be such a massive gap between them. An okay character should be able to play in a group of well-built characters. But that’s not the case in 3.5. Likewise, a single high-OP character can utterly outshine an entire group of only decently built characters.

That is, to me, bad design. ESPECIALLY given what Wizards was trying to do with 3rd.

Ivory Tower Design. Some choices were made to be deliberately better than others, with the intention of players figuring out which ones were superior and which ones were inferior... With that in mind, I believe it's safe to assume classes weren't excluded from "some are deliberately better than others." Though Monte Cook did say he regrets that design philosophy afterwards...

[Psyren]

Why should failure be possible in character creation?

Edit: I won’t say it’s bad for there to be well built and poorly built characters, but there shouldn’t be such a massive gap between them. An okay character should be able to play in a group of well-built characters. But that’s not the case in 3.5. Likewise, a single high-OP character can utterly outshine an entire group of only decently built characters.

That is, to me, bad design. ESPECIALLY given what Wizards was trying to do with 3rd.

To be clear - I'm not saying I would be opposed to a game where the possibility of failure has been removed. But it's very difficult to have a game with the level of depth that 3e/5e/PF/SF have, without some suboptimal or trap choices. For me, that depth is worth the cost of the occasional bad build, because bad builds are so easily dealt with - all four games allow for retraining your character after all, or they can just get buffed on the fly.

Is it "bad design?" In a strict sense yes, or at the very least it's flawed design. But I'll take the flaws and a deep game, over a perfectly balanced yet shallow one, and deal with the cracks as they appear. Again, like thousands do.

[Blackhawk748]

this was all well and good in real life, where every weapon has its niche: spears are good in formation, especially against mounted opponents. maces are good against heavy armor. Axes are good against medium armor, and swords are good at general utility. So there was value in learning several different weapons.
but in d&d all those distinctions got lost, so a fighter taking feats to specialize in different weapons isn't really gaining anything, and is just throwing feats away. Not to mention, a medieval knight could easily have sword, mace and lance in his horse saddles. for a d&d fighter, having a +10 version of each weapon is not very practical

Well, using E6 (as it's the nicest to doing this sort of stuff) I have actually done weapon swapping between Two-Handed and Two-Weapon. Two-Weapon was when I wanted a ton of attacks Two-Handed was for large single targets.

The other thing you'd do is second in Ranged (if melee primary) or Melee (if Ranged Primary) Yes it's not as good as in other systems, but its not completely worthless


And thinking about making the Fighter better... I was wondering something. Barbarians get Rage + Fast Movement, Rogues get Sneak Attack, Paladins get Smite Evil + Divine Health... What should a Fighter get that signifies they've taken several levels in Fighter? Something only a Fighter can do. That's just what I can't figure out beyond "master of martial weapons" when other classes can use all martial weapons too. That's where my mind went towards improving the 3.5E Fighter anyway.

Well, Blunt, Piercing and Slashing Mastery are actually pretty neat abilities, if they happened at like level 10 instead of 20 and only the Fighter can get them. Otherwise PF made them the best at using Heavy Armor, which was nice. Personally, I think giving them the Warblade ability to swap all their Weapon Specific feats with a bit of warm up would help, and then maybe letting them effectively make whatever weapon they were weilding Aptitude would solidy the whole Weapon Master schtick.

[OrbanSirgen]

this was all well and good in real life, where every weapon has its niche: spears are good in formation, especially against mounted opponents. maces are good against heavy armor. Axes are good against medium armor, and swords are good at general utility. So there was value in learning several different weapons.
but in d&d all those distinctions got lost, so a fighter taking feats to specialize in different weapons isn't really gaining anything, and is just throwing feats away. Not to mention, a medieval knight could easily have sword, mace and lance in his horse saddles. for a d&d fighter, having a +10 version of each weapon is not very practical

And this is how you get Fire Emblem's weapon triangle...

[NigelWalmsley]

There's always room for improvement, sure, but parity between magic-users and martials is not even close to a meaningful priority. 5e's runaway success despite not bothering to solve that is proof.

5e isn't a success because of some design choice the designers made instead of balancing the game. It's a success because e.g. Critical Role and Stranger Things raised the profile of D&D. It's true that game balance isn't the only reason products succeed or fail, but it is the thing that the people who design games can actually effect.


Whether or not it's some form of "narrative retribution" against jocks, I don't think D&D was the genesis of that. The superiority of magic over not-magic has been a part of many more kinds of fiction than D&D.

It's not about whether magic is better than non-magic or not. It's about whether the sword guy is magic. And D&D probably is the genesis (or at least a genesis) of that. Fantasy historically does not have any real objection to the idea that you might do or be magic and also have a sword. It's simply not weird that Hercules is a guy who fights with a club and also gets an explicitly supernatural amount of strength. If you were sticking to the conventions of fantasy, Fighters would simply get magic at mid levels.


Is it "bad design?" In a strict sense yes, or at the very least it's flawed design. But I'll take the flaws and a deep game, over a perfectly balanced yet shallow one, and deal with the cracks as they appear. Again, like thousands do.

I don't think anyone has actually been allowed to make that choice. I know you're gesturing at 4e here, and a lot of people do, but the reality is that it was not an especially balanced game. If you compare like to like (e.g. disregarding things like Planar Binding that were simply removed), it's probably not even more balanced than 3e. People genuinely do want a game where "the math just works". That was a pitch of 4e's that they were very excited about, and the game did not deliver.

[Psyren]

5e isn't a success because of some design choice the designers made instead of balancing the game. It's a success because e.g. Critical Role and Stranger Things raised the profile of D&D. It's true that game balance isn't the only reason products succeed or fail, but it is the thing that the people who design games can actually effect.

I'll rephrase - if caster/martial disparity mattered half as much as you think it does, it would have hurt 5e's success to contain it. It didn't, and it doesn't.


It's not about whether magic is better than non-magic or not. It's about whether the sword guy is magic. And D&D probably is the genesis (or at least a genesis) of that. Fantasy historically does not have any real objection to the idea that you might do or be magic and also have a sword. It's simply not weird that Hercules is a guy who fights with a club and also gets an explicitly supernatural amount of strength. If you were sticking to the conventions of fantasy, Fighters would simply get magic at mid levels.

Hercules "isn't weird" because his power has a plausible external explanation - divine heritage. Not all fighters have that. And the same goes for all the other fictional examples listed previously.



People genuinely do want a game where "the math just works". That was a pitch of 4e's that they were very excited about, and the game did not deliver.

They want that, but also depth. And when the two come into conflict, depth wins every time.

[NigelWalmsley]

I'll rephrase - if caster/martial disparity mattered half as much as you think it does, it would have hurt 5e's success to contain it. It didn't, and it doesn't.

It matters a great deal to the quality of the rules. But the quality of the rules don't really matter much at all to the success of the product. It's hard for some people to wrap their heads around, but basically nothing we discuss here matters to the success of a new edition of D&D as the fact that it is an edition of D&D. Most of it doesn't matter as much as the quality of the art in the books. People supply an enormous amount of mind caulk when playing TTRPGs, and the quality of the base ruleset matters very little. But it does matter, and it's the only thing the designers can actually effect, so it should be high.


Hercules "isn't weird" because his power has a plausible external explanation - divine heritage. Not all fighters have that. And the same goes for all the other fictional examples listed previously.

The source material also has people get upgraded to magical powers. Aragorn claims his mantle as rightful king and is given an army of ghosts for his troubles. The idea that you would just not be magic and then get stronger while continuing to not be magic is the outlier. It's the norm in D&D, but this is an area where D&D bucks genre conventions.


They want that, but also depth. And when the two come into conflict, depth wins every time.

Then why aren't they playing <obscure niche RPG> that is way deeper than D&D? People are picking something that is D&D, or close to it, because name recognition drives things far more than rules. And within that niche, they've never been given the tradeoff you're describing. 4e wasn't "more balance for less depth" it was "less depth, comparable amounts of imbalance, and also combat is mind-numblingly boring".

[Psyren]

It matters a great deal to the quality of the rules. But the quality of the rules don't really matter much at all to the success of the product.

"Quality of the rules" is subjective (and the contribution of interclass balance to said quality is even moreso), and thus how much it truly matters will vary from person to person. For me (and evidently many others) the quality of the rules is fine; for you, it's not good enough, and that's okay. "Success of the product" meanwhile is objective - it can be empirically measured, compared to competing products and editions, and design decisions made as a result.

In other words - when the designers decide which aspects to spend precious limited development time continuing to iterate on, class balance is something they evidently decided not to chase. I believe that decision was the correct one. Maybe they'll get around to it eventually, and folks like you who care about it will be happier - but until then, you have the tools you need to fix it on your own at your tables.


The source material also has people get upgraded to magical powers. Aragorn claims his mantle as rightful king and is given an army of ghosts for his troubles. The idea that you would just not be magic and then get stronger while continuing to not be magic is the outlier. It's the norm in D&D, but this is an area where D&D bucks genre conventions.

Aragon isn't a Fighter to begin with, so him attaining magic doesn't mean every fighter should follow in his footsteps. (Honestly, I don't even think he'd qualify as a normal human in D&D terms, no more than any of the other fictional legends we discussed.)


Then why aren't they playing <obscure niche RPG> that is way deeper than D&D? People are picking something that is D&D, or close to it, because name recognition drives things far more than rules. And within that niche, they've never been given the tradeoff you're describing. 4e wasn't "more balance for less depth" it was "less depth, comparable amounts of imbalance, and also combat is mind-numblingly boring".

That would be because of the other factor I didn't mention (because we weren't talking about it) - accessibility. Something like GURPS can go way deeper than D&D, sure, but it sacrifices a ton of accessibility to do so. There are other factors besides these three that designers have to consider when making decisions, and for me, D&D and its derivates hit the sweet spot.

[DMVerdandi]

Now this is an interesting thread; So here is my 2 cents. Some of the ideas are already echoed in the thread, thus that is my agreeing with how important the poster's points were.

1. Wizards in real life would not just be a "Scientist/Engineer".

No. One if the issues with D&D and 3.5 in general are the artificial gamist abstractions of even making like a "wizard" in general. Is a wizard just a smart person? No. An Expert is a smart person. A wizard is someone with a Resource that ignores the standard rules of the game that is manipulated best by intelligence. So you only have that sort of person in very small places. In real life, a wizard would be in the past and future, someone with Technology and Wealth. Yes, you could argue semantics and say that's an artificer, whatever. Elon Musk would be a "wizard". Not his actual engineers. Magic is his R&D Team making something. Also, alternatively, a cyber-defense officer in the military. Wizard isn't a scientist/engineer. It's a scientist/engineer/Cosmopolitan man/Philosopher king/Captain of Industry with an unlimited budget. Level 20 is being a billionaire.
Leonardo DaVinci is a wizard. A savant with a black card. It is the Senex archetype. From Senex [Latin for old man], we get Senate. Thus the technocrats, Mandarin or intelligencia are the ACTUAL representations of wizards. Heck, ideas like freemasons or the illuminati controlling the world from the shadows. Not just "smart dude". That is an NPC.

2. Wizard, Cleric and Druid are done right. Fighter is done wrong.
What is the fighter?
11 mundane tricks. An 11 year old in a BJJ class has more feats than a fighter.

Fighter is the absolute WORST PC class in the game and does not express it's archetype well, and is not an archetype at all. It is a Non-archetype.
Translated to the real world, the caster classes are people who have command over sectors of infrastructure and concepts. Science, Religion, Environment. The CEO of Greenpeace, or PETA[arguably], are like the level 20 Druid. An AUTHORITY on such a subject. So, a "FIGHTER", even at level one should be like a crack recruit in a special forces unit at level 1. You are Elite, but still a baby. The usual SF unit newbie is about 19-20, and usually they are in the suck about 10 or so years before they either train, command, or ETS[retire].

Thing is, SF guys are NERDS. You have to be. And above all, they are DISCIPLINED NERDS. So even in real life, if you are capping stats, these guys would exceed the pointbuy system alone and would gain INSANE amounts of experience in no time. Just to make the cut, they would have to have raw stats through the roof, and then the military says "go learn X, you have to go assassinate some dude in no mans land and Infiltrate". AND they routinely run 4 minute miles, bench god, and can do backflips counting to 100,000 in Russian.
Your fighter is not just a guy who can throw a haymaker. That is a warrior. The "fighter" is supposed to be a monster. And they always have been throughout history. No man who was "good at fightin" alone ever amounted to anything short of a gladiator. The real hero is someone who can kill people like breathing, and is also something of a scientist himself, because only the smart survive.

Thus the idea of "street smarts". That is why strategy and tactics and prep conquer nations. You take that same Savant. That same extremely high functioning neuro-atypical kid, and you give him resources to get good at killin. THAT is what the "fighter" always has been and always should be. It's supposed to be the James Bond to M, Not Mook no.4

So automatically there is a roadblock. That roadblock is that there are CLASSES, that hold back what should have always been FEATS, behind CLASS LEVELS, which is infinitely wrong. Only by creating what would be a guild that secretly guards information [which has always been a thing anyway], can you stop someone from learning everything, especially if they are the type. So really, the class system is wrong in itself and falsely premised.


So, before I get into the Diatribe that is the SYSTEMATIC fix, I will show what the fighter in 3.5 is supposed to look like. What is a true to life? How would you represent a commando in 3.5 terms with the resources that 3.5 already has, without a complete homebrewed class
Factotum//Generic Warrior
It would get better with one single change, and that change being instead of Arcane Dilletante and opportunistic peity, swap for chameleon feats. That gives you your bad-A** normal.
That is what Conan is supposed to be. That is what the action hero is supposed to be. Not some meathead. They are usually leading the meatheads, and the meatheads die. In real life too. It's the guy who's swole, but ALSO has the WIT to be inspired to come up with the solution which is the fusion of brains and brawn on the fly. Brock Samson is the the smartest man in the room, despite everyone thinking it's Dr.Venture. He just has triddlydinks. Brock just knows that you can solve most problems by killing someone.





It's Kind of even easier when you have like homebrews and pathfinder and all that jazz. The pathfinder Build, since it requires less gimmies, is probably more important.
Gestalt Brawler//Polymath[Empiricist Investigator]
Boom. That's it. You don't even have to do any weird stuff. That is what a standard, Taken 1-3 Dad, MMA Junkie, Yes I wax my mustache, but I can kill you with a spoon, king of all trades, minuteman would be properly expressed as in PF. they SMOKE a "fighter", but in real life, you aren't even considered a good "fighter", unless you are really maxing out hard on SF level stuff. It's the standard. Everyone else is liable to get their food pushed back in on the street.

Yes, a wizard is better than that, but that build should be what is considered the norm for hypercompetence, which is VERY much a celebrated thing in real life, and expected for those considered able to be people who get "stuff" done. That is what the "fighter" should be. The wizard of fighting, and you aren't getting that with even the upgraded pathinder fighter. It has to be outside the situational, and become the general.
Hell, call the infusions protein shakes and mutagens steroid stacks and pre-workout.

You only need two feats. Extra investigator traits, and extra martial flexibility. That's all. That's all you ever need to take. As far as favored class bonuses go, if you are able to get those with half-elf [my books are away from me], then it just gets better every level. Personally, I think a good amount of times per day you can use martial flexibility is probably around 30 minutes/Uses a day. Having that at level 10 would take 5 purchases of extra martial flexibility.
The best part of it all, is that it's just a base brawler that it takes. You can change what "type of combatant" you are by changing the brawler archetype, while maintaining the primary reason why it's so sick, the fact that it CAN do these feats of wonder, just off raw talent and general working knowledge. You don't have to spend a permanent resource to learn power attack. PAWNCH THAT SOB. HARD. Duh. When you are rolling on the mat, sometimes you are in the zone and you pull some sick ISH you saw ONCE on youtube.

You aren't supposed to be spending the same amount of resource that a wizard gets on learning WISH, to learn toughness. That's stupid. [And in actuallity, it's more expensive. Scratch that.The same amount of resources learning PERSISTENT SPELL. Spells are WAY cheaper than feats.] In pathfinder, you can get to permanently write in your mind 4 spells for 1 feat.


3. The system fix
WELL, Obviously classes die. They don't make any sense. however, there does need to be ways in which you can distinguish yourself and show that you are different from regular shmucks. Essentially a growth and progress formula that shows that you are dope, know dope things, and can get doper. I say instead of classes, you get occupation and talent feats, and then the amount of these you can hold is based on a formula of Resources + Caste/Rank/Nobility + Intelligence.

So, someone who is high on the caste system and has tons of resources but limited intelligence, still has access to the premier education, and can learn WAY more than someone who has extremely high intelligence but no resources or rank. You can just be SMART and have nothing to do with it. People's talent gets wasted all the time.

What we consider techniques, spells and skills would be purchasable from said occupation and talent feats. with each occupation and or talent having things that range from acolyte to [lets say 5 points to mastery]maester in cost to learn as well as cost to use.

Occupations should take a cue from 4e and be powered by power sources, and each power source would have it's own pool of points, thus you could know a little bit about a lot of things. About the divine, about the arcane, about the primal and the shadows and the mind, and it amounts to a little bit. and at the same time one person could learn a lot about all of them in a lifetime, and just be a monster but the sources and the occupations may or may not be directly linked. If you have the divine power source learned by mastering the cleric occupation, it directly impacts how strongly your powers are if you were to obtain the paladin occupation. You don't just start over as a crap paladin, because you are empowered by the same element, you just are applying it differently. A master paladin with acolyte cleric training is still able to learn really advanced clerical stuff because it becomes easier to understand if you are already a beast at something similar.

So, certain spells and techniques might be locked behind specializing, but general stuff[Talents] are learnable by everyone, without having to be specialized in said occupation. racial and cultural traits would be similar, just exposing a set of techs, spells, knowledge and such which could be focused on, or not at all

Everything else would be handled by raw stats.
It's the artificial separation which doesn't naturally make sense. You can be smart and work out at the same time. You can take a little bit of time to learn how to code before you go to bed, even as a soldier or a boxer. The static 1-20 structure of the class is the problem, and hiding stuff behind archetypes, as well as the value of mundane things being so expensive. Most skills need to be interpreted from raw ability scores instead of skills being a whole different mechanism onto themselves, or rather what we would call the operative 3.5 [FEAT] does not need to be that expensive at all. They should cost the relative same amount as a spell.

This is why like a maneuver shouldn't be a special thing at all. Maneuvers, skill tricks, and anything you can do or pay for to be better at should cost the same amount as a spell, and perhaps be cheaper, but also have a cost to use and a resource, even if the resource is easier to get. Grit, panache, ki, whatever. Martial points, AKA Stamina.

The important thing would be having an amount of martial techniques that was if not equal to the number of spells, still numerous, and varied. We know this can be done because there are INSANE amounts of feats. The point is in giving them a relative price and cost.
THAT is how you fix it.

Being a Maester Judge might mean you can literally summon a giant hammer of law to crush your foes, but as an acolyte you get bonuses to recalling obscure legal knowledge.
Being a Maester Fighter might mean you can use any martial technique while using *flow*, or a technique of *ferocity* that doesn't leave you tired whatsoever.
That's how I would fix it to be fair, and simply have discounts in the usage costs when you have the occupation feat. It is *easier* when you are good so native costs go down.

Anyone can learn to cast a spell. Someone with the wizard occupation has special tricks of the trade that make it especially easy to cast though. You don't need so much raw talent because you have an education in how to be most efficient. You might learn fireball with the fighter and knight occupations, and it just isn't as easy casting it as if you had invested your focus.
Thus Occupations become these... paths that each person specializes in. Everything is learnable from everyone, but some people have a calling. How rapidly you grow as well as how many of these callings you express are tied to the amount of wealth, resources, and raw intelligence you have, and once they leave the realm of the mundane and become supernatural, being inclined to learn these techniques is crucial to their success.

Magic itself, then would be within just as many occupations and talents. there can be powered by different sources and such, so a time/space spell is within it's own school, which could be cheaper or or more expensive for certain types of occupations to learn. A time-mage has a drastically easier time learning and using time-space magic than a surgeon does, however it may be extremely useful for a surgeon to learn how to stop time, thus they pay the cost because it is worth it. It's not something in their curriculum, but it's useful. the minor sub-scripts that you learn once you purchase time-space magic would be far lower than what it takes to learn how to use it in general,

[Quertus]

Nobody that wants to play a wizard is gonna pick a feral half-orc for their race just like nobody that wants to go barbarian is gonna pick a venerable grey elf.

Well, not only would I pick Feral Half-Orc for the race for my Wizard, it's actually the nearly optimal choice.


Even Eomer and Theoden was pulling weird stuff, and there's no way they could be more than fifth level fighters.

Actually, I'd say that they both had Leadership, and so there's no way either could have been below 6th level…


So it's actually worse, because a group of four level X PCs may or may not be able to do at all what the system expects, both by being too powerful or too weak?

Yes. Eventually, "good" players find the sweet spot. All in accordance with the game's design. Whether that is a good design goal is a matter of some debate.

[Aotrs Commander]

(Honestly, I don't even think he'd qualify as a normal human in D&D terms, no more than any of the other fictional legends we discussed.)

He doesn't; Dúnedain are High Men, which is basically part of the whole Middle-Earth theme which is The Old Stuff Is Just Better Than You.

At the very least, they'd have to be modelled something more akin Aasimar/Tieflings et al (i.e. with low LA or high RP, depending whether you're using 3.5 or PF).

[Peat]

Tbf, a lot of the examples about how real life Fighters are total all round badasses would be represented in D&D/PF (well, PF to an extent) by using multiclassing (i.e. being a politician or going to school), other Martial Classes (MAs = Monks, Cuchulain = Barbarian, Knight = Knight etc.etc.) PrCing (saying all SF soldiers are in a PrC seems pretty fair) and so on.

And of course, when you have all that, you can do a reasonable job of accommodating most martial stereotypes. It's just a shame the Fighter says it does something like that and requires a lot of reading/doing things other than being a Fighter to do so. Personally, I suspect they made Fighter the way it is so that the friend who doesn't really want to do anything other than hang out, drink, eat pizza, say silly things, and play along without actually having to do any real thinking or investment has something to play.

And if anyone wants to see what a version of the Fighter is that kinda allows the lazy player but also offers a lot more baked in power and versatility, PF's Fighter is a heck of an improvement. Just wish it had more than 2 skill points natively but oi vey.



Whether or not it's some form of "narrative retribution" against jocks, I don't think D&D was the genesis of that. The superiority of magic over not-magic has been a part of many more kinds of fiction than D&D.

If you look at Gygax's favourite fantasy books, or the majority of fantasy published prior to D&D, this isn't really true. Most days the iron thewed sword wielder beats the evil wizard (who's nowhere near as powerful as a D&D wizard). Books where that's not true are mostly post-D&D.



Hercules "isn't weird" because his power has a plausible external explanation - divine heritage. Not all fighters have that. And the same goes for all the other fictional examples listed previously.


If we're going for sticking faithfully with mythic and legendary sources, then pretty much all of them have divine heritage so it doesn't really matter, and the wizards have far far too much power compared to their counterparts (who are also frequently in some way divine). If we're not going for faithful and are just using it as a loose reference when mixed in with a bunch of Fantasy archetypes and wargame conventions, I don't see the point in applying it only when it screws Fighters and not Wizards.

[Psyren]

If we're going for sticking faithfully with mythic and legendary sources, then pretty much all of them have divine heritage so it doesn't really matter,

And that's exactly my point- those authors almost universally needed something besides just "training" to explain where these characters' power came from. Every last one either had divine heritage like descending from a deity, or got blessed by one, or interacted with some mythic power source like the River Styx, or drew their power from a magical item like Excalibur etc etc.


and the wizards have far far too much power compared to their counterparts (who are also frequently in some way divine). If we're not going for faithful and are just using it as a loose reference when mixed in with a bunch of Fantasy archetypes and wargame conventions, I don't see the point in applying it only when it screws Fighters and not Wizards.

That depends on the setting. Yes, a D&D wizard can do a lot more exciting things than say, Gandalf - but compared to someone like Milamber, or Rand al'Thor, or Sparrowhawk, or Prospero, or Medivh, I'd say the difference isn't that noteworthy.



And if anyone wants to see what a version of the Fighter is that kinda allows the lazy player but also offers a lot more baked in power and versatility, PF's Fighter is a heck of an improvement. Just wish it had more than 2 skill points natively but oi vey.

I completely agree but their hands were a bit tied - the need to make P1 backwards-compatible with 3.5 and avoid people having to remake their characters meant they needed to keep most of the basic chassis intact. But thanks to Advanced Weapon Training, archetypes, skill consolidation and traits I think they successfully gave the Fighter the out-of-combat boost it needed.

[AntiAuthority]

Well, Blunt, Piercing and Slashing Mastery are actually pretty neat abilities, if they happened at like level 10 instead of 20 and only the Fighter can get them. Otherwise PF made them the best at using Heavy Armor, which was nice. Personally, I think giving them the Warblade ability to swap all their Weapon Specific feats with a bit of warm up would help, and then maybe letting them effectively make whatever weapon they were weilding Aptitude would solidy the whole Weapon Master schtick.

Blunt, Piercing and Slashing Mastery? Could you elaborate, I couldn't find any information when I googled them?

I like swapping out feats with some prep, really sells the idea that they have far raw skill than someone like a Barbarian.

And Pathfinder's Two Handed Fighter had an interesting ability, in that they could threaten a crit at will at Level 20 at an attack penalty. I feel it's a good ability in theory, but it's coming near the end of the character's career, when... I once again find it weird that a trained warrior can't do that a lot sooner, even I know how to punch at someone's throat for a "critical strike."

I suppose there is one way thing that could help set Fighters apart from other martial classes, but not sure how to implement it mechanically. Essentially, to show the way a Fighter is the most skilled class, maybe they get extra options and benefits from using weapons than other martial classes? Such as "A skilled gunslinger can shoot a target in the neck" while "A Fighter can intentionally cause a ricochet that'll go around barriers and hit the enemy."




Tbf, a lot of the examples about how real life Fighters are total all round badasses would be represented in D&D/PF (well, PF to an extent) by using multiclassing (i.e. being a politician or going to school), other Martial Classes (MAs = Monks, Cuchulain = Barbarian, Knight = Knight etc.etc.) PrCing (saying all SF soldiers are in a PrC seems pretty fair) and so on.

We gotta keep martial characters weaker than real life warriors is why lol.



If we're going for sticking faithfully with mythic and legendary sources, then pretty much all of them have divine heritage so it doesn't really matter, and the wizards have far far too much power compared to their counterparts (who are also frequently in some way divine). If we're not going for faithful and are just using it as a loose reference when mixed in with a bunch of Fantasy archetypes and wargame conventions, I don't see the point in applying it only when it screws Fighters and not Wizards.

You've answered your own question, there isn't a point. Just a double standard.

[Psyren]

And Pathfinder's Two Handed Fighter had an interesting ability, in that they could threaten a crit at will at Level 20 at an attack penalty. I feel it's a good ability in theory, but it's coming near the end of the character's career, when... I once again find it weird that a trained warrior can't do that a lot sooner, even I know how to punch at someone's throat for a "critical strike."

Targeting vitals/sensitive areas would be an application of the Called Shot rules (https://www.d20pfsrd.com/gamemastering/other-rules/called-shots/), which you can use at any level. "Neck" (rated Challenging) would cover going for the throat.

[Blackhawk748]

Blunt, Piercing and Slashing Mastery? Could you elaborate, I couldn't find any information when I googled them?

I like swapping out feats with some prep, really sells the idea that they have far raw skill than someone like a Barbarian.

And Pathfinder's Two Handed Fighter had an interesting ability, in that they could threaten a crit at will at Level 20 at an attack penalty. I feel it's a good ability in theory, but it's coming near the end of the character's career, when... I once again find it weird that a trained warrior can't do that a lot sooner, even I know how to punch at someone's throat for a "critical strike."

I suppose there is one way thing that could help set Fighters apart from other martial classes, but not sure how to implement it mechanically. Essentially, to show the way a Fighter is the most skilled class, maybe they get extra options and benefits from using weapons than other martial classes? Such as "A skilled gunslinger can shoot a target in the neck" while "A Fighter can intentionally cause a ricochet that'll go around barriers and hit the enemy."

Sorry, its Melee and Ranged Weapon Mastery. And my brain some how mixed the benefit up with Weapon Supremacy which gives you a bunch of nice benefits, it just makes you be level 18 in Fighter.

And ya, the Gunslinger tricks but for other weapons would be great. Except most of those got turned into general Combat feats that everyone gets to use, thus infringing on the Fighter's design space

[Remuko]

Blunt, Piercing and Slashing Mastery? Could you elaborate, I couldn't find any information when I googled them?

Theres a feat fighters can get called Melee Weapon Mastery, in 3.5. You have to choose slashing piercing or bludgeoning when you take it. Thats what feat(s) they were referencing.
We gotta keep martial characters weaker than real life warriors is why lol.

[Peat]

And that's exactly my point- those authors almost universally needed something besides just "training" to explain where these characters' power came from. Every last one either had divine heritage like descending from a deity, or got blessed by one, or interacted with some mythic power source like the River Styx, or drew their power from a magical item like Excalibur etc etc.

But it's also true for a lot of mythic/legendary wizards. Yet nobody would think of locking their class features behind anything other than training. That is my point. Either it should all be coming from X item/blessing, or you just say "what the hell" and stick the ability to do it in classes somewhere. One rule for one and another for the other doesn't fit with "We're following X, and this is how it is done in X". It only works if it's a choice to pick the good things for Wizards and the bad things for Fighters.


That depends on the setting. Yes, a D&D wizard can do a lot more exciting things than say, Gandalf - but compared to someone like Milamber, or Rand al'Thor, or Sparrowhawk, or Prospero, or Medivh, I'd say the difference isn't that noteworthy.

Again - I was talking exclusively about a mythic/legendary/pre D&D fantasy source set i.e. where we're getting the idea that warriors are only capable of supernatural things from things that shouldn't be reflected by their class. Of course you can find more powerful spellcasters from other settings. But if we're going to pick and choose settings, rather than just go with that one coherent set you're drawing all objections to Fighters being able to access supernatural power in class from, then why not pick settings where Fighters can access supernatural effects just through training as well? There is no need to pick and choose to enable spellcasters and screw fighters unless that's what you actually want.

Also...

Rand Al'Thor - Inborn magical talent that shows itself as an affinity for certain types of magic (also with a probable big reincarnation template attached) - probably best shown by Sorcerer (with at least a Fighter level, and a Gish PrC) - not a Wizard

Sparhawk - In a setting where all magic is clerical, probably some sort of adapted Paladin/Warpriest who is then revealed to be a God after getting hold of a unique item - not a Wizard

Milamber - Again, a person with innate magical talent and a big honking 'predestined' template whose capabilities are altered by a God's agent. Probably fair to call a Wizard given how represented, but even then, you can make a case for Sorcerer (which is what the D&D playing author who wrote him called him...)

Prospero - A fair example. He has Sleep, Invisibility, the power to bind and punish Spirits, some Weather Control and the ability to Raise the Dead. Might be missing some because it's been a while since I've read/watched The Tempest. But no Fireballs, no Teleportation, don't recall any Divinations, no Mage Armour etc.etc. He does not have the ability to do everything, nowhere near.

Fair's fair. If we're going to be exact and demanding about what a Fighter's class is going to give it (and what should be coming from magic items, templates, etc.etc.), then apply the same to Wizards. Most of them either display greater limitations than D&D wizards, or have big cases of some sort of template applied.

And sure, we don't have to follow that when allotting powers to a D&D wizard. No reason to unless wanted. But the same goes for fighters. Which is why we're once again back to picking and choosing on sources without consistency, and wanting to give Wizards everything and Fighters everything. And that's a choice. Not a logically consistent application of the sources, not a reflection of reality, but a choice. Which has been my point all along.

[Berenger]

Makes the game more realistic.

Real life wizards make robots. Robots are better soldiers than human soldiers.
Real life wizards make Power Armor. Wizard in Power Armor is better than a human soldier.
Real life wizards make tanks, gunships, battleships, and fully automate them with drone or ai technology. They're better than a human soldier.
Real life wizards use genetic augmentations to turn themselves into super soldiers. Mutant super soldiers are better than human soldiers.
Real life wizards make automated mass production complexes manned by drones and robots that lets him build and churn out machinery of epic proportions quickly and by himself. Human soldiers have no idea where to even start.

In case you didn't notice, real life wizards are anyone in the intellectual fields, mainly technology and science. And a human soldier is someone who spends his life increasing his muscle mass or reflexes through training.

So why are people arguing that once a wizard hits high levels and have enough gold to buy a country, he should still be on par with a human soldier? Makes no sense. Wizards should be stronger than fighters. Because human bodies are fragile, weak, and inferior to even animals. Bears beat humans. Tigers beat humans. So people who dedicate their lives making their bodies stronger through training even fully knowing that they will never be able to beat a bear in strength should be weaker than people who dedicate their lives making their bodies stronger through anything but training like studying biology, chemistry, physics, robotics, etc.

All of those are experts (https://www.d20srd.org/srd/npcClasses/expert.htm) with maxed Craft and Knowledge skills, not wizards.

The war machines are typically operated by other experts and warriors (https://www.d20srd.org/srd/npcClasses/warrior.htm).

[Zarrgon]

If you look at Gygax's favourite fantasy books, or the majority of fantasy published prior to D&D, this isn't really true. Most days the iron thewed sword wielder beats the evil wizard (who's nowhere near as powerful as a D&D wizard). Books where that's not true are mostly post-D&D.


Really, this is true of just about all fiction in general. No matter how powerful a villain is, they will just about never use that power fully against the hero.

X-men the last stand: Magento just stands there and watches both Colossas and Wolverine fight...when he could have just flicked a finger and send both of them to the moon(or like 50 miles out into the Pacific). Also he could have taken apart the bridge, or cars, and made dozens of razor sharp metal chunks to kill everyone on the island.

Guardians of the Galaxy: At the end, Roinon fights the Guardians using the power of ''knock them down and make them fall" instead of...well anything else that might hurt or kill them.

Spider Man far from home- Mystero with tons of Stark drone tech could not kill Spider Man. Other then things like sonic and gas, why not use more smart missiles?

The reason is: the hero must win.

[AntiAuthority]

Sorry, its Melee and Ranged Weapon Mastery. And my brain some how mixed the benefit up with Weapon Supremacy which gives you a bunch of nice benefits, it just makes you be level 18 in Fighter.

And ya, the Gunslinger tricks but for other weapons would be great. Except most of those got turned into general Combat feats that everyone gets to use, thus infringing on the Fighter's design space


Theres a feat fighters can get called Melee Weapon Mastery, in 3.5. You have to choose slashing piercing or bludgeoning when you take it. Thats what feat(s) they were referencing.
We gotta keep martial characters weaker than real life warriors is why lol.

Looking at both... They're pretty cool. Especially Melee Weapon Mastery. Weapon Supremacy seems like something that could easily be turned into class features and gotten at earlier levels than 18 when magic users are able to use Save or Sucks much earlier lol. But they're also hidden behind a bunch of feats, which I'm beginning to think were just a nerf in disguise for martial classes...

Also, iterative attacks... Why can't my character get 4 attacks and be able to move their full speed? I'm also a little iffy on the negatives of iterative attacks being a requirement, as it seems like another unnecessary nerf.




Really, this is true of just about all fiction in general. No matter how powerful a villain is, they will just about never use that power fully against the hero.

X-men the last stand: Magento just stands there and watches both Colossas and Wolverine fight...when he could have just flicked a finger and send both of them to the moon(or like 50 miles out into the Pacific). Also he could have taken apart the bridge, or cars, and made dozens of razor sharp metal chunks to kill everyone on the island.

Guardians of the Galaxy: At the end, Roinon fights the Guardians using the power of ''knock them down and make them fall" instead of...well anything else that might hurt or kill them.

Spider Man far from home- Mystero with tons of Stark drone tech could not kill Spider Man. Other then things like sonic and gas, why not use more smart missiles?

The reason is: the hero must win.

To be fair, heroes forget their powers for the sake of the villain winning or surviving longer too... (https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ForgotAboutHisPowers)

[Peat]

Really, this is true of just about all fiction in general. No matter how powerful a villain is, they will just about never use that power fully against the hero.

X-men the last stand: Magento just stands there and watches both Colossas and Wolverine fight...when he could have just flicked a finger and send both of them to the moon(or like 50 miles out into the Pacific). Also he could have taken apart the bridge, or cars, and made dozens of razor sharp metal chunks to kill everyone on the island.

Guardians of the Galaxy: At the end, Roinon fights the Guardians using the power of ''knock them down and make them fall" instead of...well anything else that might hurt or kill them.

Spider Man far from home- Mystero with tons of Stark drone tech could not kill Spider Man. Other then things like sonic and gas, why not use more smart missiles?

The reason is: the hero must win.

All fiction?

What did Thulsa Doom forget to do to Conan in the movie? What did Sauron do earlier in the books that would have saved him at the end of LotR?

Not all fiction features a villain that is mightier where it matters and needs to act the fool.

[Psyren]

He does not have the ability to do everything, nowhere near.

To be absolutely clear - I don't like wizards that can do "everything" either. However, I don't mind ones that can do anything, and I think the distinction is crucial.

For me, a wizard is a class of limitless potential - until they actually start preparing any of their spells, in which case that potential decreases drastically every time they do. That's the model the game should ideally be shooting for. I think PF has gotten closer to that ideal than 3.5 did, and I think 5e is closer still - albeit doing other things along the way that I disagree with.`


Fair's fair. If we're going to be exact and demanding about what a Fighter's class is going to give it (and what should be coming from magic items, templates, etc.etc.), then apply the same to Wizards. Most of them either display greater limitations than D&D wizards, or have big cases of some sort of template applied.

And sure, we don't have to follow that when allotting powers to a D&D wizard. No reason to unless wanted. But the same goes for fighters. Which is why we're once again back to picking and choosing on sources without consistency, and wanting to give Wizards everything and Fighters everything. And that's a choice. Not a logically consistent application of the sources, not a reflection of reality, but a choice. Which has been my point all along.

While I agree there are some examples of wizards that have something going for them besides training, it's a far cry from every fictional martial (well, the vast majority outside of shounen anyway) needing such an explanation.

And in fact, I'm okay with martials getting some limited magical abilities as they level too. For example, I think high-level rogues should get shaodw-related abilities innately instead of needing to PrC for them.

[Dienekes]

While I agree there are some examples of wizards that have something going for them besides training, it's a far cry from every fictional martial (well, the vast majority outside of shounen anyway) needing such an explanation.

And in fact, I'm okay with martials getting some limited magical abilities as they level too. For example, I think high-level rogues should get shaodw-related abilities innately instead of needing to PrC for them.

Well hold on here. Your earlier post brought up myths and legends, discussing the Greek Achilles and Hercules, Wukong, and Arthurian legend. And I don't think this statement really even hold true for that. In Arthurian legend, certainly, King Arthur had his magic sword, but he was never the greatest knight in his realm (And actually the sword being magical was a later addition, it was originally just signified his rank). The greatest knights were the likes of Gawain, Bors, and later Lancelot depending on the version you're drawing from. And none of them had anything magical about them.

For the Greek legends you're missing out on characters like Ajax (also known as the best character in the freaking Iliad) who very specifically doesn't have the gods guiding him and he was regarded as the second greatest warrior on the Greek side, and dueled against Hector fighting to a tie even with Apollo puling strings so that Hector wouldn't die.

And that's not getting into different legends such as Beowulf, who is just a badass. He's just presented as a guy who can swim for days, fight dragons in his 60s, and hold his breath for a week. And he wasn't even the only one considered capable of doing these things. He lost that month long swimming race against another normal dude.

While on the other side of things, Merlin either gets his magic being half-demon, or through worship of the old pagan gods depending on your version, the mages of Cassandra and Tiresias are divinely cursed/inspired. I can't really think of any Ancient Greek magic user who wasn't either the child of a god, divinely inspired, or a Titan in disguise. In Arthurian legend magic comes mostly through blessings, either from God, demons, or fairy. And while I am sure there are going to be examples that come up that don't have some outside source for their magic, I don't see them as any more or less prevalent than the not-so-mundane warriors of legend.

[Peat]

To be absolutely clear - I don't like wizards that can do "everything" either. However, I don't mind ones that can do anything, and I think the distinction is crucial.

For me, a wizard is a class of limitless potential - until they actually start preparing any of their spells, in which case that potential decreases drastically every time they do. That's the model the game should ideally be shooting for. I think PF has gotten closer to that ideal than 3.5 did, and I think 5e is closer still - albeit doing other things along the way that I disagree with.`

Fair enough. Me, I prefer a more limited potential on the character sheet - I think what White Wolf's Mage games do, where you can do a lot in certain sphere but only those, is more my preferred speed - but I get that's not what D&D is about on the sheet. And I'd also agree that other editions have done better at forcing choices.


While I agree there are some examples of wizards that have something going for them besides training, it's a far cry from every fictional martial (well, the vast majority outside of shounen anyway) needing such an explanation.

And in fact, I'm okay with martials getting some limited magical abilities as they level too. For example, I think high-level rogues should get shaodw-related abilities innately instead of needing to PrC for them.

I think there's more wizards out there than you believe who have those explanations, and less martials, but I think we can agree to disagree on that. And some limited magical abilities - and maybe some exponential skills - is most of what I really want here.


edit: Also I can't believe I just confused Sparrowhawk with Sparhawk. My bad!

[Perch]

Makes the game more realistic.

Real life wizards make robots. Robots are better soldiers than human soldiers.
Real life wizards make Power Armor. Wizard in Power Armor is better than a human soldier.
Real life wizards make tanks, gunships, battleships, and fully automate them with drone or ai technology. They're better than a human soldier.
Real life wizards use genetic augmentations to turn themselves into super soldiers. Mutant super soldiers are better than human soldiers.
Real life wizards make automated mass production complexes manned by drones and robots that lets him build and churn out machinery of epic proportions quickly and by himself. Human soldiers have no idea where to even start.

In case you didn't notice, real life wizards are anyone in the intellectual fields, mainly technology and science. And a human soldier is someone who spends his life increasing his muscle mass or reflexes through training.

So why are people arguing that once a wizard hits high levels and have enough gold to buy a country, he should still be on par with a human soldier? Makes no sense. Wizards should be stronger than fighters. Because human bodies are fragile, weak, and inferior to even animals. Bears beat humans. Tigers beat humans. So people who dedicate their lives making their bodies stronger through training even fully knowing that they will never be able to beat a bear in strength should be weaker than people who dedicate their lives making their bodies stronger through anything but training like studying biology, chemistry, physics, robotics, etc.

Repeat with me.

{Scrubbed}

MAGIC IS NOT THE SAME AS TECHNOLOGY!

{Scrubbed}

[digiman619]

Repeat with me.

{Scrubbed post, scrubbed quote}

MAGIC IS NOT THE SAME AS TECHNOLOGY!

{Scrubbed post, scrubbed quote}

You're right. However, you may have noticed that magic isn't "realistic" like fighting is IRL. Also, a lot of what magic does can be modeled with technology, so technology is the closest we have for a real world equivalent.

[Dienekes]

You're right. However, you may have noticed that magic isn't "realistic" like fighting is IRL. Also, a lot of what magic does can be modeled with technology, so technology is the closest we have for a real world equivalent.

That's still a weird argument to make though.

Like: Tonight in our battles to the death! In one corner we have a trained Navy Seal. In the other corner a multiple PhD engineer with a pencil, paper, calculator and all the equipment necessary to build a nuclear warhead. Touch gloves in the middle and come out swinging!

If we say technology is what we're modelling our magic around. Then magic should be painfully restrictive. Our mage should have to go through years of college to learn the basics of magical theory. Maybe having projects where they do a single cantrip over the course of a day or month. Go find funding with government or private investors to allow to do research. All so they can work on one spell for decades at a time that may or may not even work. Only to find when that project finishes that to get funding for the study of a single other type of spell requires them to go back to university to learn something that they now know will be necessary for the next step of making their 1 spell work efficiently enough to be mass-produced. Assuming that your funding doesn't dry up before the spell finishes.

I really don't think modelling our mages on that reality works particularly well either. Or at least doesn't make for a fun game.

[Lucas Yew]

Also, iterative attacks... Why can't my character get 4 attacks and be able to move their full speed? I'm also a little iffy on the negatives of iterative attacks being a requirement, as it seems like another unnecessary nerf.

Hear, hear! Although I heard that the specific penalties were there to replicate 2E's 2.5 attacks per round (100% + 75% + 50% + 25% = 250%). Which of course, is pretty pathetic if you mix the totally unrealistic sticky feet clause as mentioned (puke in disgust).

[Psyren]

The greatest knights were the likes of Gawain, Bors, and later Lancelot depending on the version you're drawing from. And none of them had anything magical about them.

Okay - so tell me, what did they do that puts them out of range of a current D&D/PF Fighter?



For the Greek legends you're missing out on characters like Ajax (also known as the best character in the freaking Iliad) who very specifically doesn't have the gods guiding him and he was regarded as the second greatest warrior on the Greek side, and dueled against Hector fighting to a tie even with Apollo puling strings so that Hector wouldn't die.

Descended from a deity (not to mention a nymph) so no, still not human.



And that's not getting into different legends such as Beowulf, who is just a badass. He's just presented as a guy who can swim for days, fight dragons in his 60s, and hold his breath for a week. And he wasn't even the only one considered capable of doing these things. He lost that month long swimming race against another normal dude.


Putting aside that that dragon kicked his ass, all the rest of that stuff is perfectly doable by fighters and barbarians, so I'm still not seeing the issue.

[sandmote]

Okay, half of what was in this comment was addressed when I needed to take a break from writing it, so I'm splicing in where the current conversation is at the points last addressed to me.

On measuring Power Level


I feel like this is probably directed more at me than most, so here we go.

You've misunderstood something. It's not that the wizard doesn't get an equal opportunity to spend his gold and choose his race that closes the gap. It's that WBL and racial options that are compatible and conducive to maximizing wizard capability just don't go as far as those for a non-caster do.

If you consider items that expand a character's options, a wizard doesn't really have many options and the ones he does have are largely redundant to his class features. He can pick up wands, staves, runestaves, expand his spellbook, and pick up any number of items that produce magical effects but only the last of those even offers him things he can't already do and precious few of them at that. Most of his wealth really only -can- be spent on making him better at what he already does or mitigating the cost of doing it.

Race, forget about it. Any race that gives a substantial ability of any kind is gonna mean eating either RHD, LA, or both. It's almost never worth the lost clas levels for a caster.

A warrior build, on the other hand, can use his wealth to gain a whole myriad of new capabilities as well a augment his existing ones. Picking a race with RHD and/or LA really only costs a few points of BAB and maybe a handful of HP or or save bonus. The racial features can easily be worth the tradeoff or delay of class features.

The simple fact is that the overall build weight of race and wealth just isn't the same between classes not only in what they need to function but in what they have to offer.

I'm not sure this changes my point.

The wizard is (at high levels) very powerful, with abilities rarely included in a similar level of RHD, LA, or both. The fighter (at high levels) loses very little, because there's so little from those later levels, and so isn't giving nearly as much up from either. If you're a native outsider with 5 RHD, you've exchanged 3 feats and 5 hit points for 48 skill points and +3 each to will and reflex saves. Or you've given up 5 levels in a full casting class to gain stuff your spells would have prevented you from needing.

And if you're getting anything on top of the base racial features for the type it's worse, see your own argument on how useful items are.

I think some sort of formula is useful here. An approximate one, but still:


Ptotal = Rbase racial - RRHD & LA cost + W + Lall classes

Where P power, R is racial features, W is wealth (ie. acquired items) and L is levels.

L for a single class wizard is much higher than for a single class fighter at high levels, so if you're measuring by percentage the fighter gets a bigger boost from an equal raw W. Meanwhile the boost costing RHD and LA is essentially taken out of L (because you're replacing class levels with RHD & LA). In which case, the case becomes "boost the fighter by making them less of a fighter." Which is a nice floor to the power of a class, but not a great sign of parity if one class needs to take it in order to keep up with another class.

This still applies when you consider synergy between racial and class features.


Of course there's some - but where you continue to fail is in assuming the game has, or needs, such an anal degree of precise calibration to function. We do know how they came up with CR calculations - initially by using a standard party of tank fighter, stabby rogue, blaster wizard and healbot cleric, and then by basically eyeballing it and using items to patch up any cracks. It's not precise, it's not meant to be precise, and the parties they playtested with are nowhere near the top or bottom of the optimization spectrum - and yet for the vast majority of people who spend more time playing the game than complaining about it online, it works.
There's a maximum degree of precision you can ever have, because the characters aren't identical at every table. For a lot those tables, extra time is spent on keeping the wizard handicapped. Either by player choice or by having the DM tailor the encounter to waste more the spells specifically prepared.

The question here isn't whether is works. The question is whether it works without needing to be fixed. And I'm see no reason to decide differently if the fix is technically within the rules.

On Not Cherry-Picking


Oh please, even something as relatively benign as Tome of Battle ignited a firestorm of "too anime" among the 3.5 base, ended up being the most controversial splat ever made for the edition to this day (well, maybe second to BoED), and sparked complaints so ubiquitous that they ended up being acknowledged by WotC on their website. And you want actual anime characters added to the edition? Pull the other one :smallbiggrin: If you don't want anime level action from martials, stay away from 3.5e in the first place. :smallbiggrin:

No, seriously, where is cutting through a person per second not anime? Getting eaten and then cutting your way out is what? Please, explain exactly how going toe to toe with an adult dragon with a sword and your hit points does not qualify already -- and D&D's dragons are heavily anime compared to the ones from Arthurian legend. If you've decided allowing fighters to do anything from the old mythology LotR was based on is "too anime," to be included for a martial, then they're already breaking your suspension of disbelief with the features you get from having hit dice.


At the risk of repeating myself - countering your team's spellcaster(s) is something that a smart enemy would do, and thus makes sense in-universe. Casters are artillery - either you have a plan to at least try and deal with them, or you're likely to lose, it's not a radical concept. And you're correct, some of those tactics (like archers and ambushes) CAN be applied to martials too - but it's still asymmetrical if they prioritize the guy in robes, which again they would be fools (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0928.html) not to (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0712.html). As a comparison (yours), battlefield artillery didn't become a major target until it was an effective method of devastating the enemy. No one cared about medieval trebuchets on the battlefield, because they could barely do anything -- most of time they'd be carried in pieces until a fortification was encircled.

A non-comprehensive list of ways to deal with the fighter:

A fight in the water
A fight across separated vessels
A fight in the air
A fight along or between sheer cliffs
Opponents that can attack from out of charging range (rough terrain, thin tinnels, ect.)
Against anyone capable debuffing their aim or actions.


Groups heavily avoid these things until the caster has spells slots and the martial has wands. In which case the wands took up resources the caster used on something else--typically getting around their slot limits.

When this stuff is less commonly discussed, (on average) less optimized, and less used. Again, "mos tables fix it," does not equate "its not a problem."


What "effort?" :smallconfused: Either you have more encounters or fewer spell slots, both of which have been done for you many times over. There are tables you can roll on and variant spell systems you can use (like this one) if you want caster ammunition to matter more. Ah, but you are describing is done entirely to reduce the casters. All the work of going through deciding how many and want kind of encounters to set up? Its to pull back the casters, because the casters have tools.

Releasing the wizard from using their abilities to maximum effect takes little to negative effort; fewer fights at the level's spell slots. Reining them in so the fighter can keep up the effort I'm talking about.


While on the other side of things, Merlin either gets his magic being half-demon, or through worship of the old pagan gods depending on your version, the mages of Cassandra and Tiresias are divinely cursed/inspired. I can't really think of any Ancient Greek magic user who wasn't either the child of a god, divinely inspired, or a Titan in disguise. In Arthurian legend magic comes mostly through blessings, either from God, demons, or fairy. And while I am sure there are going to be examples that come up that don't have some outside source for their magic, I don't see them as any more or less prevalent than the not-so-mundane warriors of legend. I don't see "random dude who studied magic," making up a larger percentage of caster-equivalents than I see "random dude who studied the anime," among martial-equivalents.

Errata


Wizard isn't a scientist/engineer. It's a scientist/engineer/Cosmopolitan man/Philosopher king/Captain of Industry with an unlimited budget. Level 20 is being a billionaire. I agree with everything but that last bit. I don't think anyone's managed level 20, even if they've managed similar wealth.


Thus the idea of "street smarts". That is why strategy and tactics and prep conquer nations. You take that same Savant. That same extremely high functioning neuro-atypical kid, and you give him resources to get good at killin. THAT is what the "fighter" always has been and always should be. It's supposed to be the James Bond to M, Not Mook no.4

So automatically there is a roadblock. That roadblock is that there are CLASSES, that hold back what should have always been FEATS, behind CLASS LEVELS, which is infinitely wrong. Only by creating what would be a guild that secretly guards information [which has always been a thing anyway], can you stop someone from learning everything, especially if they are the type. So really, the class system is wrong in itself and falsely premised. I don't see this. The class system is there to represent different subtypes within the idea of you "good at killing." An assassin has very different methods from, say, Beowulf, and the class system is there to provide parity the width and breadth of problems they can deal with. I think the concept you're describing reflects poorly on the people you're talking about, given both the described training and exaggerated feats of strength.

I think the issue is closer to being that martials based on real (non-extreme) people don't get the width and breadth of an old European fantasy character while martials with the width and breadth of an old European fantasy character get labeled "too anime." "The cream of the most specialized of the special forces units," even as you describe them, aren't going to match a high level wizard.

Th rest of your suggestion I think strips out the d&d to make a different game entirely.


Is there some rule that I'm only allowed to apply to the parts of your post that address me directly? :smallconfused:
You invoked the "fallacy" incorrectly and I replied. What you're replying to starts by noting it isn't in response to you, and you write the following:


I'm not trying to argue that the system is balanced... 2) I'm not the one arguing for "miles ahead" - just "ahead."

I admit it could be an act of stupidity on my part, but I don't know what this has to do with what I had written. As far I as I can tell, I had written, "person A is not making argument X, but it looks like argument X makes fallacy Y." To which you replied "person A made argument Z rather than argument X, so fallacy Y doesn't apply to.... argument Z."

[digiman619]

That's still a weird argument to make though.

Like: Tonight in our battles to the death! In one corner we have a trained Navy Seal. In the other corner a multiple PhD engineer with a pencil, paper, calculator and all the equipment necessary to build a nuclear warhead. Touch gloves in the middle and come out swinging!

If we say technology is what we're modelling our magic around. Then magic should be painfully restrictive. Our mage should have to go through years of college to learn the basics of magical theory. Maybe having projects where they do a single cantrip over the course of a day or month. Go find funding with government or private investors to allow to do research. All so they can work on one spell for decades at a time that may or may not even work. Only to find when that project finishes that to get funding for the study of a single other type of spell requires them to go back to university to learn something that they now know will be necessary for the next step of making their 1 spell work efficiently enough to be mass-produced. Assuming that your funding doesn't dry up before the spell finishes.

I really don't think modelling our mages on that reality works particularly well either. Or at least doesn't make for a fun game.
Except a) they do; Trained classes like wizard have the highest starting age, but most importantly b) If it's fundamentally impossible to make "realistic" magic and we shouldn't try, then it makes no sense why we have to limit fighters to what's possible.

[NigelWalmsley]

Tome of Battle was perceived as "too anime" because it deliberately and aggressively sold itself on anime aesthetics. There's very little reason to believe that comparable mechanics would inherently cause backlash. The reality is that people mostly accept mechanical improvements when they are made. There's simply no excuse for failing to fix known problems that fans have developed workable fixes for close to a decade ago.

[Dienekes]

Okay - so tell me, what did they do that puts them out of range of a current D&D/PF Fighter?

Let's see, Bors spent a year and a day unmoving and without food and drink. Tactical genius who inspired each man in his 1000 man army to fight as ten men. Trapped a giant with some sort of homemade net launcher thing. Hunted alongside some sort of magic Fae king and kept up running beside a magic super fast horse. Not to mention clearly having very high ranks in the following non-Fighter skills: Knowledge: History, Knowledge: Religion, Knowledge: Nobility/Royalty, Knowledge: Architecture, Diplomacy, Disguise, Spot, and Survival.

Gawain was able to defeat 9 witches of high enough level that they could cast Time Stop. So that's however many levels of fighter you think is enough to defeat 9 17th level wizard/sorcerers in a straight fight. All the skills listed for Bors, but he most certainly also gets Bluff added to his list. Able to deceive the wisest man in the land and a duke of hell (balor?) has to count for something. But I'd remove Knowledge: Architecture as he doesn't design a castle in any legend I know of.

Lancelot, being a much later addition to the legends doesn't have as much weird stuff as the other two. He could just hold off an army of demons by himself at one point, and was supposedly better than them in prowess.

I'll be honest, if you can find a Fighter build that can pull that stuff off Gawain I'd be very impressed. He fights that duke of hell with no magic equipment at all. I'd love to see a build that can take on a Balor with no magic items and all those skills I listed for him at a reasonable rank to be used at high level. I'm not much of an optimizer, but I think you're better at that than me.



Descended from a deity (not to mention a nymph) so no, still not human.


That's fair-ish. But if we're going by the statement that any single drop of non-human blood in your DNA makes you not human, then we can't include any character martial or mage from Greek mythology. All of them descended from outsiders, that was part of Greek culture at the time. As it added legitimacy to the ruling class. Hell, even useless pathetic people like Paris, Pelias, and Eurystheus had divine heritage and they sucked. At everything. So being not completely human is not always a heroic boon. And since it never comes up in the Iliad in relation to Ajax feats of glory, I usually tend to disregard it. But it's fair if you don't. But then I'd say if we're trying to use myths to determine what humans and only humans can do we must not use Greek mythology as a justification for anything. Because none of them are human.



Putting aside that that dragon kicked his ass, all the rest of that stuff is perfectly doable by fighters and barbarians, so I'm still not seeing the issue.

He won that fight. He also died. But it died first. He still had time to compose a song and divide his wealth and holdings. I honestly didn't think a Fighter can swim in full armor over the course of a month non-stop with no rations without dying. Or fighting underwater for weeks without breathing. As well as pulling off people's arms while grappling (or grabbing I know Pathfinder changes the naming a bit from 3.5 whichever one makes the enemy unable to perform any actions until they get out of the condition, in this case by literally having its arm ripped off) a giant while naked. Might be for the best with that last one though. I know Pathfinder tried to implement hit location rules and they sucked.


Except a) they do; Trained classes like wizard have the highest starting age, but most importantly b) If it's fundamentally impossible to make "realistic" magic and we shouldn't try, then it makes no sense why we have to limit fighters to what's possible.

Yes, but my point is. They would need that level of training to cast every single spell. Just because you know how to engineer a tank, doesn't mean you can engineer a rocket, doesn't mean you can design a comprehensive security system, doesn't mean you can put a man on the moon.

[NigelWalmsley]

Yes, but my point is. They would need that level of training to cast every single spell. Just because you know how to engineer a tank, doesn't mean you can engineer a rocket, doesn't mean you can design a comprehensive security system, doesn't mean you can put a man on the moon.

But his point is that we don't know that's the appropriate analogy. Certainly, there are things that are kind of related such that skill at one does not guarantee competence at another. And magic could work that way. But it could also work like knowing a language, where the hard part is mastering the general structure, and learning individual words is relatively easy. Magic, by definition, doesn't exist, and as a result there is no particularly compelling model for us to choose for how it operates. Therefore, we should chose a model that produces the kinds of gameplay we consider to be compelling.

[AntiAuthority]

Hear, hear! Although I heard that the specific penalties were there to replicate 2E's 2.5 attacks per round (100% + 75% + 50% + 25% = 250%). Which of course, is pretty pathetic if you mix the totally unrealistic sticky feet clause as mentioned (puke in disgust).

Sticky Feet Clause? I don't know what that is, but from context alone, I'm assuming the game is treating martial characters like they're super glued to the floor for some reason.

And about replicating 2E... I actually liked the idea of Tremendous Strength, in that it gave the class something unique, but I can understand why it would get annoying for other classes that aren't dedicated warriors and trying to get a high strength only to be told, "No."






On Not Cherry-Picking

If you don't want anime level action from martials, stay away from 3.5e in the first place. :smallbiggrin:

No, seriously, where is cutting through a person per second not anime? Getting eaten and then cutting your way out is what? Please, explain exactly how going toe to toe with an adult dragon with a sword and your hit points does not qualify already -- and D&D's dragons are heavily anime compared to the ones from Arthurian legend. If you've decided allowing fighters to do anything from the old mythology LotR was based on is "too anime," to be included for a martial, then they're already breaking your suspension of disbelief with the features you get from having hit dice.


I absolutely hate anime. Especially with those guys with their rainbow colored hair, having tons of women throw themselves at the main character, being super strong, super fast, super precise, being able to leap on darts in mid-air, being trained by the best teacher in the world, being able to burn through being drugged while napping, having a special heritage, being forced to fight against their best friend, being the only person skilled enough to use an ultra special weapon, being a One-Man Army and transforming into a super powered monster capable of killing hundreds with a single blow when they get mad enou- Wait, I just realized I'm talking about Cu Chulainn?! :smallconfused:

Wait, no, then there's that monkey guy who likes punching people, has super strength, incredible senses, has an extending magic pole, rides around on a cloud and turns into a giant monkey when... You know, it's saying something that Goku, the character that inspired a lot of battle Shonen anime tropes, was based on a high powered mythological character.

Seriously though, saying something is being anime is a way of saying something without saying anything. Anime is a visual medium to tell a story, and there are plenty of anime where the characters are well within the realms of normal humans. What people mean by saying something is "too anime" in this context in regards to warriors is more in line with saying something is "high powered." Battle Shonen anime have high powered characters because one of the most popular Battle Shonen anime characters was just a new take on a mythological character. Battle Shonen characters are pretty much what you'd see in mythological stories in terms of abilities because a lot of them were based on Goku, the (relatively speaking) modern reinterpretation of a mythological character.

When people say "too anime" they might as well be saying "too mythological", at which point they'd have to be intentionally ignoring that D&D spellcasting was inspired by mythology too, so that counts as "too anime."

[Dienekes]

But his point is that we don't know that's the appropriate analogy. Certainly, there are things that are kind of related such that skill at one does not guarantee competence at another. And magic could work that way. But it could also work like knowing a language, where the hard part is mastering the general structure, and learning individual words is relatively easy. Magic, by definition, doesn't exist, and as a result there is no particularly compelling model for us to choose for how it operates. Therefore, we should chose a model that produces the kinds of gameplay we consider to be compelling.

A part of it is his point seems to change between posts from this:


Also, a lot of what magic does can be modeled with technology, so technology is the closest we have for a real world equivalent.

Technology is the closest real world equivalent to understanding magic.

To the later post which still tries to defend the mage=scientist/engineer stance in the first part. While then throwing his hands up in the second.

[NigelWalmsley]

Technology is the closest real world equivalent to understanding magic.

I think he meant that many magical effects are closely analogous to technological ones. Plant Growth increasing crop yields is similar to the Green Revolution doing the same. Magic Missile and the like are similar to modern automatic weapons. Sending and other "communicate at a distance" spells are like modern telecommunications. That is, he was talking about the effects of magic, rather than the practice of it.

[DMVerdandi]

Errata
I don't see this. The class system is there to represent different subtypes within the idea of you "good at killing." An assassin has very different methods from, say, Beowulf, and the class system is there to provide parity the width and breadth of problems they can deal with. I think the concept you're describing reflects poorly on the people you're talking about, given both the described training and exaggerated feats of strength.
The issue with martial classes, and why tome of battle was seen as such an improvement, is that the conceptual space that these classes are given are so narrow that they might as well be cartoonish. Fighters don't sneak? Didn't beowulf sneak? Fighters don't backstab or sneak attack? Fighters don't track, or rage or dodge? They don't do ALL of those things? Sure you can have someone specialize, but that is what is supposed to be gained with the FEATS, or some equivalent modular ability that gives them that specialization.

They shouldn't be different classes. unless the depth of what they learn is SO EXTRAVAGANT that no one else could possibly do what they are doing. And the fact that they are doing primarily physical actions, which most people with a body should be able to emulate, rather than taking on different sources of power, means that at best, the majority of mundane classes should be archetypes/kits.
So yeah, break it all the way back down to fighting man. And another point to tome of battle was taking those archetypes and making whole lists of martial arts techniques from them, because that is what the fighting man should be focused on in the first place. Martial arts techniques. Anything else should be reflective of raw stats.
And while its obvious that maneuvers were not spells, organizing them as such was brilliant. Because just looking in a feats chapter tells you next to nothing about how powerful the feats are, or what kind of style they promote.



I think the issue is closer to being that martials based on real (non-extreme) people don't get the width and breadth of an old European fantasy character while martials with the width and breadth of an old European fantasy character get labeled "too anime." "The cream of the most specialized of the special forces units," even as you describe them, aren't going to match a high level wizard.
Oh, I totally agree. The westaboo grognardary is sickening, but at the same time the backlash is also bad. Fighters should NOT just be better wizards. My point is that they should at least be worst wizards, without doing anything, because if they are going to be the class that prides itself on modularity and skill above all, skill is a measure of intelligence. And modularity means that they should have exchangeable parts. They should be able to switch builds, and in a fantasy setting that means doing it on a whim. Fighter as it is isn't even a weaker sorcerer. It's a weaker wilder really, but with none of the cool stuff, and the worst possible powers. 11 extra feats? When being an archer requires HOW MUCH?

[I forgot to explain what I meant by fighters should not be better wizards. I am alluding to the muscle wizard meme, where there is no resource that the martial spends, but they have abilities on par with or greater than people who can re-write the laws of reality. Casters if you will are still spending a finite resource, but if you are focused on making a martial do the same thing, but without any cost, it just becomes more broken, so the issue is and always will be the cost/benefit schism between magic and martial, as well as qualia. I am saying they should be a worse wizard by saying they deserve the same scale of adaptability, but only with different and weaker tools, rather than not coming close to the adaptability with FAR weaker tools.

Bigger tool box, better job. The fighter current fighter is a blunt stick vs a turing machine. It is absurd to have them both at the same capability, but there is nothing wrong with swapping the stick out for a multi-tool]
John Wick is in my mind, what the fighter should be like. And that is just a recent portrayal. Odysseus if you wanna go OG. Batman. Because it's more than just being able to use all martial weapons and a couple of tricks. It's about understanding the science behind war and fighting in general.



Th rest of your suggestion I think strips out the d&d to make a different game entirely.
[/QUOTE]
Yes.
Ultimately however, I do think that the Gestalting of the Polymath//Brawler is the solution to at least having that supernormal mastery which I believe should exemplify the Fighter in the first place. Is it anywhere near the wizard? No. But the wizard is pulling from a different dimension altogether. The over man if you will is still bound within his realm of control. He HAS mastery of what tools he has, however, and freely moves within his cage. And the same for the wizard, but where the "fighter [cough polymath//brawler cough warblade//factotum]" is on the 3rd dimension, the wizard is beyond that due to pulling from a source of power above his own. That being Cosmic or Eldritch Energy.

It's the fact that you have to go and do a roundabout thing and use non-core rules to even recreate the actual archetype which makes the core fighter bad, and thus not worthy of comparison to a class functional to what it's archetype portrays. Conan is MUCH closer to the PB build than a level 20 fighter. And so is almost every hero. They might have a weakness or spot they missed, but generally are hyper-competent in mundane things. That's why they kick butt. they are SKILLED, so having 2 skill points is the height of idiocy and the worst sacred cow nonsense possible.

Rogue and barbarian shouldn't REALLY be a their own thing. They are just expressions of a martial hero, if they are heroes at all, and not NPC's.

[Psyren]

Let's see, Bors spent a year and a day unmoving and without food and drink. Tactical genius who inspired each man in his 1000 man army to fight as ten men. Trapped a giant with some sort of homemade net launcher thing. Hunted alongside some sort of magic Fae king and kept up running beside a magic super fast horse. Not to mention clearly having very high ranks in the following non-Fighter skills: Knowledge: History, Knowledge: Religion, Knowledge: Nobility/Royalty, Knowledge: Architecture, Diplomacy, Disguise, Spot, and Survival.

Gawain was able to defeat 9 witches of high enough level that they could cast Time Stop. So that's however many levels of fighter you think is enough to defeat 9 17th level wizard/sorcerers in a straight fight. All the skills listed for Bors, but he most certainly also gets Bluff added to his list. Able to deceive the wisest man in the land and a duke of hell (balor?) has to count for something. But I'd remove Knowledge: Architecture as he doesn't design a castle in any legend I know of.

Lancelot, being a much later addition to the legends doesn't have as much weird stuff as the other two. He could just hold off an army of demons by himself at one point, and was supposedly better than them in prowess.

Yeah, none of these are remarkable. Taking them in order:

Bors
1) The food and drink thing: immunity to nonlethal (or just removing/delaying the need to eat/drink - e.g. pretty sure there's a meditation feat for that) makes starvation a non-issue.
2) Fighting as ten men: This begs the question "which ten men?" Because any bard can inspire you to fight as hard as 10 commoners I'd wager.
3) Giant net: boosted Craft check.
4) Run next to a horse: Barbarians can do that without any optimization at all, and you can get fighters there too.
5) Cross-class skills: Traits, AWT, archetypes, you name it.

Gawain
1) I saw nothing about the 9 witches that indicates they're 17th-level in D&D terms. Breathing fire? One of them can fly? Woopty-do. If you have a source for the time stop thing feel free to share it, but my guess is it's an incantation with some heavy restrictions and nothing at all like the 9th-level spell.
2) Bluff skill: traits etc. yet again.

Lancelot: Nothing.

No items, as requested.



That's fair-ish. But if we're going by the statement that any single drop of non-human blood in your DNA makes you not human, then we can't include any character martial or mage from Greek mythology.

I included several non Greek examples, so sure, whatever you like.


He won that fight. He also died. But it died first.

Remarkable! :smalltongue:
And the dragon that he died to is pathetic in D&D terms too.



The question here isn't whether is works. The question is whether it works without needing to be fixed.

If you define "tailoring encounters" - something the system expects the DM to do as a matter of course - as "fixing" the game, then I suspect we have very different definitions of the term.


If you don't want anime level action from martials, stay away from 3.5e in the first place. :smallbiggrin:

No, seriously, where is cutting through a person per second not anime? Getting eaten and then cutting your way out is what? Please, explain exactly how going toe to toe with an adult dragon with a sword and your hit points does not qualify already -- and D&D's dragons are heavily anime compared to the ones from Arthurian legend. If you've decided allowing fighters to do anything from the old mythology LotR was based on is "too anime," to be included for a martial, then they're already breaking your suspension of disbelief with the features you get from having hit dice.

Oh, you misunderstand - I'm completely fine with all the (bolded) examples you just listed. And you're right, all of that stuff is perfectly doable with a D&D fighter or barbarian today. Rather, I suspect that the folks complaining about caster-martial disparity have other deficiencies in mind than paltry actions such as these.


As a comparison (yours), battlefield artillery didn't become a major target until it was an effective method of devastating the enemy. No one cared about medieval trebuchets on the battlefield, because they could barely do anything -- most of time they'd be carried in pieces until a fortification was encircled.

...And? Mages are clearly effective (and don't need to be carried to the battlefield in pieces, for that matter), so they should and would be targeted by anyone with the slightest grasp of tactics.


A non-comprehensive list of ways to deal with the fighter:

A fight in the water
A fight across separated vessels
A fight in the air
A fight along or between sheer cliffs
Opponents that can attack from out of charging range (rough terrain, thin tinnels, ect.)
Against anyone capable debuffing their aim or actions.


Groups heavily avoid these things until the caster has spells slots and the martial has wands. In which case the wands took up resources the caster used on something else--typically getting around their slot limits.

If you can't build a Fighter that can handle everything on this list, especially in Pathfinder, then that sounds like a player problem to me. No changes needed.


Ah, but you are describing is done entirely to reduce the casters. All the work of goin through deciding how many and want kind of encounters to set up? Its to pull back the casters, because the casters have tools.

And that's perfectly reasonable, because magic is something that people will want to have plans to deal with in-universe.

If I have a priceless treasure vault, I'm not going to just put a padlock on the door and call it a day - I'm going to plan for people who can teleport in, walk through walls, or charm my guards. If I can't, I have no business having a priceless treasure vault in a D&D setting. Same thing.



I admit it could be an act of stupidity on my part, but I don't know what this has to do with what I had written. As far I as I can tell, I had written, "person A is not making argument X, but it looks like argument X makes fallacy Y." To which you replied "person A made argument Z rather than argument X, so fallacy Y doesn't apply to.... argument Z."

You lost me, sorry.

[Dienekes]

[SPOILER=@Dienekes]

Yeah, none of these are remarkable. Taking them in order:

Bors
1) The food and drink thing: immunity to nonlethal (or just removing/delaying the need to eat/drink - e.g. pretty sure there's a meditation feat for that) makes starvation a non-issue.
2) Fighting as ten men: This begs the question "which ten men?" Because any bard can inspire you to fight as hard as 10 commoners I'd wager.
3) Giant net: boosted Craft check.
4) Run next to a horse: Barbarians can do that without any optimization at all, and you can get fighters there too.
5) Cross-class skills: Traits, AWT, archetypes, you name it.

1) How do I get immunity to non lethal as a fighter with no magic items?
2) bard isn’t fighter...
3) cool
4) Barbarian isn’t fighter. How does fighter do it as well?
5) which ones? Can they all be used on the same build? What Int is needed to get all those skills? It takes double points to get them in 3.5.



Gawain
1) I saw nothing about the 9 witches that indicates they're 17th-level in D&D terms. Breathing fire? One of them can fly? Woopty-do. If you have a source for the time stop thing feel free to share it, but my guess is it's an incantation with some heavy restrictions and nothing at all like the 9th-level spell.
2) Bluff skill: traits etc. yet again.


1) version I read they stopped the people coming against them and chatted about what to do next between them. Seemed like time stop to me.
2) ok. Again. Which ones, how do I get it all on a Fighter build?
3) I notice he’s not facing down a balor with no magic items.

[Bartmanhomer]

Wizards are better than fighters. There's a reason why Wizards are Tier 1. Wizards can do just about everything in and out of combat.

[Psyren]

Barbarian isn’t fighter

Well hang on now, how do you know what martial classes Bors, Gawain, Beowulf and your other examples actually have? All we know for sure is that they aren't casters. There could very well be Cavalier, Barbarian, and/or Monk in there for all we know. Not to mention that a Fighter with a Barb-like archetype like Viking is still technically a "Fighter," only now he can grab rage powers and the like.


version I read they stopped the people coming against them and chatted about what to do next between them. Seemed like time stop to me.

You can also do that with something much weaker like Hypnotism or Greater Command. No reason to assume they're 17th level.


I notice he’s not facing down a balor with no magic items.

"Facing down?" Didn't your guy just pass a bluff check? Appreciate the goalpost there though.

[Lord Raziere]

When people say "too anime" they might as well be saying "too mythological", at which point they'd have to be intentionally ignoring that D&D spellcasting was inspired by mythology too, so that counts as "too anime."

Yeah.

thing is, Goku isn't nearly as ridiculous as Sun Wukong in terms of the variety of things he can do. Goku is technically more powerful in pure strength, but Sun Wukong can do a lot of ridiculous tricks involving immortality, make clones of himself from his hair and so on...

and even if we accept that the fighter and rogue aren't supposed to be mythological because "no magik fer de marshulz, dey is normalz, anything dat iz magik to me haz to have magik force behind it", that still doesn't excuse the monk not getting enough to be on par with the wizard, because ki is basically the magic that such characters run on to do that sort of thing, not western arcane magic, so we should at least have the monk be buffed to be more mythological.

[Dienekes]

Well hang on now, how do you know what martial classes Bors, Gawain, Beowulf and your other examples actually have? All we know for sure is that they aren't casters. There could very well be Cavalier, Barbarian, and/or Monk in there for all we know. Not to mention that a Fighter with a Barb-like archetype like Viking is still technically a "Fighter," only now he can grab rage powers and the like.

Well the thread is about Fighters. And he's pretty clearly not a Bard which you tried to pass off some of his abilities onto. I'm sorry, but if to get the feats of a knight you need to take levels of Bard then the system has failed. As to not being a Barbarian, because Bors is clearly lawful good for one thing so he can't take the class levels, and doesn't fly to any murder rages. Though Gawain actually does get angry enough to vow revenge upon Lancelot, but the reason he did that was because his oaths compelled him not to attack a kinsman. So Gawain is still pretty far on the law side of the alignment pool as well. And as to a Monk? Well he certainly doesn't fit the fluff the class is going for, since he's a horse riding heavily armored sword, lance, and shield knight. But, if you can make it work for the build, sure I suppose. Cavalier as well I don't really have a problem with, other than the fact this was supposed to be a Fighter challenge. But if you want to add it I'm not really opposed.


You can also do that with something much weaker like Hypnotism or Greater Command. No reason to assume they're 17th level.

Fair enough. Let's set a baseline here. The biggest thing they did was create a magical plague that effected an entire kingdom instantly. What's the minimum level a mage class can do that?


"Facing down?" Didn't your guy just pass a bluff check? Appreciate the goalpost there though.

If we're going by the story. The demon was trying to tempt him with a willing woman to break his vows to his wife, then when he would not be tempted offered a "test of strength" that if he did would curse a village, which Gawain then turned around back on the demon to trick him. The demon realized he had been bested, returned to his true form and fought Gawain, and Gawain beat him.

[Segev]

And that's exactly my point- those authors almost universally needed something besides just "training" to explain where these characters' power came from. Every last one either had divine heritage like descending from a deity, or got blessed by one, or interacted with some mythic power source like the River Styx, or drew their power from a magical item like Excalibur etc etc.


To be fair, if we're leaning back on "classic myth," mages/sorceresses/wizards were generally also inhuman to a degree. Merlin's a cambion, technically (half-incubus). Circe is "a sorceress" but is treated as being a demi-goddess. (She might even have a divine parent, but I am not sure about that.) Baba Yaga is as much her own supernatural force as she is "witch" (and in D&D is a very powerful Hag). It's actually rare to find a non-priest "spellcaster" character in classic myth and legend who isn't at least descended from a god or demon.

So the argument that you need supernatural racial traits to achieve what people would consider "high level fighter" status "as it should be" could be extended to say you need the same thing to be a wizard at all. (Heck, it's built into sorcerer.)

If we said that "being a member of SuperFighter base class, which allows you to be Thor or Hercules by the time you're high level, means you're descended from great and mighty demons and gods," would that suit your criticism of the approach?

Again, sorcerers already do it in-class: that "human sorcerer" is actually a descendant of dragons, which makes it possible for him to be a sorcerer. Why not have the SuperFighter (whatever you want to call the class) have the same distinction? If you just make the Fighter have that distinction, that's why he gets whatever really cool abilities you say fighters can ahve to close the fighter/caster disparity by whatever amount you manage. Meanwhile, barbarians get their superjuice from anger management issues, etc. etc.

[OrbanSirgen]

Circe is "a sorceress" but is treated as being a demi-goddess. (She might even have a divine parent, but I am not sure about that.)

Circe was the daughter of Helios, the sun god...

[Afghanistan]

Well the thread is about Fighters. And he's pretty clearly not a Bard which you tried to pass off some of his abilities onto. I'm sorry, but if to get the feats of a knight you need to take levels of Bard then the system has failed. As to not being a Barbarian, because Bors is clearly lawful good for one thing so he can't take the class levels, and doesn't fly to any murder rages. Though Gawain actually does get angry enough to vow revenge upon Lancelot, but the reason he did that was because his oaths compelled him not to attack a kinsman. So Gawain is still pretty far on the law side of the alignment pool as well. And as to a Monk? Well he certainly doesn't fit the fluff the class is going for, since he's a horse riding heavily armored sword, lance, and shield knight. But, if you can make it work for the build, sure I suppose. Cavalier as well I don't really have a problem with, other than the fact this was supposed to be a Fighter challenge. But if you want to add it I'm not really opposed.

I think you're looking to much at the name of the class instead of the role of the character. Whether they are a Barbarian, a Monk, a Paladin, or even the Knight class itself, a character can just BE a Samurai (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0209.html) regardless of what their class name actually is.

[Peat]

I think you're looking to much at the name of the class instead of the role of the character. Whether they are a Barbarian, a Monk, a Paladin, or even the Knight class itself, a character can just BE a Samurai (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0209.html) regardless of what their class name actually is.

Yup. And that's true for Wizards too, given many people don't think you'd use one to represent Gandalf.

Besides, if we do want exact name to class, then the Knights of the Round Table aren't Fighters. The clue is in the name.

(And Psyren pointed out the running thing could be done by fighters).

Getting hung up on exact cases kinda feels like a distraction from what is (or should be) the main argument, which is there's no reason Martials of all stripes should be deprived of interesting abilities, or that Fighters should be the poor cousins there. Which is mostly agreed on anyway.

[Jack_McSnatch]

Because human bodies are fragile, weak, and inferior to even animals. Bears beat humans. Tigers beat humans. So people who dedicate their lives making their bodies stronger through training even fully knowing that they will never be able to beat a bear in strength should be weaker than people who dedicate their lives making their bodies stronger through anything but training like studying biology, chemistry, physics, robotics, etc.

I feel the urge to point out that for THOUSANDS of years, certain people have dedicated their lives to proving you very, VERY wrong. From bulls, to alligators, to, yes, tigers and frickin BEARS, you name just about any animal in existence, and there is a human who murdered it WITH THEIR BARE HANDS.

F**k wizards, I wanna be the guy who says "YES, my squishy mortal body IS better than your magic" and then flexes a dragon to death.

EDIT: Also you're talking about realism in a game about wizards, dragons, and the walking dead. Miiight wanna reexamine your priorities.

[Jack_McSnatch]

Okay I gotta expand a little cause this is really grinding my gears. I'm not gonna go too in depth, because several other people have made most of these points, and in more eloquent fashion to boot.

Wizards don't make ****. A wizard CAN make things, but most wizards are not magic item crafters. That's obviously a specialty thing. If your party wizard is a blaster, or a buffer, or an enchanter, and you tell him to make you a magic sword, he's going to tell you he can't do that, and wouldn't want to burn the xp if he could.

A soldier is not a dumb pile of muscle, and the DND fighter does an awful job of expressing a soldier's capabilities. A soldier needs to be a close combat fighter, a marksmen, a navigator, a diplomate, and a million other things. Dumb piles of muscle don't get to be soldiers, because battles aren't won by strength alone.

But they also aren't won on brains alone. Intelligence is a wonderful thing, and is absolutely the reason humans stand atop the natural world... but we wouldn't have become THE apex predator on earth, if we didn't have strong bodies to back up our fantastic minds.

You treat these attributes as if they exist in vacuums, completely seperate from each other, but they don't. HUmans wouldn't have gotten anywhere if they didn't have brains AND brawn.

Now onto the point about DND be a fantasy game about people doing fantastical things. Um.... that statement I just made kinda sums it up. Not everybody wants to play a wizard. Maybe some people think the wizard is a stupid, unfocused class, that can completely nullify the efforts of an entire party with a single spell that they fart out, fillinf the room with the scent of bad cheese. Or maybe they just want to play beowulf, hercules, thor, or any of the heroic figures humanity has had throughout its tenure on this planet that AREN'T spellcasters.

That's okay, and they should be allowed to do that without the wizard hanging over their shoulders whispering "I can do that so much more efficientlyyyyy."

And, finally, your point about all that sci fi stuff, that is very much still sci fi and not even CLOSE to being real life yet. Someone already said this in so many words, but it doesn't matter if someone came up with the concept, and drew up a picture of how it works, if there wasn't somebody to help build it. In other words, as many ideas as your "real life wizards" come up with, they wouldn't go anywhere without somebody to do the heavy lifting.

Final statement.... stop with the power levels, and let everybody feel like a badass. Wizards and fighters alike.

[Kelb_Panthera]

Okay, half of what was in this comment was addressed when I needed to take a break from writing it, so I'm splicing in where the current conversation is at the points last addressed to me.

On measuring Power Level



I'm not sure this changes my point.

If there's one thing I may have been guilty of in this conversation, it's imprecise use of terms. This, I don't think, is entirely the case here though.

I've been avoiding use of the term "fighter" because I don't mean the fighter class, necessarily. I mean the whole, "My primary interaction with the world is to stick the pointy end in the other man" archetype of character: warriors. The warrior NPC class exists too but I'd hope no one was so dense as to actually presume I was talking about that.


The wizard is (at high levels) very powerful, with abilities rarely included in a similar level of RHD, LA, or both. The fighter (at high levels) loses very little, because there's so little from those later levels, and so isn't giving nearly as much up from either. If you're a native outsider with 5 RHD, you've exchanged 3 feats and 5 hit points for 48 skill points and +3 each to will and reflex saves. Or you've given up 5 levels in a full casting class to gain stuff your spells would have prevented you from needing.

The balance factor when you compare whole characters, since you can't play a class alone, comes in the notion of how much they can do -at any one time-.

As I pointed out earlier (at least I think it was this thread), while the wizard has the broadest overall access to what can be done* he's one of the most limited in what he can do at any one time. At any given time, even a high level wizard will only have about a dozen or so things he can do unless he fails to take advantage of his class' preparation mechanic. He can use his gear to increase that by maybe half-again and stretch how he can do them but that's about it.

A fighter, on the other hand, even with gear will probably lag behind that just a little in terms of number of options available at any one time but his are much less likely to be depleted with use. As they say, "you never run out of sword" and getting ways to undo damage at staggering rates isn't terribly expensive or difficult.

What you can do -right now- may not matter as much in terms of narrative bending power but nothing matters more in staying alive when the crap hits the fan.

The narrative bending powers too can generally be accomplished by any character; minionmancy can be rented, purchased, or built using a variety of resources from calling creatures to hiring mercs to taking the leadership feat; the ability to travel quickly and without interuption only matters in as much as the ability for information to travel just a bit quicker; anywhere that can be reached magically can be walked, swam, sailed, or flown to without magic, even including other planes thanks to various rules scattered about supplements that discuss the matter. Magic does a -lot- more to make things faster than it does to make them possible in the first place.



And if you're getting anything on top of the base racial features for the type it's worse, see your own argument on how useful items are.

I think some sort of formula is useful here. An approximate one, but still:


Ptotal = Rbase racial - RRHD & LA cost + W + Lall classes

Where P power, R is racial features, W is wealth (ie. acquired items) and L is levels.

L for a single class wizard is much higher than for a single class fighter at high levels, so if you're measuring by percentage the fighter gets a bigger boost from an equal raw W. Meanwhile the boost costing RHD and LA is essentially taken out of L (because you're replacing class levels with RHD & LA). In which case, the case becomes "boost the fighter by making them less of a fighter." Which is a nice floor to the power of a class, but not a great sign of parity if one class needs to take it in order to keep up with another class.

This still applies when you consider synergy between racial and class features.

I don't care about being less of a fighter as long as it doesn't diminish the character's ability to be a warrior**. As long as the RHD and LA come with things that make the character overall better at fighting, it's no different than dipping into multiple base classes or prestige classes.

The name of the game is to line up synergistic and complementary and/or supplementary abiliites. Almost no wizard or other caster stays with their base class up to 20 because they're all pretty close to strictly inferior to using classes and prestige classes to either maximize their casting ability or blend it with some other archetype into a caster/ non-caster hybrid. They can choose to do so in spite of that fact, just like the warrior's player could choose to roll up a human fighter 20, but in both cases they're deliberately making the game harder for themselves.

The question is; what's at the core of the character's identity?

For most casters it -is- that casting ability. Basically nothing really synergizes with it and deviating from it with non-advancing classes and races almost invariably diminishes that identity until you hit the (nebulous) point that you're more hybrid than caster.

For warriors, it's their ability to fight well; get a fairly high attack bonus and damage output or otherwise hamper the enemy through use of arms; is primary. When it comes to outside of combat matters, that's just not their primary concern, though they shouldn't eschew it altogether IMO.

For a skillful skirmisher, it's being able to either interact with the world through skills or reliable utility powers to a greater extent than others. They're less concerned with being able to kill anything that moves or bend the fabric of reality than they are not getting caught with their pants down.

There's -absolutely- nothing wrong with picking one of these and cleaving to it, if that's what you want out of the game, and if it's not then you can blend them pretty freely. There are prestige classes for just about every conceivable combination of two or all three archetypes.

If, for example, you think it's only a half-ass warrior that can't be sneaky when the situation calls for it, you can go anywhere from putting CC ranks into the stealth skills and picking up low-level stealth gear like the gloves and boots of elvenkind to being a ghost-faced killer with the martial stalker feat, a ring of invisibility, and never approaching a foe in the open if you can help it and everything inbetween.

You can blend combative ability with a whole host of other options, including virutally everything mentioned in this thread, to one degree or other without ever deviating substantially from the non-magical fighting man archetype as long as you don't latch on to the idea that it all has be expressed by a single classed, fighter 20.


*There are a few exceptions but the one for which the statement is most true is a variant of a variant (StP erudite) and the other requires cheesing around its intended limits (artificer). The only other contender is the archivist, since it largely shares the same mechanics, but between split casting and the largely inferior list it's -just- edged out, IMO.

**Same argument goes for any of the three archetypes its just most applicable to warriors.

__________________________________________________ ____________________

The above covers most of my thoughts on this matter when combined with my previous posts but there is one nit I've got to pick on behalf of the fighter class.

The fighter -does- have features. Even if you're inclined to say "bonus feats aren't features" there exist both ACFs and fighter only feats that are either entirely the fighter's own unique options or very close to it.

Then there are the bonus feats. The bonus feat features are a fighter feature in that they're more than the sum of their parts. While any one character can take several feats that the fighter gets for free and use them to the same effect, the majority of them will only ever get individual feats or perhaps a single chain. The fighter, on the other hand, will as likely as not complete a couple chains, complete at least one of them faster than any other class, and has the option to use character feats on things outside of his combat style without dramatically reducing his efficacy unlike most other martial classe. His bonus feat feature embodies the old adage that "Quantity has a quality of its own," and this fact is either overlooked or dismissed far too often and easily, IMO. Seriously, would you give any real consideration to picking up a style feat or multiple tactical feats on -any- other class?

Given the weight that having a variety of options and customizability is given in this community, it almost feels strange to have to say that the fighter is -the- most customizable non-caster class in the game and that is a fact that should be given more weight than it is.


__________________________________________________ _____________

One last thing on the fighter class:

Given the nature of most D&D settings, any comparison to modern warriors is absurd. Broad public education isn't common and a big portion of military tactics we think of as classic, obvious knoweldge hasn't necessesarily been broadly observed and recorded yet since they're -cutting edge- socio-military technology in that world.

A first level fighter is not a special forces guy. He's not even a basic infantry army grunt. He's a peasant's son that's either been conscripted or an idolent third son of some noble that's decided to join up for adventure (or vice-versa) and happens to have a little bit of fighting talent*. He's scrounged, inhereted, borrowed, or been issued some basic kit. That's it. He's either worked out or been taught by somebody how to use standard, military arms and armor to a degree that he's more likely to hurt his foes than himself.

If you want him to be a great and powerful warrior like in fiction, you've got to survive a few battles or skirmishes first and build onto what you've started with to reach for it. If you don't want to multiclass (why are you playing -this- system?) then you can -still- buy CC skill ranks in whatever skills you think you should have and give yourself a good int score and/or take the talented feat a few times to get whatever skills you like up to a decent level. Be educated (feat) if you're worried about knoweldges.

If that's not good enough, either multiclass or pick something else but -stop- blaming the fighter for not being a perfect representation of what -you- think a fighter should be and refusing solve your problem. Knights, swashbucklers, samurai, barbarians, non-caster rangers, and a whole slew of PrCs that extend any of them and the fighter exist.

I swear that every time this discussion comes up again, I'm reminded of these two comics:

Maybe look at the system as a whole rather than just the one class?https://pics.onsizzle.com/in-mad-i-dont-want-a-solution-heres-a-solution-3144859.png

Inevitable homebrew solution ideas:
https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/standards.png

[AntiAuthority]

Yeah.

thing is, Goku isn't nearly as ridiculous as Sun Wukong in terms of the variety of things he can do. Goku is technically more powerful in pure strength, but Sun Wukong can do a lot of ridiculous tricks involving immortality, make clones of himself from his hair and so on...

and even if we accept that the fighter and rogue aren't supposed to be mythological because "no magik fer de marshulz, dey is normalz, anything dat iz magik to me haz to have magik force behind it", that still doesn't excuse the monk not getting enough to be on par with the wizard, because ki is basically the magic that such characters run on to do that sort of thing, not western arcane magic, so we should at least have the monk be buffed to be more mythological.

We need mythological monk examples, I'm sure there's better examples, but... Considering the similarities chi and prana, along with how magic users get to step into the realm of divinity through spells... I'd said something like Shiva being able to set the world on fire with his third eye might be a good starting point for mythological monks, along with being able to create avatars, things along those lines.





A first level fighter is not a special forces guy. He's not even a basic infantry army grunt. He's a peasant's son that's either been conscripted or an idolent third son of some noble that's decided to join up for adventure (or vice-versa) and happens to have a little bit of fighting talent*. He's scrounged, inhereted, borrowed, or been issued some basic kit. That's it. He's either worked out or been taught by somebody how to use standard, military arms and armor to a degree that he's more likely to hurt his foes than himself.

I'll agree they're not a special forces guy... But this article (http://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/587/roleplaying-games/dd-calibrating-your-expectations-2) provides reasoning for why the best in our world would probably only hit Level 6. So I suppose a Navy SEAL would be around Level 3-5. Even at Level 1, that's no reason for them to have so few skill points or Class Skills warriors would need to be remotely effective beyond, "Imma a button masher."

My issue with the bolded part is that what you're describing sounds more like the Warrior NPC class. If we want to bring in 2E for a moment, a Fighter was called a Veteran at Level 1... Even then, I think this becomes a moot point by the time they hit Level 4-5 and are still, mechanically, so inept that these fantasy badasses would get laughed out of real world armies for how incompetent they are. The 3.5E Fighter fits more in line with a dumb henchman than anything...


If you want him to be a great and powerful warrior like in fiction, you've got to survive a few battles or skirmishes first and build onto what you've started with to reach for it. If you don't want to multiclass (why are you playing -this- system?) then you can -still- buy CC skill ranks in whatever skills you think you should have and give yourself a good int score and/or take the talented feat a few times to get whatever skills you like up to a decent level. Be educated (feat) if you're worried about knoweldges.

If that's not good enough, either multiclass or pick something else but -stop- blaming the fighter for not being a perfect representation of what -you- think a fighter should be and refusing solve your problem. Knights, swashbucklers, samurai, barbarians, non-caster rangers, and a whole slew of PrCs that extend any of them and the fighter exist.


The issue is that Fighters need to multi-class to be able to function at all beyond dumb brutes. The D&D Fighter was inspired by characters such as Conan the Barbarian, who could sneak and had high perceptive abilities.

A Wizard, by going pure Wizard, can potentially surpass Zeus (Zeus wasn't shooting out fireballs or creating zombies in addition to being able to throw lightning, shape shift himself and others) and Odin (Odin couldn't even detect poison in his food so just drunk mead to be safe and would have absolutely loved to be able to create Simulacrums or revive the dead enemies as allies to help prevent Ragnarok) in terms of versatility. They can essentially be given abilities that would make them overpowered by the standards of mythological divinity.

A Fighter can't do what even basic fantasy (or real world) warriors would be capable of without multiclassing or being very careful with what skills they pick, let alone step into the realms of the gods like a Wizard can (I admit, a Fighter can hit stuff REALLY hard... Hercules can also do that, and much harder... So can Thor...). Fighters don't scale in damage too well unless you pick the right feats (Power Attack, Vital Strike) and even then, they can't move more than 5 feet to do a Full Attack... While Wizards can cast higher level spells as a Standard Action and move, along with the bit about their spells increasing in damage automatically with level (by a d6 or so). Wizards get to be potentially everything at once, Fighters get to be the henchman of the Wizard is why people like me have a problem.

[Peat]

Complaining about people not wanting solutions might make more sense if this was a thread about solutions. It is a thread in which someone gave their opinion on how things should be and why, with the result of a lot of people saying it should be a different way based in no small part on the OP's logic. Just because solutions exist doesn't mean they should have to, or that they're the ones people think should exist.

[Dienekes]

I think you're looking to much at the name of the class instead of the role of the character. Whether they are a Barbarian, a Monk, a Paladin, or even the Knight class itself, a character can just BE a Samurai (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0209.html) regardless of what their class name actually is.


Yup. And that's true for Wizards too, given many people don't think you'd use one to represent Gandalf.

Besides, if we do want exact name to class, then the Knights of the Round Table aren't Fighters. The clue is in the name.

(And Psyren pointed out the running thing could be done by fighters).

Getting hung up on exact cases kinda feels like a distraction from what is (or should be) the main argument, which is there's no reason Martials of all stripes should be deprived of interesting abilities, or that Fighters should be the poor cousins there. Which is mostly agreed on anyway.

Wait now. Hold up here. The original challenge was Fighter class is suitable to perform anything done by a completely human martial legend who did not gain powers from magic items. I gave a list feats performed by several such figures. And now you’re saying it’s my fault it’s not working because I’m being too limited with just using the Fighter class?

That was the original challenge! And hell I’m not even making him stick to it. If he wants to add monk and knight and marshal and whatever go ahead. He just can’t use Bard and Barbarian, partially because one is a caster class so it breaks the entire premise of the argument. But the other is he literally can’t. They were lawful good characters, the rules stay that to be a Bard or a Barbarian you must be of any non-lawful alignment.

[Peat]

Wait now. Hold up here. The original challenge was Fighter class is suitable to perform anything done by a completely human martial legend who did not gain powers from magic items. I gave a list feats performed by several such figures. And now you’re saying it’s my fault it’s not working because I’m being too limited with just using the Fighter class?

That was the original challenge! And hell I’m not even making him stick to it. If he wants to add monk and knight and marshal and whatever go ahead. He just can’t use Bard and Barbarian, partially because one is a caster class so it breaks the entire premise of the argument. But the other is he literally can’t. They were lawful good characters, the rules stay that to be a Bard or a Barbarian you must be of any non-lawful alignment.

I wasn't even aware there was a challenge.

But in any case - D&D 3.5 is built around the assumption of multiclassing, PrCing, multiple classes to cover slightly different niches etc.etc. I may not entirely agree with how much it is needed but that is it how it is built. As a result, expecting all things that could be considered fighter to be found under Fighter makes little sense, and I'm fairly sure Psyren wasn't arguing against that at any point. If that is actually the expectation then, well, fair enough. If it is "Can I do it in D&D 3.5", it goes out of the window.

Also Paladin with Harmonious Knight or Smite to Song totally gets around needing to be a Bard for Inspire Courage.

[Psyren]

Well the thread is about Fighters. And he's pretty clearly not a Bard which you tried to pass off some of his abilities onto. I'm sorry, but if to get the feats of a knight you need to take levels of Bard then the system has failed. As to not being a Barbarian, because Bors is clearly lawful good for one thing so he can't take the class levels, and doesn't fly to any murder rages. Though Gawain actually does get angry enough to vow revenge upon Lancelot, but the reason he did that was because his oaths compelled him not to attack a kinsman. So Gawain is still pretty far on the law side of the alignment pool as well. And as to a Monk? Well he certainly doesn't fit the fluff the class is going for, since he's a horse riding heavily armored sword, lance, and shield knight. But, if you can make it work for the build, sure I suppose. Cavalier as well I don't really have a problem with, other than the fact this was supposed to be a Fighter challenge. But if you want to add it I'm not really opposed.

You're taking the thread title a bit too literally I'd say. What really matters here is the caster/martial divide - once we bring up the actual builds of fictional characters and their abilities I think you'll find that most of them are multiclassed in some way. Even Conan, the most iconic barbarian imaginable to this day, is often statted with some rogue in there, and several folks even view him as being lawful.

With that said, I don't have to go to a magical class like Bard to inspire people - Seasoned Commander Fighter and Exemplar Brawler can do it, for example, and if you interpret "inspire" more broadly then Cavalier and even Ranger are in too. As for monk, a Sohei or Shou Disciple can do the armor and horse thing.


Fair enough. Let's set a baseline here. The biggest thing they did was create a magical plague that effected an entire kingdom instantly. What's the minimum level a mage class can do that?

Sounds like a ritual/incantation, in which case the answer is "whatever level the plot needs it to be." You can move it up or down with mitigants and other factors to a near limitless degree.


If we're going by the story. The demon was trying to tempt him with a willing woman to break his vows to his wife, then when he would not be tempted offered a "test of strength" that if he did would curse a village, which Gawain then turned around back on the demon to trick him. The demon realized he had been bested, returned to his true form and fought Gawain, and Gawain beat him.

That doesn't sound like a Balor at all; FC1 doesn't put them in the "manipulator" or "corrupter" categories. They also don't have any shapeshifting. Whatever fiend it was, it's undoubtedly weaker than that if it sought to manipulate first.

[Peat]

Also, if I was to pick the most supernatural attributes of ostensibly completely human warriors in mythology, I'd look at Culhwch and Olwen. Cei can survive 216 hours underwater without breathing, go 216 hours without sleep, nobody can heal a wound from his sword (arguably weapon qualities, but seems to imply its any sword of Cei as Bedwyr is called out as having a magic spear but Cei isn't), he can grow as high as a tree, and can radiate heat from his hands. It's a pretty funky list.

[Afghanistan]

A first level fighter is not a special forces guy. He's not even a basic infantry army grunt. He's a peasant's son that's either been conscripted or an idolent third son of some noble that's decided to join up for adventure (or vice-versa) and happens to have a little bit of fighting talent*. He's scrounged, inhereted, borrowed, or been issued some basic kit. That's it. He's either worked out or been taught by somebody how to use standard, military arms and armor to a degree that he's more likely to hurt his foes than himself.

I contest this for a number of reasons, namely that this simply an argument to box in the creativity of identity for the fighter and serves to minimize the potential for a Fighter. While I am sure you would absolutely never declare that


A Wizard is not Archimedes or a super scientist. He's a scruffed little bookworm, the child of a peasant witch who was burned as a child, or a thrillseeking noble scion too distant in relation to any serious power to be a threat to the family that decided to join up for adventure and happens to just know how to read a bit of magic text and chuck a magic bullet once in a blue moon. She stole, scrounged, or made up a few magic words to form the basics of their spellbook. That's it. She's either worked out, or been taught how to cast some basic cantrips and maybe some basic spells, and is more likely to hurt his foes than himself.

I do not believe this is fair to limit characters who are supposed to be heroes in such constrained ways. There is a MASSIVE gap in strength between the bog standard Commoner and even the Warrior and the Fighter.




Wait now. Hold up here. The original challenge [...]

Gonna stop you right there and say I do not recall any such challenge being issued, nor ever accepting any such challenge. Furthermore...


That was the original challenge! And hell I’m not even making him stick to it. If he wants to add monk and knight and marshal and whatever go ahead. He just can’t use Bard and Barbarian, partially because one is a caster class so it breaks the entire premise of the argument. But the other is he literally can’t. They were lawful good characters, the rules stay that to be a Bard or a Barbarian you must be of any non-lawful alignment.

You are constraining to a martial/caster dichotomy, when this is not necessarily the case. This should not be the case, and in practice usually isn't. Does the Wizards ability to cast spells prevent it from being able to make melee attacks? Must they always, on each round cast spells or do they cease to become a Wizard? No. Often at low level play, you will see dedicated spellcasters, any one that can equip a crossbow, will do so simply because it is a reliable source of damage that scales with them until they gain more spellcasting abilities. This experience of not casting, does not somehow negate them as spellcasters, it is simply them taking a tactical option.

Note: Pathfinder and 5es cantrip system and options allow them to bypass this method, however despite this, Wizards at low levels can still elect to fight as mentioned above. My description is unique to early D&D.

Furthermore, your two examples, the Bard and Barbarian, do not in anyway negate class features if they simply cease to be their respective alignment, so why you would choose such a poor example is beyond me.

[Rater202]

One of the best PRCs from direct melee combat is the Warshaper, which gives immunity to stunning and crits, and immunity to crits makes you immune to sneak attack and similar, as well as big boosts to strength and con, fast healing, and the ability to spend a turn to make yourself heal even more(neither of which are enough to shrug off damage, but they lower your dependency on healers.)

But most importantly, it gives you the ability to make an arbitrary number of natural weapon attacks from five feet away, meaning that, theoretically, within a six-second round a warshaper can inflict an infinite amount of damage to a single target(GM permitting.)

One is more likely to hit, and thus will take up less time and be more likely to get away with it, if they have a high base attack bonus, so while wizards are caable of becoming Warshapers(which is suboptimal as it doesn't progress spellcasting) the best Warshapers would-be fighters or other classes with a full base attack bonus who would not be penalized by a lack of 1-5 levels of spellcasting. (and would not be overly penalized by 1-5 levels of 1/3 base attack bonus.)

Thus, one could argue that, in a Total op scenario, the absolute best damage dealer would be a Fighter 8+/Warshaper 4(the capstone is kind of worthless if you're not a caster taking it as a gish build) with Weapon Focus, Specialization, and Melee weapon mastery, as well as Multiattack and Improved Multiatack, who sets up an arbitrary number of natural weapons that inflict the kind of damage they have Melee weapon Mastery in who then tears apart individual enemies with full attack actions. Only if an enemy is immune to that attack type or has DR high enough that none of your natural weapons can pierce it is it not a theoretical One Turn KO, and this can be mitigated with two more melee weapon mastery feats if your initial weapon focus is "natural weapon: Bite"

Thus, fighters are better than Wizards, who take far longer to set up such a build and do not have access to some of the necessary feats.

See, anyone can make an inane argument that's dependant on extremes and logical leaps.

[danzibr]

This reminds me of a thread I made... looks like 8 years ago, entitled "*Should* melee be able to rival casters? (https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?232729-*Should*-melee-be-able-to-rival-casters)"

Conversation went on for 34 pages.

[digiman619]

I think that when you boil this question down to its basest form, it's "Should having magic be as good than not having magic?" And for the folks that come down on the side of magic, I can totally respect that opinion.

However, there is a second, unasked question here that, in my mind, is more pertinent: "Does something being magic automatically mean it should be usable by mortals?" And to me, the answer is clearly no. But D&D wizards are capable of so many incredibly powerful things that many gods in other settings can't and no one cares. But god forbid a martial have any out of combat utility. Hell, I've seen people complain about even minor boons giving them line effects on their attacks as "too anime". Which is stupid as hell, as D&D casters can stop time and create demiplanes and all sorts of broken crap, while the most that most anime casters can do is elemental blasting or general buffs.

[Kelb_Panthera]

I'll agree they're not a special forces guy... But this article (http://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/587/roleplaying-games/dd-calibrating-your-expectations-2) provides reasoning for why the best in our world would probably only hit Level 6. So I suppose a Navy SEAL would be around Level 3-5. Even at Level 1, that's no reason for them to have so few skill points or Class Skills warriors would need to be remotely effective beyond, "Imma a button masher."

My issue with the bolded part is that what you're describing sounds more like the Warrior NPC class. If we want to bring in 2E for a moment, a Fighter was called a Veteran at Level 1... Even then, I think this becomes a moot point by the time they hit Level 4-5 and are still, mechanically, so inept that these fantasy badasses would get laughed out of real world armies for how incompetent they are. The 3.5E Fighter fits more in line with a dumb henchman than anything...

The -entire- difference between the fighter PC class and the warrior NPC class is that talent. The former is a little tougher, a little more prone to figuring out the tricks of the trade, a little luckier perhaps. The same XP gets you the same number of levels and their training is in the same field. What else would you use to explain why one gets a larger HD and -way- more combat competency?


The issue is that Fighters need to multi-class to be able to function at all beyond dumb brutes. The D&D Fighter was inspired by characters such as Conan the Barbarian, who could sneak and had high perceptive abilities.

That goes back to my commentary on CC skills. You're not -forbidden- to put ranks in skills that aren't class skills. You're not forbidden from having a high int score (virtually all of mine have at least a 14 for combat expertise). You -choose- whether or not to do those things. A fighter that's put max cross-class ranks in hide and move silently has used the exact same number of skill points as one who has put max ranks intimidate and ride. He's not as good as an equal level rogue at stealth but why should he be?

The question isn't whether or not he -can- sneak, you don't need ranks at all for that. The question is whether he has enough to succeed at stealth often enough. That doesn't take much when the overwhelming majority of foes and creatures are only gonna have a few points of overall bonus to their spot and listen checks. Conan never had to sneak past a grell so why would you expect a fighter to? Being stealthy enough to pick a copper piece out of an old red's scales is the design space for the skirmisher types like rogues and scouts. The fighter's design space is running the beast through and prying that copper out with a crow-bar after. He can be sneaky enough to get past its kobold minions without a fight though.

Let's put some numbers to it, just to really hammer the point home.

Human thug fighter 20 with int 14 and dex 12. Really wants to be a proper sneak so he takes the feats guerrilla scout and guerrilla warrior.

7 skill points a level means he can have just about max ranks in each of spot, listen, hide, and move silently and 5 other skills. About level 9 or so, he picks up darkstalker, just to be safe.

So at 20, he has 11 ranks in all 4 of those skills and still has plenty of points left over to also have, let's go with know (local), gather info, tumble (skilled city-dweller article), intimidate, and jump. He's even picked up a couple of skill tricks since he could only advance the other 4 on every other level.

Let's go ahead and give him greater boots and cloak of elvenkind for +10 to each and a set of gloves of dexterity +4

So that's 11 ranks, +10 competence, +3 dex for a total bonus on stealth rolls of +24. For comparison, most of the spot/listen modifiers at the same level on the SRD only have that beat by about 5 points. The 20k spent on these skills is chump change from the 760k that a level 20 character gets and that's not even close to the highest bonus you can get without epic items. It's also only 3 feats out of the character's 18 total.

You can lean even harder into stealth without being any less of a fighter with another feat or two and a few 10's of thousands more gold if you want but I think the point is made here and the same is true for -most- skills. If your fighters are big, dumb brutes then it's because that's how you build them.


A Fighter can't do what even basic fantasy (or real world) warriors would be capable of without multiclassing or being very careful with what skills they pick, let alone step into the realms of the gods like a Wizard can (I admit, a Fighter can hit stuff REALLY hard... Hercules can also do that, and much harder... So can Thor...). Fighters don't scale in damage too well unless you pick the right feats (Power Attack, Vital Strike) and even then, they can't move more than 5 feet to do a Full Attack... While Wizards can cast higher level spells as a Standard Action and move, along with the bit about their spells increasing in damage automatically with level (by a d6 or so). Wizards get to be potentially everything at once, Fighters get to be the henchman of the Wizard is why people like me have a problem.

There's nothing really left to say on this except to repeat my theses. Don't look to class alone to make your character everything you want him to be. The caster archetype is more limited and the non-casters less so than they're given credit for in these discussions.

There are plenty of ways to move and full attack and get damage up to decent levels as well as do a whole host of other things. A spell you can have ready in 15 minutes doesn't do you a lick of good if you need it right now.


I contest this for a number of reasons, namely that this simply an argument to box in the creativity of identity for the fighter and serves to minimize the potential for a Fighter. While I am sure you would absolutely never declare that



I do not believe this is fair to limit characters who are supposed to be heroes in such constrained ways. There is a MASSIVE gap in strength between the bog standard Commoner and even the Warrior and the Fighter.

Your little blurb doesn't match mine. You forgot the all important "first level" phrase from your wizard description. If it's placed at the beginning of the first sentence, as it was with my fighter description, then I absolutely would describe a first level wizard that way.

First level characters have not yet had any adventures. They have the minimum competence as described in their class entries; armor and weapon proficiencies and their first level class features. For a fighter, that's one more combat trick than the next guy. For a wizard it's a bare handful of slots and a book with next to nothing but cantrips in it. They're more talented than warriors and magewrights and capable of growing to far greater heights but they're not there yet and there's no reason their backstory should say different.

Both wizards and fighters are -far- too customizable to make any definitive statement of what they are much beyond first level but at first level they're barely competent nobodies.

Same goes for pretty much all of the classes to one degree or other. Favored souls and sorcerers are special at level one by virtue of having their powers invested in them by something greater than themselves but pretty much everybody else had to work for it and they're barely off the starting line yet at level 1.

You want to be a super-special snowflake at level one, you're gonna have to come up with a peculiar race. Elans used to be something but are no longer. An incarnate effigy of something humanoid shaped and with only one HD is definitely not something you see every day. You could be a failed mind seed implanted in the clone of a cerebremancer as an experiment. End of the day though, you're still a level 1 nobody that's barely competent now and you've got to earn being something by leveling and accomplishing feats and deeds.

You can be as creative as you want but there's gonna be narrative and cognitive dissonance if your creativity outstrips your actual character's abilities.

[AntiAuthority]

I think that when you boil this question down to its basest form, it's "Should having magic be as good than not having magic?" And for the folks that come down on the side of magic, I can totally respect that opinion.

There is a second, unasked question here that, in my mind, is more pertinent: "Does something being magic automatically mean it should be usable by mortals?" And to me, the answer is clearly no. But D&D wizards are capable of so many incredibly powerful things that many gods in other settings can't and no one cares. But god forbid a martial have any out of combat utility. Hell, I've seen people complain about even minor boons giving them line effects on their attacks as "too anime". Which is stupid as hell, as D&D casters can stop time and create demiplanes and all sorts of broken crap, while the most that most anime casters can do is at best elemental blasting.

It's ok for completely mortal magic users to make gods in most settings look incompetent because magic is fantastic. It's wrong for completely mortal martial types to do the same thing because we need an explanation for that.

Before someone brings it up, Ainz Ooal Gown from the Overlord anime is a spell caster can stop time, throw around elements, teleport, etc. Things you'd expect from anime, right? Well yes and no... The thing is Ainz is from an MMORPG heavily inspired by D&D 3E, so everything he's doing that counts as "too anime" are mostly things you'd find in D&D. So everything is "too anime."




The -entire- difference between the fighter PC class and the warrior NPC class is that talent. The former is a little tougher, a little more prone to figuring out the tricks of the trade, a little luckier perhaps. The same XP gets you the same number of levels and their training is in the same field. What else would you use to explain why one gets a larger HD and -way- more combat competency?

I'd say the Fighter has more training because of their ability to gain more combat feats.

The same XP doesn't make sense for an argument, because Fighters and Wizards also level up at the same XP, so they should be equal if we're using XP... So why are you against Fighters having more versatility in the form of class skills? Everyone levels up at the same rate in 3.5E, that doesn't imply one class has more talent than another since they're all progressing in levels at the same time.

Fighters having Armor and Weapon Training , more feats and more Class Skills as a class feature while Warriors don't supports them not getting luckier or figuring it out. Just better training than Warriors... I just don't understand why the better trained class has as few skill ranks as the lesser trained one...

If we look at the Starting Ages thing, the higher ages imply Fighters have longer training than someone like a Barbarian or Rogue... But they still have far fewer skill ranks than either...


That goes back to my commentary on CC skills. You're not -forbidden- to put ranks in skills that aren't class skills. You're not forbidden from having a high int score (virtually all of mine have at least a 14 for combat expertise). You -choose- whether or not to do those things. A fighter that's put max cross-class ranks in hide and move silently has used the exact same number of skill rank as one who has put max ranks intimidate and ride. He's not as good as an equal level rogue at stealth but why should he be?

In an earlier post, I covered why a D&D Fighter is so incompetent that they'd be considered slow by the standards of real world and other fantasy armies because of how they lack class skills that real and fantasy warriors tend to have. Basic soldiers in the real world are capable of performing stealth, even fantasy warriors are capable of this. Fighters apparently fail at that archetype and are reduced to unskilled brutes.


The question isn't whether or not he -can- sneak, you don't need ranks at all for that. The question is whether he has enough to succeed at stealth often enough. That doesn't take much when the overwhelming majority of foes and creatures are only gonna have a few points of overall bonus to their spot and listen checks. Conan never had to sneak past a grell so why would you expect a fighter to? Being stealthy enough to pick a copper piece out of an old red's scales is the design space for the skirmisher types like rogues and scouts. The fighter's design space is running the beast through and prying that copper out with a crow-bar after. He can be sneaky enough to get past its kobold minions without a fight though.


So you're in support of Fighter's main option being violence to get what they want? Because that's fitting... For a dumb bandit or monster that a hero would kill in any other story, not the usual hero you'd follow in a story.


Let's put some numbers to it, just to really hammer the point home.

Human thug fighter 20 with int 14 and dex 12. Really wants to be a proper sneak so he takes the feats guerrilla scout and guerrilla warrior.

7 skill ranks a level means he can have just about max ranks in each of spot, listen, hide, and move silently and 5 other skills. About level 9 or so, he picks up darkstalker, just to be safe.

So at 20, he has 11 ranks in all 4 of those skills and still has plenty of points left over to also have, let's go with know (local), gather info, tumble (skilled city-dweller article), intimidate, and jump. He's even picked up a couple of skill tricks since he could only advance the other 4 on every other level.

Let's go ahead and give him greater boots and cloak of elvenkind for +10 to each and a set of gloves of dexterity +4

So that's 11 ranks, +10 competence, +3 dex for a total bonus on stealth rolls of +24. For comparison, most of the spot/listen modifiers at the same level on the SRD only have that beat by about 5 points. The 20k spent on these skills is chump change from the 760k that a level 20 character gets and that's not even close to the highest bonus you can get without epic items. It's also only 3 feats out of the character's 18 total.

So the fantasy warrior that is super unskilled compared to even real world or other fantasy warriors is ok because he had to spend feats to be competent at skills fantasy, mythological and real world warriors would have had as class skills/basic training? Even better, it's ok because he has to use magic items instead of his own class features (Like a Rogue's class skills being stealth along with a bunch of skill ranks or a Wizard just being able to buff their stealth through spells)?


You can lean even harder into stealth without being any less of a fighter with another feat or two and a few 10's of thousands more gold if you want but I think the point is made here and the same is true for -most- skills. If your fighters are big, dumb brutes then it's because that's how you build them.


So why don't they have Class Skills such as Disable Device (like traps), Persuasion (real world and fantasy warriors are more than just killing machines, they usually have to give orders too and have enough presence to make their underlings want to follow them least mutiny happen), Perception (So they don't walk into said traps), Geography (to be able to use the stars as a map) etc. Anything that mythological, fantasy or even real world soldiers would have or did have at some point in the past? Even more, why do they have so few skill ranks? Was their entire training just, "Stand here and pound on the enemy until one of you is dead"?

That sounds appropriate if a Fighter is meant to be a bandit living out in the wilderness or a socially ungraceful killing machine instead of a warrior that can contribute to society outside of stabbing things and maybe building things to stab more people with.



There's nothing really left to say on this except to repeat my theses. Don't look to class alone to make your character everything you want him to be.

This is what a Pathfinder Fighter is described as that I have an issue with.


Far more than mere thugs, these skilled warriors reveal the true deadliness of their weapons, turning hunks of metal into arms capable of taming kingdoms, slaughtering monsters, and rousing the hearts of armies.


Far more than mere thugs... Their class skills revolve almost entirely around brute strength and intimidating people... Like mere thugs. Doesn't add up with description.

Skilled warriors... Only 2 Skill Ranks + Intelligence. Doesn't add up with description.

Taming kingdoms... How are they supposed to do this when they can't even use Diplomacy or Persuasion? Just stab people until they get heard? Doesn't add up with description.

Rousing the hearts of armies... Without any Diplomacy or Persuasion as Class Skills? So they just stab people until the army gets inspired enough to follow them? Doesn't add up with description.

Admittedly they could fix this by gaining class skills from Adaptable Training or Versatile Training... They're spending EX on things that probably should have come as a Class Skill from Level 1 by the description and even real world, fantasy and mythological precedents. This would be like telling a Rogue, "You can turn Stealth into a Class Skill, you just have to go and use up one of your Rogue Abilities later on for that thing that you were described as having in the description." The Pathfinder Fighter doesn't have class skills matching up to the description, you're pretty much just a guy who hits stuff and maybe knows some possibly useful stuff revolving around physical labor, scaring people and building stuff to maybe scare more people.

Even the Barbarian (the class that is noted to have little training in its description) has more Skill Ranks than the trained Fighter. WTF were Fighters being taught? It sounds like they got ripped off if the people who know "little of training" are apparently more skilled than them.


The issue is that the Pathfinder Fighter's description might seem like a lie to most people since the class' mechanics don't reflect it at all. I don't think many people are going to be happy if they realize the game could be interpreted as lying to them about something their class as having, let alone what plenty of fantasy warriors have had since mythology.


The caster archetype is more limited and the non-casters less so than they're given credit for in these discussions.


Can you define what you mean by caster archetypes?

Because 3.5E Wizards are capable of fulfilling every single role to my knowledge with their vast array of spells that even mythological gods would be staring at...

Or do you mean "Greek God+" as a caster archetype? Because I don't think you'll see many magic caster archetypes like a D&D Wizard.

This might sound sarcastic, but I really don't understand what you mean by caster archetype as a D&D style Wizard wouldn't even fit with most fantasy stories because there's rarely magic users as versatile and powerful as a D&D Wizard in fantasy.

Considering Fighter is a broad term and the class seems to imply a lot of training (about as much as a Paladin), I'd imagine someone that's skilled instead of someone who apparently doesn't know much about anything beyond hurting people... Like a mere thug. But apparently the barely trained person like a Barbarian (both from the description and Vital Statistics page) knows more somehow.


There are plenty of ways to move and full attack and get damage up to decent levels as well as do a whole host of other things.


What can a fighter do to move (preferably at full) and Full Attack?

And why is a Wizard capable of casting higher level spells as a standard action as a default for the class, while a martial player apparently has to figure out how to Full Attack and Move at the same time? Even at lower levels, why should the Wizard be better at hurting multiple targets and getting able to move while a Fighter needs a feat to hit more than one person unless they want to use their Full Attack action?

Even more, the bulk of the martial's increased damage comes from picking certain feats while a magic user's damage scales by a d6 every level or so, on top of any feats the mage may take to augment their damage further.


First level characters have not yet had any adventures. They have the minimum competence as described in their class entries; armor and weapon proficiencies and their first level class features. For a fighter, that's one more combat trick than the next guy. For a wizard it's a bare handful of slots and a book with next to nothing but cantrips in it. They're more talented than warriors and magewrights and capable of growing to far greater heights but they're not there yet and there's no reason their backstory should say different.

Both wizards and fighters are -far- too customizable to make any definitive statement of what they are much beyond first level but at first level they're barely competent nobodies.

Same goes for pretty much all of the classes to one degree or other. Favored souls and sorcerers are special at level one by virtue of having their powers invested in them by something greater than themselves but pretty much everybody else had to work for it and they're barely off the starting line yet at level 1.

You want to be a super-special snowflake at level one, you're gonna have to come up with a peculiar race. Elans used to be something but are no longer. An incarnate effigy of something humanoid shaped and with only one HD is definitely not something you see every day. You could be a failed mind seed implanted in the clone of a cerebremancer as an experiment. End of the day though, you're still a level 1 nobody that's barely competent now and you've got to earn being something by leveling and accomplishing feats and deeds.

You can be as creative as you want but there's gonna be narrative and cognitive dissonance if your creativity outstrips your actual character's abilities.

Took me a second to recall, but... In older D&D, a first level Fighter was called a Veteran. Not exactly 3.5E, but I think that's pretty much the only thing we have to go on in regards to what Level 1 counts as. Take it for what it was, as it was a different edition, but your interpretation is just as valid as anyone else's.

Outside of your personal interpretation, there's nothing supporting what you're saying. and the only thing I found was basically saying the opposite. This sounds like head canon that you're trying to push onto others.

[Afghanistan]

Your little blurb doesn't match mine. You forgot the all important "first level" phrase from your wizard description. If it's placed at the beginning of the first sentence, as it was with my fighter description, then I absolutely would describe a first level wizard that way.

Oh how dare I forget the all important "first level" phrase that you very clearly mentally filled in yourself and knew exactly what I was doing.


First level characters have not yet had any adventures. They have the minimum competence as described in their class entries; armor and weapon proficiencies and their first level class features. For a fighter, that's one more combat trick than the next guy. For a wizard it's a bare handful of slots and a book with next to nothing but cantrips in it. They're more talented than warriors and magewrights and capable of growing to far greater heights but they're not there yet and there's no reason their backstory should say different.

Maybe YOUR first level characters have not had any adventures. Sometimes discovering that you have a PC class level can be your first adventure all on it's own, but for some reason you've elected to just make your characters ding at minimum class age and suddenly decide to be adventurers for no other reason than to to be a bundle of stats. Min/Maxing past at 1st level isn't very hard as it is a time in game play when poisons are lethal, a +1 bonus can mean the difference between victory and defeat, and magic is not the end all, be all solution to your problems. Furthermore, most people work with their GMs to establish characters within the setting that fit the overarching themes of the setting, even if (and especially so) your character concept is that you exist outside of and uniquely within the setting. Furthermore, in a setting where you are walking around with at most 6 more hp than everyone else, and 2 more hp than people trained to fight at the same level, you are by default inherently and mechanically more unique than most other individuals within the setting strictly based on your class mechanics.


You want to be a super-special snowflake at level one, you're gonna have to come up with a peculiar race. You can be as creative as you want but there's gonna be narrative and cognitive dissonance if your creativity outstrips your actual character's abilities.

You can just write your backstory to suggest that you are in some way special because simply by virtue of even having class levels, you are already simply a cut above the rest. Furthermore, at level 1, a character has a plethora of options worth noticing and talking about that can make them special. The ones that come to mind immediately are Precocious Apprentice, Improved Initiative, Greenbound Summoning, even feats like Aberration Blood can be useful at this level as the at this point in the game, it really comes down to very minuscule numbers to improve your chances, or clever gameplay when literally one attack can potentially end an entire encounter no matter how feeble it might be.

Superhuman accuracy can be replicated by a Fighter simply taking Point Blank Shot, and then Precise Shot as their fighter bonus feat. Superhuman strength can simply be Grappling and just rolling very well for your Strength Score. I think you are grossly overestimating the abilities of a bog standard NPC commoner, that has 1 less feat, a dozen less proficiencies, even less hit points, and even less relevance to the story than what should be our brave heroes.

[Glorthindel]

It's ok for completely mortal magic users to make gods in most settings look incompetent because magic is fantastic. It's wrong for completely mortal martial types to do the same thing because we need an explanation for that.

No, its wrong because some people do not want to play that archetype.

Look, there are many classes out there with different degrees of magical, mystical and superhuman. The idea of a melee combat class that uses elemental, magical, superhuman or superpower abilities should absolutely exist for the players that want to fulfil that character idea or engage in that fantasy archetype. And they do; we have Monks, Paladins, Barbarians, Rangers, and many PrC classes that blend those power types to a variety of degrees. That role is fulfilled.

But what about the guy who just wants to play the medieval knight? Or the farmboy turned sellsword (who is not the subject of a prophecy, or concealing some chosen-one bloodline)? He plays a Fighter. And as soon as you start tacking on the ability to jump small buildings, fire rays of energy from his sword, and smash the ground to cause earthquake ripples, you are removing the space for his fantasy archetype.

I doubt anyone disagrees that Fighters couldn't be better (why they have so few skill points is ludicrous), but the reason that a lot of ideas face push back, is that these ideas do not take into account for a number of the fantasies that the Fighter Class fulfils. Its why the "anime" comment is often used as a slur against highly-fantastical solutions; not because anime-fantasies are inherently wrong (they are not, and design space should be given just as much to people that want to fulfil this character fantasy), but pasting them over a very tonally different fantasy archetype, and in doing so erasing that archetype completely, is wrong if it leaves nothing for the players that preferred that archetype.

[AntiAuthority]

No, its wrong because some people do not want to play that archetype.

Look, there are many classes out there with different degrees of magical, mystical and superhuman. The idea of a melee combat class that uses elemental, magical, superhuman or superpower abilities should absolutely exist for the players that want to fulfil that character idea or engage in that fantasy archetype. And they do; we have Monks, Paladins, Barbarians, Rangers, and many PrC classes that blend those power types to a variety of degrees. That role is fulfilled.

But what about the guy who just wants to play the medieval knight? Or the farmboy turned sellsword (who is not the subject of a prophecy, or concealing some chosen-one bloodline)? He plays a Fighter. And as soon as you start tacking on the ability to jump small buildings, fire rays of energy from his sword, and smash the ground to cause earthquake ripples, you are removing the space for his fantasy archetype.

I doubt anyone disagrees that Fighters couldn't be better (why they have so few skill points is ludicrous), but the reason that a lot of ideas face push back, is that these ideas do not take into account for a number of the fantasies that the Fighter Class fulfils. Its why the "anime" comment is often used as a slur against highly-fantastical solutions; not because anime-fantasies are inherently wrong (they are not, and design space should be given just as much to people that want to fulfil this character fantasy), but pasting them over a very tonally different fantasy archetype, and in doing so erasing that archetype completely, is wrong if it leaves nothing for the players that preferred that archetype.

The thing is... Wizards are already doing some anime sheninagans.

By saying it's wrong because some people don't want to play that archetype, I could easily say the same about anyone who wants to play Harry Potter or Gandalf (as seen in the movies) but end up with something like Dr. Strange at Level 20. The solution to that? Play lower levels.

The same with playing a completely mundane warrior if I want to play someone like a regular knight. I'd play at lower levels so that large animals are still a threat to my character and he's not capable of easily killing things much bigger than him with a pointy metal stick or deflecting boulders. (https://www.d20pfsrd.com/feats/weapon-mastery-feats/smash-from-the-air-weapon-mastery/)

You can play Harry Potter as a Level 20 Wizard, but it'll be clear you're far above the power and versatility of Harry Potter. You can play Captain America as a Level 20 Fighter, but it's clear you're hitting and tanking much better than anything Captain America could.

By saying "this archetype that does high powered anime/comic type stuff is ok at higher levels" but "this archetype that does high powered anime/comic type stuff isn't ok at higher levels" is a double standard.

The issue is "regular dude with a sword" is a low level concept and is best represented at lower levels when they're still squishy, guns are a threat to them, and falling from high distances is a very good way to kill them. If anything, you can even capture the underdog Badass Normal tone better at low levels because you literally have no reason to be traveling with a party of pseudo gods and super humans, but you still choose do... You might be squishier than them, lack their fancy powers and such but it'll also force your character to be more tactical than just smashing the very powerful beings until they die. A Level 20 Fighter trying to do this feels like someone who is clearly superhuman pretending to be someone who is athletic to peak human at best, which is ok, but seems dishonest to me when they can apparently wade through lava from Hit Points alone for more than a few seconds and they're apparently striking things so hard they don't need guns to go dinosaur hunting through instantly killing them, but whatever...

Anything higher and you're left wondering (to me) "Why are these ancient, god-like beings with all these powers not instantly murdering me the second battle starts? I'm just a guy! Screw this, my guy knows when to fold em and this is that time when the side characters realize they're hopelessly outmatched and leave it to the main characters..." Unless my character is suicidally overconfident in his ability to be relevant in these types of battles, has a hero complex and doesn't realize they're actually getting in the way of the party members that are relevant or a complete masochist who enjoys being destroyed every other round.

[OrbanSirgen]

But what about the guy who just wants to play the medieval knight? Or the farmboy turned sellsword (who is not the subject of a prophecy, or concealing some chosen-one bloodline)? He plays a Fighter.

The first is a knight (PHB2), and the second is either a commoner or a warrior...

[Segev]

No, its wrong because some people do not want to play that archetype.

Look, there are many classes out there with different degrees of magical, mystical and superhuman. The idea of a melee combat class that uses elemental, magical, superhuman or superpower abilities should absolutely exist for the players that want to fulfil that character idea or engage in that fantasy archetype. And they do; we have Monks, Paladins, Barbarians, Rangers, and many PrC classes that blend those power types to a variety of degrees. That role is fulfilled.

But what about the guy who just wants to play the medieval knight? Or the farmboy turned sellsword (who is not the subject of a prophecy, or concealing some chosen-one bloodline)? He plays a Fighter. And as soon as you start tacking on the ability to jump small buildings, fire rays of energy from his sword, and smash the ground to cause earthquake ripples, you are removing the space for his fantasy archetype.

I doubt anyone disagrees that Fighters couldn't be better (why they have so few skill points is ludicrous), but the reason that a lot of ideas face push back, is that these ideas do not take into account for a number of the fantasies that the Fighter Class fulfils. Its why the "anime" comment is often used as a slur against highly-fantastical solutions; not because anime-fantasies are inherently wrong (they are not, and design space should be given just as much to people that want to fulfil this character fantasy), but pasting them over a very tonally different fantasy archetype, and in doing so erasing that archetype completely, is wrong if it leaves nothing for the players that preferred that archetype.

Your bolded part of your first sentence strikes me as fundamentally flawed. Maybe I'm misparsing you, or misunderstanding your meaning, but if you mean that some players don't want to play a martial hero who can slay gods and leap mountains, then you're not really arguing for class features not to exist, but for levels of play to be left alone.

If you don't want to play a character that can do things high level characters can do, play in games where you're not that level. Yes, I know, currently you can choose a class that just doesn't let you keep up at those levels, and you're playing the "archetype" that is not a demigod warrior, but is a more "grounded" warrior. But this is, again, a problem if it means that other classes are leaving yours in the dust.

I feel like I should elaborate and clarify more, but I also feel like I'll just be repeating myself. Does what I've said make sense? Am I utterly missing your point and thus arguing against a construct of my own imagination rather than what you're actually saying?

[Rater202]

On cross-class skills: The cap for cross-class skill ranks is much lower than that of class skills.

A fighter as a tactically trained warrior will absolutely never be as good as setting up ambushes or figuring out where hidden enemies are as a common crook with no formal combat training.

And any magic items that could make the fighter better also apply to the Rogue: It's like in the comic: Haley takes Elan's glibness potion becuase her already being better at bluff than him means that she'll get more out of it.

The rogue with max ranks in stealth has just as much access to stealth boosting items as the fighter but will benefit from it to a greater degree.

The fighter sucks at things a fighter should be expected to do and at absolute best can only be competent if they neglect other aspects of their archetype and even then they'll never be able to compete with a rogue who likewise specializes in stealth, who will quickly dwarf them.

The obvious solution to me would be to combine the rogue, Barbarian, and Fighter classes in a manner similar to a Gestalt character, remove the alignment restrictions and illiteracy from the barbarian, and which one your character depends on how you play it and what your backstory is.

[Dienekes]

You're taking the thread title a bit too literally I'd say. What really matters here is the caster/martial divide - once we bring up the actual builds of fictional characters and their abilities I think you'll find that most of them are multiclassed in some way. Even Conan, the most iconic barbarian imaginable to this day, is often statted with some rogue in there, and several folks even view him as being lawful.

With that said, I don't have to go to a magical class like Bard to inspire people - Seasoned Commander Fighter and Exemplar Brawler can do it, for example, and if you interpret "inspire" more broadly then Cavalier and even Ranger are in too. As for monk, a Sohei or Shou Disciple can do the armor and horse thing.

You mean Conan the Thief, Conan the Pirate, Conan the tactical genius who wears the heaviest armor available to him? Yeah I'm aware the Barbarian class is a horrible representation for him.

I have no doubt you can make a build that can do any 1 thing off the list. I have yet to see one that does it all.




Sounds like a ritual/incantation, in which case the answer is "whatever level the plot needs it to be." You can move it up or down with mitigants and other factors to a near limitless degree.


So now we have Time Stop and an effect that can only be replicated with Wish, apparently.



That doesn't sound like a Balor at all; FC1 doesn't put them in the "manipulator" or "corrupter" categories. They also don't have any shapeshifting. Whatever fiend it was, it's undoubtedly weaker than that if it sought to manipulate first.

Balor was what I thought was a fair baseline for a Duke of Hell, since in the game that would technically be a named character like Dispater, Bel, and so on, who actually do work behind the scenes and mnaipulate people to their grand designs. Don't really see how stating it has more magical effects automatically means it is weaker. But you are right, Balor's aren't really big picture kind of characters. They mostly just kill things, though they are smart enough to recognize when someone is stronger than them, as Gawain was. So, which of the Archdevils or Demon Lords has shape shifting?



Gonna stop you right there and say I do not recall any such challenge being issued, nor ever accepting any such challenge. Furthermore...

Well, probably because I wasn't talking to you. I was talking to Psyren, as I have quoted him on all my posts. If you would like to participate, so far the challenge is a single non-magical build that is able to do the effects of a single non-magical but legendary character from Arthurian legend. No magic one way (in the legend) no magic the other way (in the class features). If you want to participate, awesome. I want to see these builds (so I can steal them for my next game).

If you don't want to participate. Then don't.

[Psyren]

You mean Conan the Thief, Conan the Pirate, Conan the tactical genius who wears the heaviest armor available to him? Yeah I'm aware the Barbarian class is a horrible representation for him.

So if you're aware of that fact for the most iconic barbarian in the history of fiction, why insist on Fighter 20 for Gawain or whoever? It makes no sense.


So now we have Time Stop and an effect that can only be replicated with Wish, apparently.

Do you know what incantations are? They don't involve Wish at all.


So, which of the Archdevils or Demon Lords has shape shifting?

None of them would behave anything like the character in your story so it's irrelevant.

[digiman619]

It's ok for completely mortal magic users to make gods in most settings look incompetent because magic is fantastic. It's wrong for completely mortal martial types to do the same thing because we need an explanation for that.
The hell it is. 'Because magic' only goes so far. It's an incredible act of hubris to suggest that a person could hold that much power.

[Dienekes]

So if you're aware of that fact for the most iconic barbarian in the history of fiction, why insist on Fighter 20 for Gawain or whoever? It makes no sense.

I'm not insisting. I thought that's what you claimed you could do. But I have since said "go ahead" to pretty much any class you could add so long as they don't have spellcasting or directly contradict the character. No Bard because magic. And if you can find a way for Barbarian to fit, sure, but since the class has the alignment restriction: must be non-lawful and Gawain was lawful good I find that hard to do. You find a way around it, go ahead.



Do you know what incantations are? They don't involve Wish at all.


My point is that we are using the legends to try and find a fair base level. So far every high level spell they seem to be doing you are trying to brush under DM fiat. Which makes this fairly trying and honestly just makes me think you're trying to wiggle out of making the character.


None of them would behave anything like the character in your story so it's irrelevant.

I don't care how they behave, they're different characters. I care about what they can do to fit a baseline of abilities for our martial must fight.

[Kelb_Panthera]

I'd say the Fighter has more training because of their ability to gain more combat feats.

And yet a fighter and a warrior that have had the exact same adventures, side by side even, will yield different results. If it is a difference of training, then it's one that takes place entirely before first level.


The same XP doesn't make sense for an argument, because Fighters and Wizards also level up at the same XP, so they should be equal if we're using XP... So why are you against Fighters having more versatility in the form of class skills? Everyone levels up at the same rate in 3.5E, that doesn't imply one class has more talent than another since they're all progressing in levels at the same time.

I've already addresssed this though you seem to have either misunderstood or ignored the point. Which skills are class skills is -not- a restriction on what skills he can put ranks in. Neither, for that matter, are the number of skill points a class gets a function of their intelligence. The number of skill points a -character gets is a function of intelligence and that is reflected in the fact that all classes get +int skill points per level. If you have a smart fighter, you'll have as many skill points as a wizard does at the same level unless the GM is giving out skill points for magically enhanced intelligence. More, if he's a thug fighter.

As for wizards being more than fighters of the same level, they're quite obviously studying in completely different fields. It's an apples and oranges comparison. Every character only has so much time in a day to devote to anything. A wizard spends his trying to cypher out the bendable rules of reality to the exclusion of everything else. A fighter spends his cyphering how best to make his foes fall to his blade.


Fighters having Armor and Weapon Training , more feats and more Class Skills as a class feature while Warriors don't supports them not getting luckier or figuring it out. Just better training than Warriors... I just don't understand why the better trained class has as few skill ranks as the lesser trained one...

That only works if you throw out a known quantity in the fact that both advance through levels at the same rate.

Honestly, this argument almost sounds like an argument for something like UAs generic classes more than one for why any particular class is wrong.


If we look at the Starting Ages thing, the higher ages imply Fighters have longer training than someone like a Barbarian or Rogue... But they still have far fewer skill ranks than either...

2 less than the barbarian, or the same in exchange for some armor proificiencies and a feat. The rogue is trading a -huge- amount of combat ability for his skill points compared to either of them. Again skill points are -not- a function of intelligence when you're examinging a class. A thug fighter that focuses intelligence to the extreme is going to have as many or more skill points than a rogue that doesn't on top of his comparatively myriad combat abilities. The nature of his focus on combat will make what he gets for them a bit different than what a rogue gets for his but that's part of the nature of a class based system.

Remember, when you're talking about the training characters have as they progress, -eveything- about their class is training, not just the skill points; armor and weapon proficiencies, skill points, and all class features. The character feats are -also- training that's unrestricted by class so as to be a way to represent either still further training in their field of specialization -or- outside of it.

The fighter -class'- specialty is to have as many reliable combat techniques as possible. The barbarian's is to rely on conditioning and natural instinct, the knight's to be an medieval tank, the warblade's to have a wider variety of tricks that he can't perform as reliably, etc and so on. If any one of them doesn't quite fit your ideal for what you want your fighting character to be, FFS blend them by multiclassing and/or look for a PrC to expand on them.


In an earlier post, I covered why a D&D Fighter is so incompetent that they'd be considered slow by the standards of real world and other fantasy armies because of how they lack class skills that real and fantasy warriors tend to have. Basic soldiers in the real world are capable of performing stealth, even fantasy warriors are capable of this. Fighters apparently fail at that archetype and are reduced to unskilled brutes.

I'm not sure exactly which post you're referring to but I suspect this (https://forums.giantitp.com/showsinglepost.php?p=24389164&postcount=118) one. If you'd be so kind as to confirm, I'll break this one down in my next response.


So you're in support of Fighter's main option being violence to get what they want? Because that's fitting... For a dumb bandit or monster that a hero would kill in any other story, not the usual hero you'd follow in a story.

Again, the class is not the whole of the character. That aside, you've missed the point of that example. An old red dragon is a creature -noted- for its extraordinary senses (as with all older true dragons). It's something from which you'd only expect an extraordinarily skilled stealth specialist to be able to avoid detection. A single classed fighter is not that. As I demonstrated, he's perfectly capable of being an adequate sneak, even an extraordinary one when compared to lower level characters and most other creatures. A character that is -mostly- a fighter can give up a point of BAB, fort save, and a few HPs to become just as skilled at stealth as anyone else. Trade any -one- level of the fighter I outlined with any of the classes designed for the stealth space and he can double the ranks he has and become a ghost compared to most fighters.

I seriously cannot overstate how very powerful a character building tool the multiclassing rules are for expressing a whole character.


So the fantasy warrior that is super unskilled compared to even real world or other fantasy warriors is ok because he had to spend feats to be competent at skills fantasy, mythological and real world warriors would have had as class skills/basic training? Even better, it's ok because he has to use magic items instead of his own class features (Like a Rogue's class skills being stealth along with a bunch of skill ranks or a Wizard just being able to buff their stealth through spells)?

You're putting the cart before the horse. You're expecting the class to do everything you want for the character rather than picking classes amongst other build resources based on the character you want. Choosing to take fighter at every level, and you do get to choose at -every- level, is saying to the game that you -want- to be hyper-focused on being the very best "stick the pointy end in the other guy" chaaracter you can be to the exclusion of most other things.

As for spending feats on doing what you want the character to do, that's the whole point of feats. That's why almost none of them have a specific class as a requirement even if they are defacto for that class by expanding on an option unique to it.

And finally there's that ridiculous canard of "worse at stealth than literally every warrior ever" that's -still- a choice. Even without the boots, gloves, and cloak, the one I showed is skilled enough at hiding that he can be within 10 feet of an eagle and have close to even odds of escaping its detection in shiny metal armor. While using the gear that he uses to improve his stealth (something everyone who's ever worn camo has done to a lesser degree) he becomes so stealthy as to be outright undetectable by any real life animal with game stats and even has good odds of avoiding detection from security specialists that are anything less than legendary (level 11+).


So why don't they have Class Skills such as Disable Device (like traps), Persuasion (real world and fantasy warriors are more than just killing machines, they usually have to give orders too and have enough presence to make their underlings want to follow them least mutiny happen), Perception (So they don't walk into said traps), Geography (to be able to use the stars as a map) etc. Anything that mythological, fantasy or even real world soldiers would have or did have at some point in the past? Even more, why do they have so few skill ranks? Was their entire training just, "Stand here and pound on the enemy until one of you is dead"?

That sounds appropriate if a Fighter is meant to be a bandit living out in the wilderness or a socially ungraceful killing machine instead of a warrior that can contribute to society outside of stabbing things and maybe building things to stab more people with.

How about because no one class is meant to do everything? Even the vaunted wizard can do -anything- not everything. You want trapfinidng, take a dip into -any- of the 8 or so base classes or handful of PrCs that get it. Nothing's stopping you from putting ranks in the skill before or after that dip or grabbing gear that further enables your ability to find traps. You want to be as good at it as a skirmisher type character, multiclass one and be happy that you can accomplish your character goal.

And I'm gonna keep hammering this: not as good as a specialist in his field is -not- utterly incompetent. Taking cross-class ranks is always an option.





This is what a Pathfinder Fighter is described as that I have an issue with.



Far more than mere thugs... Their class skills revolve almost entirely around brute strength and intimidating people... Like mere thugs. Doesn't add up with description.

Skilled warriors... Only 2 Skill Ranks + Intelligence. Doesn't add up with description.

Taming kingdoms... How are they supposed to do this when they can't even use Diplomacy or Persuasion? Just stab people until they get heard? Doesn't add up with description.

Rousing the hearts of armies... Without any Diplomacy or Persuasion as Class Skills? So they just stab people until the army gets inspired enough to follow them? Doesn't add up with description.


Here's the 3e description


The questing knight, the conquering overlord, the king’s champion, the elite foot soldier, the hardened mercenary, and the bandit king—all are fighters. Fighters can be stalwart defenders of those in need, cruel marauders, or gutsy adventurers. Some are among the land’s best souls, willing to face death for the greater good. Others are among the worst, with no qualms about killing for private gain, or even for sport. Fighters who are not actively adventuring may be soldiers, guards, bodyguards, champions, or criminal enforcers. An adven-turing fighter might call himself a warrior, a mercenary, a thug, or simply an adventurer.

Class description fits just fine to the class' featues.

One more reason for me to stick to one over the other.

Even so; it's not hard to find examples of characters doing and being those things on strength of arms alone.

A thug is nothing but brute force and bravado. Simply being a skilled master of arms makes you more than a mere thug.

Skilled warrior.... okay, dude. it takes skill to be able to do all the combat tricks that a fighter does. Treating the term as a keyword here is just deliberately looking for problems. The implication never was that fighters would be good at forgery or spellcraft or something.

Taming kingdoms: people are very prone to follow a winner. History is replete with examples of leaders that were skilled warriors and utter failures at statecraft and pure competency as a means of acquiring rank is relatively new as a widespread phenomenon. Being a skilled wordsmith -can- help but it's not strictly necessary.

And as for rousing the hearts of armies, you seem to be an anime fan so let's see if I can get this one in just five words: Monkey D Luffy, Roronoa Zoro. Here's a bit more, for those who don't get the reference; it is entirely possible to inspire through competent example, even if you're not good with words. The two characters named, especially the latter, are examples of exactly that; men of few, simple words that nonetheless inspire large numbers of people with their exploits and the virtues (for a certain value of the term) they embody.


Admittedly they could fix this by gaining class skills from Adaptable Training or Versatile Training... They're spending EX on things that probably should have come as a Class Skill from Level 1 by the description and even real world, fantasy and mythological precedents. This would be like telling a Rogue, "You can turn Stealth into a Class Skill, you just have to go and use up one of your Rogue Abilities later on for that thing that you were described as having in the description." The Pathfinder Fighter doesn't have class skills matching up to the description, you're pretty much just a guy who hits stuff and maybe knows some possibly useful stuff revolving around physical labor, scaring people and building stuff to maybe scare more people.

Even the Barbarian (the class that is noted to have little training in its description) has more Skill Ranks than the trained Fighter. WTF were Fighters being taught? It sounds like they got ripped off if the people who know "little of training" are apparently more skilled than them.


The issue is that the Pathfinder Fighter's description might seem like a lie to most people since the class' mechanics don't reflect it at all. I don't think many people are going to be happy if they realize the game could be interpreted as lying to them about something their class as having, let alone what plenty of fantasy warriors have had since mythology.

I won't pretend I know more about pathfinder than I do. What I -do- know is that a lot of what I've said about the 3e fighter holds up just fine though. The description being less than super accutely accurate really feels like a nit-pick given the fact that fluff tends to be mutable within the limitations of what the class that can actually do.


Can you define what you mean by caster archetypes?

Because 3.5E Wizards are capable of fulfilling every single role to my knowledge with their vast array of spells that even mythological gods would be staring at...

Or do you mean "Greek God+" as a caster archetype? Because I don't think you'll see many magic caster archetypes like a D&D Wizard.

This might sound sarcastic, but I really don't understand what you mean by caster archetype as a D&D style Wizard wouldn't even fit with most fantasy stories because there's rarely magic users as versatile and powerful as a D&D Wizard in fantasy.

Caster archetype, as I use it, is a catch all for workers of magic of all stripes; the bookish types that study the fundaments of reality or religious apocrypha to find ways to bend reality, the religious zealot or chosen of the gods that work miracles through faith, those who make dark pacts or have blood of inhuman creatures that allow them to ignore the natural rules of the world, and even those whose connection to the natural or spirit world is close enough that the world itself responds to their will.

This is contrasted with the warrior archetype; character's whose primary concern is skill at arms above all else; and the skillful skirmisher archetype that is chiefly concerned with always having some way to apply their skills (not the ruleset key term) and wit to the situation at hand.

The ur-examples of each are the wizard, fighter, and rogue respectively. There are, of course, classes and characters that take splashes from more than one or even hybridize them; the ranger being a single-class examples of a hybrid of all three archetypes.


Considering Fighter is a broad term and the class seems to imply a lot of training (about as much as a Paladin), I'd imagine someone that's skilled instead of someone who apparently doesn't know much about anything beyond hurting people... Like a mere thug. But apparently the barely trained person like a Barbarian (both from the description and Vital Statistics page) knows more somehow.

Knowing how to fight effectively, nevermind perform a whole host of combat tricks also requires knowledge and skill. The actual mechanic of class skills and ranks is not the exclusive meaning of the term "skill."


What can a fighter do to move (preferably at full) and Full Attack?

In PF? No idea. I'd be surprised if there wasn't something though.

In 3e, there are a whole host of feats, maneuvers, and items that enable it. Top of my head: travel devotion, sudden leap, belt of battle, DC 40 tumble for 10 foot step, pouncing charge, anklets of translocation, tattoo of inconstant location, and wolfpack tactics stance. Some of those are 10 feet, some are full speed and at least one is potentially greater than normal speed. A couple can even be combined with each other for greater effect. If you're willing to dip so much as a single level, there's also the sparring dummy of the master and the lion spirit totem.

Oh right. And archery.


And why is a Wizard capable of casting higher level spells as a standard action as a default for the class, while a martial player apparently has to figure out how to Full Attack and Move at the same time? Even at lower levels, why should the Wizard be better at hurting multiple targets and getting able to move while a Fighter needs a feat to hit more than one person unless they want to use their Full Attack action?

Because a wizard is very squishy and can do virtually nothing -but- cast spells. At low levels, a martial class only gets one attack a round anyway unless he's a TWF or flurry type.

It's also worth remembering that an attack roll does not represent a single swing of a warriors arm. The combat abstraction for a single attack roll is described as being a single genuine attempt to penetrate the enemy's defense amongst more general probing and positioning to look for an opening. Doing so to the extent that you find 2 or three, nevermind half a dozen or more, is a tremendous feat of martial talent and skill. To do so after closing a 10, 20, 30 foot or wider gap? Nothing less than phenomenal.


Even more, the bulk of the martial's increased damage comes from picking certain feats while a magic user's damage scales by a d6 every level or so, on top of any feats the mage may take to augment their damage further.


Looking at it a different way, a caster's damage only scales in one way that he doesn't have much say over. A warrior's damage can scale in several, many of which can be stacked; stat increases, BAB through power attack, multiple attacks whether by iteration or acquiring extras through feats and gear.

Metamagic can allow a caster to put out shocking levels of damage but only at the end of chains of feats and gear. Every metamgic has to be acquired and its cost mitigataed before it starts to do more than slightly edge ahead of unadjusted spells. A mailman can blast just about anything you like clear out of existence but he's got to bend his entire build around that idea to do it even a handful of times a day. A fighter has everything he'll even need to reach horrific levels of damage by level 6 on a charger setup. Pushing past that very quickly gets into overkill.



Took me a second to recall, but... In older D&D, a first level Fighter was called a Veteran. Not exactly 3.5E, but I think that's pretty much the only thing we have to go on in regards to what Level 1 counts as. Take it for what it was, as it was a different edition, but your interpretation is just as valid as anyone else's.

Outside of your personal interpretation, there's nothing supporting what you're saying. and the only thing I found was basically saying the opposite. This sounds like head canon that you're trying to push onto others.

Don't care about previous editions. XP used to be bought with cash.

It is an interpretation, yes. If you think you can come up with one that's sufficiently different to matter and also in line with what a level one character can actually -do- then I'm all ears.

For real, 3 or 4 first level -commoners- can bring down a 1st level fighter or barbarian with a little luck and coordination. He has shockingly bad odds against a couple big dogs, nevermind any real predators.

Now level 2, after a battle or 3, -that- is a veteran. That's somebody who's seen some stuff and probably isn't gonna get offed by a miner getting in a luck hit.


Oh how dare I forget the all important "first level" phrase that you very clearly mentally filled in yourself and knew exactly what I was doing.

Words mean things, my dude. If I'd made my comment about fighters in general, I'd deserve every bit of the scorn implicit in these two responses. I didn't though.

I didn't presume you meant first level, as it's entirely possible you missed me saying it while reading quickly.




Maybe YOUR first level characters have not had any adventures. Sometimes discovering that you have a PC class level can be your first adventure all on it's own, but for some reason you've elected to just make your characters ding at minimum class age and suddenly decide to be adventurers for no other reason than to to be a bundle of stats. Min/Maxing past at 1st level isn't very hard as it is a time in game play when poisons are lethal, a +1 bonus can mean the difference between victory and defeat, and magic is not the end all, be all solution to your problems. Furthermore, most people work with their GMs to establish characters within the setting that fit the overarching themes of the setting, even if (and especially so) your character concept is that you exist outside of and uniquely within the setting. Furthermore, in a setting where you are walking around with at most 6 more hp than everyone else, and 2 more hp than people trained to fight at the same level, you are by default inherently and mechanically more unique than most other individuals within the setting strictly based on your class mechanics.

Even if you're starting as a venerable elf, several hundred years old, the fact you're only level one means you haven't done -jack- in those hundreds of years. Not in the realm of adventure, at least.

Yeah, maybe some dramatic event triggered the decision to become an adventurer after a life of the mundane but the life before that -must be- mundane else it's inappropriate to start at 0 xp. That's just not a substantial enough difference to invalidate my point that 1st level characters are nobodies. The exception is, as I said, in racial choices that are a bit out there.


You can just write your backstory to suggest that you are in some way special because simply by virtue of even having class levels, you are already simply a cut above the rest. Furthermore, at level 1, a character has a plethora of options worth noticing and talking about that can make them special. The ones that come to mind immediately are Precocious Apprentice, Improved Initiative, Greenbound Summoning, even feats like Aberration Blood can be useful at this level as the at this point in the game, it really comes down to very minuscule numbers to improve your chances, or clever gameplay when literally one attack can potentially end an entire encounter no matter how feeble it might be.

Being a slightly better than average nobody doesn't make you somebody. It makes you someone with the -potential- to be somebody. You've still got to get there first.


Superhuman accuracy can be replicated by a Fighter simply taking Point Blank Shot, and then Precise Shot as their fighter bonus feat. Superhuman strength can simply be Grappling and just rolling very well for your Strength Score. I think you are grossly overestimating the abilities of a bog standard NPC commoner, that has 1 less feat, a dozen less proficiencies, even less hit points, and even less relevance to the story than what should be our brave heroes.

Oh dear god, no. point blank shot does -not- represent super human accuracy, at all. It's 5% more accurate at 30 feet or less. It -at most- puts you to 30% more accurate than an average commoner with a crossbow, as opposed to the 25% more accurate for further than 30 feet. That's not nothing but it's a far cry from being Deadshot. It's also more likely than not a bigger gap than you're gonna see with most archer builds. That's a -lot- more likely to be 20% and 15%.

Str 18 is not superhuman. It's impressive, certainly, but it's not enough to even have a shot at breaking free of a set of average manacles. It's just over half the lifting capacity for the world record for lifting over your head (clean and jerk) and less than half of the record for carrying a you walk (farmer's walk).

Don't get me twisted. Beyond a certain level, every character, even commoners, become superhuman. That level isn't level 1 for any of them though. Even the classes that get overtly supernatural powers at level 1 are still otherwise -very- human beyond those powers. Even the ones that aren't actually humans are still pretty human, given that any dramatic deviation from the starting point of human is assessed a level adjustment.

Like I said to AntiAuthority, if you can come up with something that meaningfully deviates from "nobody with a little bit better than average skill (still not the game mechanics key word)" while still oberving the limitations of what the character can actually do then I'd be happy to hear it.

[Psyren]

I'm not insisting. I thought that's what you claimed you could do. But I have since said "go ahead" to pretty much any class you could add so long as they don't have spellcasting or directly contradict the character. No Bard because magic. And if you can find a way for Barbarian to fit, sure, but since the class has the alignment restriction: must be non-lawful and Gawain was lawful good I find that hard to do. You find a way around it, go ahead.

No, what I specifically said was that your examples weren't remarkable. Sitting perfectly still for weeks without food or drink - congratulations, you've removed yourself from anything relevant to the campaign and gotten no adventuring done for that entire time either, you might as well have just starved instead. Inspiring your men - I listed several non-Bard ways to get Inspire Courage, and even more that inspire in other ways. Keeping up with a horse on foot, easy with just a few levels of barbarian or monk, and hardly does anything related to caster/martial disparity anyway.


My point is that we are using the legends to try and find a fair base level. So far every high level spell they seem to be doing you are trying to brush under DM fiat. Which makes this fairly trying and honestly just makes me think you're trying to wiggle out of making the character.

There is no spell (regardless of level) that can infect an entire country with a disease in an instant; not even Wish has that in its effects. So saying it must be a custom ritual or otherwise fiat is a logical conclusion. If you consider that somehow "trying," that's your prerogative, I don't really care.


I don't care how they behave, they're different characters. I care about what they can do to fit a baseline of abilities for our martial must fight.

Some fiend claiming to be noble in your story does not equal an arch-anything in the Great Wheel or Great Beyond cosmologies.

[Bartmanhomer]

Oh goodie. It's time to bring my popcorn to hear the argument. :biggrin:

[Segev]

I'll point out that several of the knights of the round table were also men with non-human heritages.

And reitterate that that really doesn't prove anything regarding why wizards should be doing magic and non-casters should have to take a race to do awesome stuff. Because it's hard-pressed to find wizards from the same sources being quoted for these heroes who were not demigods or similar, themselves.

The only one I can think of is Solomon, who was expressly given a gift of Great Wisdom by the Almighty God. So, though born human and mortal, his sorcery is due to divine blessings.

[The Insanity]

Honestly, I don't particularly care about mundane characters. I chose PF/D&D because it's fantasy. If a DM/group needs to justify my martial's superhuman feats through some supernatural ancestry then so be it. In PF you can just decide that you have it by multiclassing into Sorcerer or Bloodrager and get actual class abilities from it, so I see no reason why I couldn't say my Fighter is descendent from a god or something.

[AntiAuthority]

The hell it is. 'Because magic' only goes so far. It's an incredible act of hubris to suggest that a person could hold that much power.

Who cares if you're reduced to a sidekick? Or would have Odin begging you to join his side to prevent Ragnarok? /s

But seriously though, I think if magic gets to surpass mythological gods in terms of power then so should martial prowess do the same for warrior types.





I've already addresssed this though you seem to have either misunderstood or ignored the point. Which skills are class skills is -not- a restriction on what skills he can put ranks in. Neither, for that matter, are the number of skill points a class gets a function of their intelligence. The number of skill points a -character gets is a function of intelligence and that is reflected in the fact that all classes get +int skill points per level. If you have a smart fighter, you'll have as many skill points as a wizard does at the same level unless the GM is giving out skill points for magically enhanced intelligence. More, if he's a thug fighter.

I figured it was more a reflection of how well the character was trained. A Wizard likely doesn't get many outside of their field because they'd usually (I presume) spend their time reading books. A Fighter/soldier that is only trained at "hit stuff" isn't... Quite that great if we want to use real life, historical or fantasy precedents.



As for wizards being more than fighters of the same level, they're quite obviously studying in completely different fields. It's an apples and oranges comparison. Every character only has so much time in a day to devote to anything. A wizard spends his trying to cypher out the bendable rules of reality to the exclusion of everything else. A fighter spends his cyphering how best to make his foes fall to his blade.


The issue is a Wizard can summon monsters to fill in the Fighter's role (Killing multiple enemies since the 3.5E Fighter needs to take a feat to be able to move and full attack). Sounds like the 3.5E Fighter is obselete around the time that happens, and would either need Feats or careful planning to avoid these things Wizards get as a class feature.


2 less than the barbarian, or the same in exchange for some armor proificiencies and a feat. The rogue is trading a -huge- amount of combat ability for his skill points compared to either of them. Again skill points are -not- a function of intelligence when you're examinging a class. A thug fighter that focuses intelligence to the extreme is going to have as many or more skill points than a rogue that doesn't on top of his comparatively myriad combat abilities. The nature of his focus on combat will make what he gets for them a bit different than what a rogue gets for his but that's part of the nature of a class based system.


Considering skill points and skill ranks are universal to all classes... I'd say it reflects the training the characters get. My issue is (as I've said before) how poorly unskilled 3.5E Fighters are in regards to how it seems to come down to, "I hit stuff."



The fighter -class'- specialty is to have as many reliable combat techniques as possible. The barbarian's is to rely on conditioning and natural instinct, the knight's to be an medieval tank, the warblade's to have a wider variety of tricks that he can't perform as reliably, etc and so on. If any one of them doesn't quite fit your ideal for what you want your fighting character to be, FFS blend them by multiclassing and/or look for a PrC to expand on them.


This will be important later.


I'm not sure exactly which post you're referring to but I suspect this (https://forums.giantitp.com/showsinglepost.php?p=24389164&postcount=118) one. If you'd be so kind as to confirm, I'll break this one down in my next response.


Yep. My point was that the 3.5E Fighter should, if we're going by what fantasy warriors have, be able to sneak since warriors were usually trained in that instead of "hit the other person harder." I suspect you'll try to say the 3.5E Fighter isn't something like a trained warrior that was taught like IRL Warriors would be or that Armed Forces are actually a multi-class or just took ranks in things like Stealth in their off time or something... In which case the 3.5E Fighter is what happens if you break the capabilities of real world warriors into three separate classes, which is the point of what I was making with that post and breaking it down to say something along the lines of they're multi-classing/a different archetype, 3.5E Fighters shouldn't emulate the capabilities of other warriors or something proves my point when Wizards get to be every archetype and you're limiting Fighters to "guys who hit the other person harder."


Again, the class is not the whole of the character. That aside, you've missed the point of that example. An old red dragon is a creature -noted- for its extraordinary senses (as with all older true dragons). It's something from which you'd only expect an extraordinarily skilled stealth specialist to be able to avoid detection. A single classed fighter is not that. As I demonstrated, he's perfectly capable of being an adequate sneak, even an extraordinary one when compared to lower level characters and most other creatures. A character that is -mostly- a fighter can give up a point of BAB, fort save, and a few HPs to become just as skilled at stealth as anyone else. Trade any -one- level of the fighter I outlined with any of the classes designed for the stealth space and he can double the ranks he has and become a ghost compared to most fighters.


Once again, stealth training is something plenty of real world warriors and fantasy types could accomplish. The bolded part will be important later too.



You're putting the cart before the horse. You're expecting the class to do everything you want for the character rather than picking classes amongst other build resources based on the character you want. Choosing to take fighter at every level, and you do get to choose at -every- level, is saying to the game that you -want- to be hyper-focused on being the very best "stick the pointy end in the other guy" chaaracter you can be to the exclusion of most other things.


Not quite, it's that I'm focused on becoming a better warrior... Too bad a 3.5E Fighter fails at that archetype (stealth, perception, astronomy, diplomacy) as Class Skills. And picking Wizard every level is saying, "I want to be able to do almost anything?" by comparison then? You're forcing the Fighter into the role of "I hit stuff REALLY HARD." And bolded again for importance later.



And finally there's that ridiculous canard of "worse at stealth than literally every warrior ever" that's -still- a choice. Even without the boots, gloves, and cloak, the one I showed is skilled enough at hiding that he can be within 10 feet of an eagle and have close to even odds of escaping its detection in shiny metal armor. While using the gear that he uses to improve his stealth (something everyone who's ever worn camo has done to a lesser degree) he becomes so stealthy as to be outright undetectable by any real life animal with game stats and even has good odds of avoiding detection from security specialists that are anything less than legendary (level 11+).


... Armed Forces members are trained to do that, which is why I was saying 3.5E Fighters should get Stealth and such as a class skill. It's not something they pick up in their spare time or whatever (like picking none class skills are, I presume), it's something they're trained to do. The fact that classes all have the same Class Skills as part of their Class implies it's something they're trained in. The camo argument, if anything, is agreeing with me. If "figuring out how to not die (via blending in) is something that isn't covered in basic training, the Fighter's training sounds nonsensical and like something I'd expect from the Incredible Hulk or something.


How about because no one class is meant to do everything? Even the vaunted wizard can do -anything- not everything. You want trapfinidng, take a dip into -any- of the 8 or so base classes or handful of PrCs that get it. Nothing's stopping you from putting ranks in the skill before or after that dip or grabbing gear that further enables your ability to find traps. You want to be as good at it as a skirmisher type character, multiclass one and be happy that you can accomplish your character goal.


... I don't know if you understand what you're implying, but IRL soldiers are trained to find traps. That 3.5E Fighters don't get this as a Class Skill is a good indicator that the 3.5E Fighter isn't trained for such things like IRL warriors would be. If "finding out how to detect traps" is something the class is left to do in their own time, their training is awful and doesn't reflect most formally trained warriors. It feels like you're either missing what I'm saying or ignoring it.

And a Universalist Wizard has access to virtually all spells. That includes blasting/summoning monsters to replace Fighters, turning invisible/having spells to undo locks to fill a Rogue's niche, they gain access to cast Rage/the Barbarian's unique thing on themselves, can use Blood Money (in Pathfinder at least) + Limited Wish to perform divine spells or spells they don't have... I'm sure there's more than that, but I don't feel like making a giant list of the things a Wizard can do.


And I'm gonna keep hammering this: not as good as a specialist in his field is -not- utterly incompetent. Taking cross-class ranks is always an option.


My thing is, let the 3.5E Fighter be trained in things that make sense for the archetype of trained warrior. You seem to be misunderstanding this.




Skilled warrior.... okay, dude. it takes skill to be able to do all the combat tricks that a fighter does. Treating the term as a keyword here is just deliberately looking for problems. The implication never was that fighters would be good at forgery or spellcraft or something.



... When did I ever say they should get forgery or spellcraft? Either you're misremembering something I said, putting words into my mouth or responding to the wrong person.



Taming kingdoms: people are very prone to follow a winner. History is replete with examples of leaders that were skilled warriors and utter failures at statecraft and pure competency as a means of acquiring rank is relatively new as a widespread phenomenon. Being a skilled wordsmith -can- help but it's not strictly necessary.


And history is replete with examples of leaders that were skilled warriors and had skills outside of the battlefield. Your point?


And as for rousing the hearts of armies, you seem to be an anime fan so let's see if I can get this one in just five words: Monkey D Luffy, Roronoa Zoro. Here's a bit more, for those who don't get the reference; it is entirely possible to inspire through competent example, even if you're not good with words. The two characters named, especially the latter, are examples of exactly that; men of few, simple words that nonetheless inspire large numbers of people with their exploits and the virtues (for a certain value of the term) they embody.


If we want to bring in One Piece (and I honestly don't know too much about it except for a friend tells me), but... Luffy has low intelligence but high Persuasion or something with how often he's able to turn his enemies into allies and inspire people with his speeches. He likely has Persuasion as a skill, probably as a Class Skill from being raised by his grandfather to be a Marine. Even then... Luffy doesn't know how to use martial weapons, as my friend mentioned he got a sword and just wildly swings it around (much to Zoro's annoyance). I can't comment too much about Zoro, but he does know how to use a sword at least, just that I think it's mentioned (early on anyway) he's pretty much useless without swords, so not an expert of all martial weapons like a 3.5E martial is... But he's close enough I guess?


I won't pretend I know more about pathfinder than I do. What I -do- know is that a lot of what I've said about the 3e fighter holds up just fine though. The description being less than super accutely accurate really feels like a nit-pick given the fact that fluff tends to be mutable within the limitations of what the class that can actually do.


Bolded for importance.


Caster archetype, as I use it, is a catch all for workers of magic of all stripes; the bookish types that study the fundaments of reality or religious apocrypha to find ways to bend reality, the religious zealot or chosen of the gods that work miracles through faith, those who make dark pacts or have blood of inhuman creatures that allow them to ignore the natural rules of the world, and even those whose connection to the natural or spirit world is close enough that the world itself responds to their will.



The caster archetype is more limited and the non-casters less so than they're given credit for in these discussions.


... The caster archetype including pretty much everything under the sun... Cool... So that means they should be able to do all of those things because it's in the archetype? Like how warriors should be able to do stealth, find traps, and lead people as class skills? But no, it's cool because you seem to be for limiting Fighters to "I hit stuff."

By the way, catch all and limited are antonyms. It'd be like saying I have real-fake object or something is big-small or that you have something that is ugly-beautiful. Do you understand what you're saying is directly contradicting itself?


This is contrasted with the warrior archetype; character's whose primary concern is skill at arms above all else; and the skillful skirmisher archetype that is chiefly concerned with always having some way to apply their skills (not the ruleset key term) and wit to the situation at hand.


For the bolded for importance part... This is what I meant earlier. You're the one limiting 3.5E Fighters as people who just specialize in overwhelming violence. You're the one saying what a 3.5E Fighter is and isn't while paradoxically saying they're not as limited as people assume. Of course Wizards make sense when you define the archetype they're part of as, "I can do whatever magic I want as a Class Feature" when Fighters are limited to being "people who focus on hitting." This is a perceptual thing you're trying to enforce as absolute truth because it's what you think. Warrior archetypes tend to have social skills and stealth abilities, but you're against them being given them as class skills because of your perception that the 3.5E Fighter "just focuses on hitting stuff" and fails at any other warrior archetype beyond unskilled brute.

Also, about warrior archetypes and skillful skirmisher archetypes... You do realize that there's a reason battles were called skirmishes in the past? Skirmishers were warriors/soldiers. Skirmishers are part of the warrior archetype, you're insisting "I only understand weapons and violence" is the only part of the warrior archetype. This seems a lot like putting limits on a "less limited than assumed" class.


You can blend combative ability with a whole host of other options, including virutally everything mentioned in this thread, to one degree or other without ever deviating substantially from the non-magical fighting man archetype as long as you don't latch on to the idea that it all has be expressed by a single classed, fighter 20.



The caster archetype is more limited and the non-casters less so than they're given credit for in these discussions.


... So the caster archetype is more limited is a way of saying they're able to pursue any and all fantastic path and abilities they want... That sounds like the opposite of limitations. Like if a Wizard were forced to be only a diviner, only a summoner, only a blaster, only a whatever... But they have the potential to be all of those things through just leveling up, casting Limited Wish or finding another Wizard's spellbook as well as having Knowledge All ... This is a limit to you...?! :smallconfused:

Non-casters being "less limited than they're given credit" also directly contradicts what you said earlier since, according to you (see bolded for importance parts), a 3.5E Fighter has to be someone who is focused solely on hitting things. They don't get to have the abilities associated with other warrior archetypes as a class feature...

I can't help but feel you got these two things mixed around... So which is it?

And non-magic isn't the same thing as being non-fantastic (examples include most Battle Shonen protagonists who don't use magic as an example of fantastic), and it definitely isn't the same thing as, "Fighty fighty punch punch is all I know" You're the one pushing for that archetype while also saying it's not limiting at the same time.


In 3e, there are a whole host of feats, maneuvers, and items that enable it. Top of my head: travel devotion, sudden leap, belt of battle, DC 40 tumble for 10 foot step, pouncing charge, anklets of translocation, tattoo of inconstant location, and wolfpack tactics stance. Some of those are 10 feet, some are full speed and at least one is potentially greater than normal speed. A couple can even be combined with each other for greater effect. If you're willing to dip so much as a single level, there's also the sparring dummy of the master and the lion spirit totem.

Oh right. And archery.

Because a wizard is very squishy and can do virtually nothing -but- cast spells. At low levels, a martial class only gets one attack a round anyway unless he's a TWF or flurry type.


Martial Player: I looked it up and I FINALLY found a way to move and full attack.

Caster Player: My character gets to cast AoE spells AND move without having to find a feat or item to allow me to do so!

Martial Player:.... What?

It's becoming increasingly clear that you're willing to give the caster archetypes everything with plenty of justifications because "because they do nothing but cast spells, so it's ok for them to be able to do an AoE that hits a bunch of enemies at once and move" (Because Magic). I could easily make the same argument that Warrior Archetypes, those guys who (according to you) specialize in only destruction and hitting things until they die, should be able to full attack and move at full speed because "Because martials are very tanky, and can do virtually nothing -but- hit, so it makes sense they'd be able to move at their full speed and be able to pull off their Full Attack without items or specific feats or anything else beyond what comes with the class when they level up."

This sounds a lot like giving magic users plenty of advantages because magic and trying to rationalize why nerfing martials makes sense somehow... Could just be me, but this is what I'm getting from that.


It's also worth remembering that an attack roll does not represent a single swing of a warriors arm. The combat abstraction for a single attack roll is described as being a single genuine attempt to penetrate the enemy's defense amongst more general probing and positioning to look for an opening. Doing so to the extent that you find 2 or three, nevermind half a dozen or more, is a tremendous feat of martial talent and skill. To do so after closing a 10, 20, 30 foot or wider gap? Nothing less than phenomenal.


How do you know this for sure?

And if we're using abstractions... Couldn't the same be said for Wizards casting spell? "You aren't actually creating a fireball, that's just an abstraction of what your character is doing." It can easily be applied both ways.


Looking at it a different way, a caster's damage only scales in one way that he doesn't have much say over. A warrior's damage can scale in several, many of which can be stacked; stat increases, BAB through power attack, multiple attacks whether by iteration or acquiring extras through feats and gear.


... It makes sense for the squishy person to automatically become better at dealing out an entire die's worth of damage per every level as much than someone who (according to you on what a 3.5E Fighter is) specializes solely in hurting people?

Fighter: Well, I wasted my time learning how to fight, I only get small incremental bonuses to my damage while the bookworms automatically increase in damage by themselves in much larger amounts. I can't even full attack and move without figuring out some steps while they can cast spells and move but... I think my training was a scam.




It is an interpretation, yes. If you think you can come up with one that's sufficiently different to matter and also in line with what a level one character can actually -do- then I'm all ears.


I'm not going to force my personal head canon onto you. I would like you to do the same.



Now level 2, after a battle or 3, -that- is a veteran. That's somebody who's seen some stuff and probably isn't gonna get offed by a miner getting in a luck hit.


Cool, that's your interpretation, not an objective truth though. I agree with you that that seems logical, but it's not an objective truth and the only clarification we have from D&D supports that not being the case, but whatever.

But back to what I noticed earlier... When you list "caster archetypes" to be open to being literally every type of archetype yet also somehow limited... I don't know what to tell you beyond that's not what a limit is? 3.5E Wizards aren't "a archetype" the problem is that 3.5E Wizards have the abilities of "all archetypes" except maybe the ones where they need to pray to a god, as that covers Clerics, but a 3.5E Wizard can still replicate their spells with Limited Wish. I find it weird that the caster archetype also includes things that mythological warriors can do... Like Sun Wukong's growing bigger shtick being represented by Enlarge Person for example... Meanwhile, by you saying a 3.5E Fighter has to be "focuses on hitting things" is pretty much the definition of limiting compared to what I and others are saying. If you want Wizards to be cool, great, don't try to pass it off as some sort of "limitation" when the archetype includes "every archetype that uses magic" including the magic that lets them do things even mythological warriors can do. while defining the Fighter/Warrior archetype as "being able to hit stuff" instead of giving it the same warrior archetype (stealth, leaders, etc.) as other warriors in fantasy and real life as class features.

You're giving one class/archetype "basically everything" and another "you have to do this one thing" is what I'm trying to get at, and it's pretty illogical to try to pass off the first as some sort of limitation. "Becoming able to imitate the powers of several gods/mages/prophets/even warriors/even rogues" is not a limitation as far as I'm aware and I doubt you'll be find many people that agree either. Especially a catch all also being limiting, which are two things that mean the opposite of each other.

[lylsyly]

I have really been enjoying this discussion. However, to me the bottom line is CASTERS are better than MUNDANES because that is the way the game is designed. Let's face it. Wizard 20 with just the SRD is how much more powerful than a fighter 20 with full splatbook support?

[Bartmanhomer]

*I'm eating popcorn to hear this argument.*

Mmm...needs more butter. :biggrin:

[AntiAuthority]

I have really been enjoying this discussion. However, to me the bottom line is CASTERS are better than MUNDANES because that is the way the game is designed. Let's face it. Wizard 20 with just the SRD is how much more powerful than a fighter 20 with full splatbook support?

I'm in agreement with you that casters are better than martials in 3.5E. I'm mostly arguing there's no reason to justify that beyond it just being the way the game was designed, when the designers could have just as easily made martial characters like Hercules, Thor or Gilgamesh and casters into someone like Merlin or David Copperfield or something. There's no reason to justify the limits of fictional characters based on realism like the OP was claiming or others say. It's solely based on how the game was designed, like you said. And even then, a D&D 3E designer admitted that he regrets some of the design decisions, such as making certain options deliberately better than others...

And I don't like the word mundane much for fantastic characters, mainly because it tends to mean "dull" and "uninteresting" or "ordinary." Which is pretty much the opposite of fantastic. When a guy can kill large predatory animals in a few seconds with a normal weapon or go into a group of them with only a pointy stick and come out slightly injured, I don't think they count as "mundane." Maybe not spell casters, but not mundane since even Captain America's returning shield can be replicated at Level 5 (https://www.d20pfsrd.com/classes/hybrid-classes/brawler/archetypes/paizo-brawler-archetypes/shield-champion/), so it stands to reason Level 20 definitely left mundane behind a while ago...




*I'm eating popcorn to hear this argument.*

Mmm...needs more butter. :biggrin:

Don't forget to add salt.

[Bartmanhomer]

Don't forget to add salt.Low sodium salt for me. :biggrin:

[lylsyly]

And I don't like the word mundane much for fantastic characters, mainly because it tends to mean "dull" and "uninteresting" or "ordinary." Which is pretty much the opposite of fantastic. When a guy can kill large predatory animals in a few seconds with a normal weapon or go into a group of them with only a pointy stick and come out slightly injured, I don't think they count as "mundane." Maybe not spell casters, but not mundane since even Captain America's returning shield can be replicated at Level 5 (https://www.d20pfsrd.com/classes/hybrid-classes/brawler/archetypes/paizo-brawler-archetypes/shield-champion/), so it stands to reason Level 20 definitely left mundane behind a while ago...


Of course. Even Aragon was stated out at what? Level 6? The real question is How to make them comparable level by level for the whole 20. Of course homebrew like that is actually beyond the scope of the thread ..... :smallfurious:. At our table we don't use much homebrew, but we are constantly adding more and more Pathfinder content. It's still not even close .................

[lylsyly]

Low sodium salt for me. :biggrin:

Off topic but try sea salt dude.

[Crichton]

And I don't like the word mundane much for fantastic characters, mainly because it tends to mean "dull" and "uninteresting" or "ordinary." Which is pretty much the opposite of fantastic. When a guy can kill large predatory animals in a few seconds with a normal weapon or go into a group of them with only a pointy stick and come out slightly injured, I don't think they count as "mundane." Maybe not spell casters, but not mundane since even Captain America's returning shield can be replicated at Level 5 (https://www.d20pfsrd.com/classes/hybrid-classes/brawler/archetypes/paizo-brawler-archetypes/shield-champion/), so it stands to reason Level 20 definitely left mundane behind a while ago...

I don't disagree with you that it has that alternate meaning and connotations that can be distasteful, but what term would you suggest we standardize to use when referring to classes that explicitly have no innate abilities to do anything magical, supernatural or otherwise beyond the in-universe laws of normal physics? I sometimes use the term 'martials' but that includes classes that do have innate powers or abilities (like ToB classes, etc)

[AntiAuthority]

I don't disagree with you that it has that alternate meaning and connotations that can be distasteful, but what term would you suggest we standardize to use when referring to classes that explicitly have no innate abilities to do anything magical, supernatural or otherwise beyond the in-universe laws of normal physics? I sometimes use the term 'martials' but that includes classes that do have innate powers or abilities (like ToB classes, etc)

I think the word martial is fine, and I use it myself too.

I think the big thing is to stop using the word mundane though.

Off the top of my head, I'll list some possible names besides martial: Hero, Godlike, Prodigious, Extraordinary, Exceptionals, Mythological, Superhuman, Unreal, Fantastic (though this one is too broad for me, but whatever). Maybe put Martials after the end of each of those words to help carry the point across? I wish I could think of a word that captures being a warrior and beyond what a real world human, but the only thing that really comes to mind is Hero...

[Crichton]

I think the word martial is fine, and I use it myself too.

I think the big thing is to stop using the word mundane though.

Off the top of my head, I'll list some possible names besides martial: Hero, Godlike, Prodigious, Extraordinary, Exceptionals, Mythological, Superhuman, Unreal, Fantastic (though this one is too broad for me, but whatever). Maybe put Martials after the end of each of those words to help carry the point across? I wish I could think of a word that captures being a warrior and beyond what a real world human, but the only thing that really comes to mind is Hero...

I like where you're going with this, but remember that the word you're trying to replace (mundane) needs to have the same limitations: It needs to ONLY refer to classes that, while they can be stronger, faster, bigger, more dexterous/coordinated, etc than real-life humans, don't have any kind of innate magical or supernatural abilities at all (of which, the Fighter that this thread is arguing about is a good example). The suggestions you offer don't impose that limitations, nor does the term 'martial.'

In comics (since the Captain America example was used a couple posts ago), the term often used is 'peak human' implying that the character is at the extreme upper limit of what human physiology is capable of, but doesn't have any other abilities (though in reality those comics characters often exceed what is even 'peak' possible by some degree, while still not having any other special abilities). It's not so applicable here, because we need to refer to classes, regardless of race, and also because in comics, it describes the character as a whole, not separating race from class, etc, but it's a good equivalent, for using to come up with an equivalent applicable term, since y'all don't like the connotations of 'mundane' (I don't personally have any problem separating its 2 senses or usages)

[sandmote]

The balance factor when you compare whole characters, since you can't play a class alone, comes in the notion of how much they can do -at any one time-. Yes, that was the point of writing out this out as a formula. Although I will update it to synthesize in your bits on optimization around here:


Ptotal = O(Rbase racial - RRHD & LA cost + W + Lall classes)

Where P power, O is the level of optimization, R is racial features, W is wealth (ie. acquired items) and L is levels.

So non comprehensive list of things included in the forumula

the amount and availability of PrC
That a wizard gets (by one of kelb's comments) +50% from W, and a fighter gets more than 50%.
That we're either comparing Wizard 20 to fighter 20, or two characters with a bunch of PrC levels + possible multiclassing, not Wizard 20 to a maximally optimized PrC heavy martial.



Oh, you misunderstand - I'm completely fine with all the (bolded) examples you just listed. And you're right, all of that stuff is perfectly doable with a D&D fighter or barbarian today. Rather, I suspect that the folks complaining about caster-martial disparity have other deficiencies in mind than paltry actions such as these. My argument is based on you being completely fine with the examples I listed. Because rather than being "paltry," they're more anime than a lot of the stuff that gets this response:


casters are ahead of martials in several respects, but martials can still contribute to the group's overall success without being warped into pseudo-casters themselves.
Frankly, I don't see how this isn't cherry picking. Some magical abilities are "paltry," while others are "too anime," and I the only delineation seems to be whether or not the martial classes can already do them in the material you like.


...And? Mages are clearly effective (and don't need to be carried to the battlefield in pieces, for that matter), so they should and would be targeted by anyone with the slightest grasp of tactics. Sorry, I'm having trouble finding the part where you explain how the same principle applies to martials. Could you provide a quote to it? Particularly once the casters have a supply of summoning spells.



If that's not good enough, either multiclass or pick something else but -stop- blaming the fighter for not being a perfect representation of what -you- think a fighter should be and refusing solve your problem. Knights, swashbucklers, samurai, barbarians, non-caster rangers, and a whole slew of PrCs that extend any of them and the fighter exist.

...

Maybe look at the system as a whole rather than just the one class?https://pics.onsizzle.com/in-mad-i-dont-want-a-solution-heres-a-solution-3144859.png I'm blaming the fighter class in particular for not being a competent representation of anything. And if it were, I don't think you'd have to bring in non-PC options to compare it to:

The -entire- difference between the fighter PC class and the warrior NPC class is that talent. The former is a little tougher, a little more prone to figuring out the tricks of the trade, a little luckier perhaps. The same XP gets you the same number of levels and their training is in the same field. What else would you use to explain why one gets a larger HD and -way- more combat competency? The Warrior is an NPC class and not in the running to match a fighter. Same way an Adept is fundamentally a weaker cleric and an expert is a rogue with fewer skill points and no combat features. So what you would use to explain the difference is that "they are for fundamentally different purposes."


It needs to ONLY refer to classes that, while they can be stronger, faster, bigger, more dexterous/coordinated, etc than real-life humans, don't have any kind of innate magical or supernatural abilities at all (of which, the Fighter that this thread is arguing about is a good example). The suggestions you offer don't impose that limitations, nor does the term 'martial.' Supernatural levels of being "stronger, faster, bigger, more dexterous/coordinated, etc," are still supernatural, so if you exclude them you're excluding the fighter class anyway, much less every other martial.

[Crichton]

Supernatural levels of being "stronger, faster, bigger, more dexterous/coordinated, etc," are still supernatural, so if you exclude them you're excluding the fighter class anyway, much less every other martial.

Pretty sure you're misunderstanding the intent and the term's meaning. Those things aren't inherently supernatural. They can be at levels beyond what's normally possible in real life humans, but that doesn't make them Supernatural (in the game rule sense, nor in the generally accepted sense of something magical, otherworldly, or outside the known laws of physics, etc) And that's what I meant when I referred to classes without innate magical or supernatural abilities. Levels of strength greater than real life, or reaction times/reflexes quicker than real life aren't magical or supernatural, in the game's terms.


The whole point was that some people don't like using the term 'mundane' to refer to such classes, so in order to appease their sensibilities, we need to find another term that imposes the same boundaries.

[sandmote]

Pretty sure you're misunderstanding the intent and the term's meaning. Those things aren't inherently supernatural. They can be at levels beyond what's normally possible in real life humans, but that doesn't make them Supernatural (in the game rule sense, nor in the generally accepted sense of something magical, otherworldly, or outside the known laws of physics, etc) And that's what I meant when I referred to classes without innate magical or supernatural abilities. Levels of strength greater than real life, or reaction times/reflexes quicker than real life aren't magical or supernatural, in the game's terms.


The whole point was that some people don't like using the term 'mundane' to refer to such classes, so in order to appease their sensibilities, we need to find another term that imposes the same boundaries.Good point. For 3.5e the specific term is Extraordinary, with the mechanical difference being how the feature interacts with an antimagic field.

I mostly jumped in "supernatural," as the first thing I remembered in contrast too "anime."


No, seriously, where is cutting through a person per second not anime? Getting eaten and then cutting your way out is what? Please, explain exactly how going toe to toe with an adult dragon with a sword and your hit points does not qualify already -- and D&D's dragons are heavily anime compared to the ones from Arthurian legend. If you've decided allowing fighters to do anything from the old mythology LotR was based on is "too anime," to be included for a martial, then they're already breaking your suspension of disbelief with the features you get from having hit dice.

[Psyren]

My argument is based on you being completely fine with the examples I listed. Because rather than being "paltry," they're more anime than a lot of the stuff that gets this response:
...
Frankly, I don't see how this isn't cherry picking. Some magical abilities are "paltry," while others are "too anime," and I the only delineation seems to be whether or not the martial classes can already do them in the material you like.

As a refresher, your bolded examples were:

Cutting through an enemy per second (i.e. 6 enemies/round)
Cutting your way out of a creature that swallowed you
Fighting an adult dragon
Yes, martials can do all three of these just fine; I labeled them "paltry" because they don't even need much optimization (and no spellcasting either) to pull off.


Sorry, I'm having trouble finding the part where you explain how the same principle applies to martials. Could you provide a quote to it? Particularly once the casters have a supply of summoning spells.

You said, and I quote: "battlefield artillery didn't become a major target until it was an effective method of devastating the enemy." Casters are absolutely artillery by that definition, so them being a major target for any enemy capable of tactics is expected.

[OrbanSirgen]

You said, and I quote: "battlefield artillery didn't become a major target until it was an effective method of devastating the enemy." Casters are absolutely artillery by that definition, so them being a major target for any enemy capable of tactics is expected.

Also, if someone is seen casting a spell, any spell, they would be the first target simply for being unpredictable... A fighter is fairly predictable in that they would be fighting in some way, most likely with weapons... A caster, on the other hand, could have pretty much anything ready to let loose at any time... Why give them the chance?

[AntiAuthority]

I like where you're going with this, but remember that the word you're trying to replace (mundane) needs to have the same limitations: It needs to ONLY refer to classes that, while they can be stronger, faster, bigger, more dexterous/coordinated, etc than real-life humans, don't have any kind of innate magical or supernatural abilities at all (of which, the Fighter that this thread is arguing about is a good example). The suggestions you offer don't impose that limitations, nor does the term 'martial.'

In comics (since the Captain America example was used a couple posts ago), the term often used is 'peak human' implying that the character is at the extreme upper limit of what human physiology is capable of, but doesn't have any other abilities (though in reality those comics characters often exceed what is even 'peak' possible by some degree, while still not having any other special abilities). It's not so applicable here, because we need to refer to classes, regardless of race, and also because in comics, it describes the character as a whole, not separating race from class, etc, but it's a good equivalent, for using to come up with an equivalent applicable term, since y'all don't like the connotations of 'mundane' (I don't personally have any problem separating its 2 senses or usages)

... I can't think of a word in all honesty to refer specifically to superhuman martial classes. Maybe someone better with coming up with names can...?

[Bartmanhomer]

Off topic but try sea salt dude.

Sure. I'm going to try it. Anyway just to be on-topic Wizard is always going to better than Fighter even on Epic Levels.

[danzibr]

Sure. I'm going to try it. Anyway just to be on-topic Wizard is always going to better than Fighter even on Epic Levels.
... *even* on epic levels? The higher the level, the greater the gap.

Anyway, I really like the whole physically-you-can-do-extraordinary-things concept. Like swing your sword so masterfully you cut through space, or so hard you disintegrate part of a wall, or things like that.

[Bartmanhomer]

... *even* on epic levels? The higher the level, the greater the gap.

Anyway, I really like the whole physically-you-can-do-extraordinary-things concept. Like swing your sword so masterfully you cut through space, or so hard you disintegrate part of a wall or things like that.
Yes, Wizards can beat Fighter even on Epic Levels. That like saying Io can beat Godzilla or Doctor Strange can beat Superman. :biggrin:

[Segev]

Yes, Wizards can beat Fighter even on Epic Levels. That like saying Io can beat Godzilla or Doctor Strange can beat Superman. :biggrin:

*cough* To be fair, Superman has an explicit gap in his invulnerability when it comes to magic. I'd call it a "weakness" or "vulnerability," but he's no more vulnerable to it than a normal human. It's just that, for him, "as vulnerable as a normal human" IS a notable weakness.

[Bartmanhomer]

*cough* To be fair, Superman has an explicit gap in his invulnerability when it comes to magic. I'd call it a "weakness" or "vulnerability," but he's no more vulnerable to it than a normal human. It's just that, for him, "as vulnerable as a normal human" IS a notable weakness.

True but he's still weak against magic.

[Psyren]

True but he's still weak against magic.

I strongly advise you drop this analogy before it derails the entire thread :smalltongue:


... *even* on epic levels? The higher the level, the greater the gap.

Anyway, I really like the whole physically-you-can-do-extraordinary-things concept. Like swing your sword so masterfully you cut through space, or so hard you disintegrate part of a wall, or things like that.

Disintegrating part of a wall is fine and is something martials can do now.

"Cut through space" is a bit vague - technically every sword swing ever "cuts through space." If you mean something like teleportation or planar travel, I'd put heavy limitations on it, e.g. probably wouldn't be any more powerful than dimension door etc.

[AntiAuthority]

Sure. I'm going to try it. Anyway just to be on-topic Wizard is always going to better than Fighter even on Epic Levels.

Yeah, but it's because of how the game was designed, not necessarily because of realism or anything like the title of this thread's title suggests.




... *even* on epic levels? The higher the level, the greater the gap.

Anyway, I really like the whole physically-you-can-do-extraordinary-things concept. Like swing your sword so masterfully you cut through space, or so hard you disintegrate part of a wall, or things like that.
I like the way you think.

Kenpachi from Bleach can cut space with his sword.

As can a character from Overlord that had a class that gave him the ability to cut the fabric of space and time. He was also stronger than the MC (who is heavily inspired by what a D&D Wizard can do, I believe the 3.5E version especially).




Yes, Wizards can beat Fighter even on Epic Levels. That like saying Io can beat Godzilla or Doctor Strange can beat Superman. :biggrin:

Magically isn't universally superior to martial warriors across the board though in comics and comic inspired material.

Thor also beats Loki plenty of times in comics (and one panel, Loki said his spells don't really work on Thor in his god form...).

World War Hulk also overpowered Dr. Strange...

In Hulk vs Thor, both Loki and the Enchantress were pretty much powerless after the Hulk broke free of their spell. They needed to remove Bruce Banner from the Hulk, and Loki pretty much hijacked the Hulk's body... Turns out that Loki's anger ended up fueling the Hulk's power (IIRC, the Enchantress noted the Hulk seemed to be resisting the spell on some level and was cautious of giving the Hulk anymore power, and was worried by Loki's frustrations making Hulk harder to control), then the Hulk broke free and was too angry to be controlled anymore by magic. So three gods (Loki, the Enchantress and later Hela), all powerful magic users, were pretty much powerless and wondering, "What do we do now with this thing on the loose?" Hela even compared the Hulk's rampage to Ragnarok...




*cough* To be fair, Superman has an explicit gap in his invulnerability when it comes to magic. I'd call it a "weakness" or "vulnerability," but he's no more vulnerable to it than a normal human. It's just that, for him, "as vulnerable as a normal human" IS a notable weakness.


True but he's still weak against magic.

Most versions of Superman are as vulnerable as the next person to magic, but Superman is infamous for his inability to handle magic.

Superman Prime isn't though lol. It's unclear if he's just highly resistant to magic or outright immune, either way, Black Adam's magic infused punches don't do anything except tickle him. Black Adam was clearly surprised as his magic punches usually worked on his universe's version of Superman, but Prime doesn't play by the same rules as the other versions of himself.

Same with Superman One Million, who's just a Superman who took a sunbath for a millennia or so, is mentioned to be immune to magic.

There's probably other versions of Superman with similar resistances that I'm not aware of. Definitely more comic heroes that are resistant/immune to magic outside of Superman too.

[Battleship789]

*snip*

Kenpachi from Bleach can cut space with his sword.

As can a character from Overlord that had a class that gave him the ability to cut the fabric of space and time. He was also stronger than the MC (who is heavily inspired by what a D&D Wizard can do, I believe the 3.5E version especially).

*snip*

The author has said that the Overlord MC is literally a level 40 3.5 necromancer with a homebrew epic prestige class, just recast in terms of a MMO (Mana instead of Vancian spellcasting, character progression is spread out over 100 levels).

[Lord Raziere]

... I can't think of a word in all honesty to refer specifically to superhuman martial classes. Maybe someone better with coming up with names can...?

I dunno, Powerhouses? Exemplars? Mightists? Wuxia? Martial Artists? Pinnacles? Peaks? Unlimited? Limitless? Improvers? Hypers? Determined? Honed? Fists? Epitomes? Paragons? Nonpareil? Potents? Talents? Masters? Courageous? Braves? Dedicated? Persistent? Valorous? Apexes? Maximums? Ascendants? Outbreakers? Aretes?

hm....

honestly I personally think Pinnacles is the best name out of all them because it leaves it open as to exactly what they are a Pinnacle OF, which is important I think.

[Bartmanhomer]

Yeah, but it's because of how the game was designed, not necessarily because of realism or anything like the title of this thread's title suggests.




I like the way you think.

Kenpachi from Bleach can cut space with his sword.

As can a character from Overlord that had a class that gave him the ability to cut the fabric of space and time. He was also stronger than the MC (who is heavily inspired by what a D&D Wizard can do, I believe the 3.5E version especially).





Magically isn't universally superior to martial warriors across the board though in comics and comic inspired material.

Thor also beats Loki plenty of times in comics (and one panel, Loki said his spells don't really work on Thor in his god form...).

World War Hulk also overpowered Dr. Strange...

In Hulk vs Thor, both Loki and the Enchantress were pretty much powerless after the Hulk broke free of their spell. They needed to remove Bruce Banner from the Hulk, and Loki pretty much hijacked the Hulk's body... Turns out that Loki's anger ended up fueling the Hulk's power (IIRC, the Enchantress noted the Hulk seemed to be resisting the spell on some level and was cautious of giving the Hulk anymore power, and was worried by Loki's frustrations making Hulk harder to control), then the Hulk broke free and was too angry to be controlled anymore by magic. So three gods (Loki, the Enchantress and later Hela), all powerful magic users, were pretty much powerless and wondering, "What do we do now with this thing on the loose?" Hela even compared the Hulk's rampage to Ragnarok...







Most versions of Superman are as vulnerable as the next person to magic, but Superman is infamous for his inability to handle magic.

Superman Prime isn't though lol. It's unclear if he's just highly resistant to magic or outright immune, either way, Black Adam's magic infused punches don't do anything except tickle him. Black Adam was clearly surprised as his magic punches usually worked on his universe's version of Superman, but Prime doesn't play by the same rules as the other versions of himself.

Same with Superman One Million, who's just a Superman who took a sunbath for a millennia or so, is mentioned to be immune to magic.

There's probably other versions of Superman with similar resistances that I'm not aware of. Definitely, more comic heroes that are resistant/immune to magic outside of Superman too.
Ok maybe to some degree that some martial warriors can outmatch magic users.

[AntiAuthority]

The author has said that the Overlord MC is literally a level 40 3.5 necromancer with a homebrew epic prestige class, just recast in terms of a MMO (Mana instead of Vancian spellcasting, character progression is spread out over 100 levels).

I also remember that Ainz apparently has Pay to Win items to fall back on if his 700~ spells aren't enough for the job. So a Necromancer with a ton of artifacts.




I dunno, Powerhouses? Exemplars? Mightists? Wuxia? Martial Artists? Pinnacles? Peaks? Unlimited? Limitless? Improvers? Hypers? Determined? Honed? Fists? Epitomes? Paragons? Nonpareil? Potents? Talents? Masters? Courageous? Braves? Dedicated? Persistent? Valorous? Apexes? Maximums? Ascendants? Outbreakers? Aretes?

hm....

honestly I personally think Pinnacles is the best name out of all them because it leaves it open as to exactly what they are a Pinnacle OF, which is important I think.

I'm actually good with pretty much all of those, Wuxia because they're doing things beyond what real humans can do, martial artists because that what they are, as well as Limitless. Ascendant sticks out the best to me though, gives the impression of becoming something greater. Pinnacles has the same feeling to it, as well as putting on what they're the pinnacles of...

Wuxia might make the most sense though....




Ok maybe to some degree that some martial warriors can outmatch magic users.

I don't think it's as overwhelming as you seem to imply it is, but I don't know 100% of every story ever, so I can't say that for sure. I'd say it's probably around even though.

In Dragon Ball, King Piccolo was able to instantly kill the nigh omnipotent dragon, Vegeta resisted Babidi's control (and admitted he allowed himself to get possessed in the first place), Shenron admitted his spells don't work on beings more powerful than himself and magic users tend to be weaker than martial artists.

Kratos in God of War is pretty much a Barbarian/Fighter that tears through plenty of magic wielding enemies, including the Greek pantheonand some of the Norse pantheon so far.

Ryu Hayabusa from Ninja Gaiden is a ninja with weapons who defeats creator deities, armies of demons and magic users.

Dante from Devil May Cry is a martial who defeats plenty of powerful demons, is mentioned to have surpassed the power of his legendary father, has defeated several magic (or elemental) wielding demons as well as Demon Lord-category demons... He rarely takes the god-like beings seriously in some games as well. Mundus, for example, can apparently create his own dimension, create projections of himself, strike enemies down from a distance with lightning and Dante... Is just a half-demon with weapons he takes/transforms his enemies into and can become a demon for short periods of time.

Asura from Asura's Wrath beat the creator deity of his world to death with his bare fists and wrath.

Link from Legend of Zelda is usually just a guy with a sword who picks up magic/non-magical items and techniques along the way, but ends up routinely defeating Ganondorf, who is very competent with the magic he performs (the curses, the creatures he creates, being able to harness the power of his Triforce more completely than the other two).

Asta from Black Clover has Anti-Magic flowing through his body and exists in a world where literally everyone can perform magic.

Samurai Jack defeats magic users, and his main antagonist is basically a magic user that he (eventually) killed... It was clear Aku was perfectly aware he couldn't beat Jack so just hid himself for 50 years because he thought Jack would eventually kill him. Jack won their first fight by all means, regardless of whatever shape shifting Aku pulled out, and Jack's Father beat Aku too in the past.

He-Man defeats Skeletor constantly.

There was that time Mythological Thor was tricked by a giant magic user and ended up making valleys, lifting the world serpent and wrestling with the personification of Old Age, scaring the giant magic user so much that he decided to just teleport away for fear of revenge. Thor was apparently the most terrifying enemy to face, regardless of magic.

Just off the top of my head, definitely more that I'm not aware of, but I don't think it's like a super rare thing for martials to defeat dedicated magic users or anything. Probably fairly common in older stories where the protagonists often used their strength of arms to defeat the evil mage.



Point of the list (Not really directed at just you, but I feel this needs to be said because of the original post and other threads and comments like it) is there isn't anything in reality saying that magic should be superior to martial prowess, or that martial prowess should be superior to magic. Neither exist, thus there is no reason to try to apply realism to say "magic should be stronger than martials because magic doesn't exist and martials do exist" when magic is inherently unrealistic, much like there is no reason to apply realism to say "superhuman martials should be stronger than magic because magic doesn't exist while martials do so magic shouldn't do anything at all" when superhuman martials are equally as unrealistic. Either one can be as strong or weak as the creators want them to be, neither is inherently superior or inferior to the other in terms of power because neither one exist. Arguing either one should be inherently superior or inferior to another might as well be like arguing Santa Clause should be better than Paul Bunyan because, "It just makes sense Santa Clause is more powerful than Paul Bunyan, he's magic!" when neither one of these fantastic characters exist and someone could just as easily say the opposite has to be true because, "It just makes sense Paul Bunyan is more powerful than Santa Clause, he's a giant!" One has magic, the other's an impossibly big guy, neither exist, both do impossible things just by existing and there is no precedent that one should be better than the other... It's only entirely subjective which one people believe should be better, but nothing objective.

If anyone sees a superhuman Fighter deflect a boulder with a sword lose to a Wizard throwing Fireballs, ok, cool... If you see a Wizard that's hurling lightning get decapitated by a swordsman who can dodge lightning bolts, great... I will change my thoughts entirely if either of these two fantastic individuals exist in real life, but until then, neither one of those two exist, so arguing which one is supposed to be better goes back to the Paul Bunyan vs Santa Clause thing and "It just makes sense because it just does." Which isn't an argument for anything beyond feelings and circular reasoning.

[Bartmanhomer]

I also remember that Ainz apparently has Pay to Win items to fall back on if his 700~ spells aren't enough for the job. So a Necromancer with a ton of artifacts.





I'm actually good with pretty much all of those, Wuxia because they're doing things beyond what real humans can do, martial artists because that what they are, as well as Limitless. Ascendant sticks out the best to me though, gives the impression of becoming something greater. Pinnacles has the same feeling to it, as well as putting on what they're the pinnacles of...

Wuxia might make the most sense though....





I don't think it's as overwhelming as you seem to imply it is, but I don't know 100% of every story ever, so I can't say that for sure. I'd say it's probably around even though.

In Dragon Ball, King Piccolo was able to instantly kill the nigh omnipotent dragon, Vegeta resisted Babidi's control (and admitted he allowed himself to get possessed in the first place), Shenron admitted his spells don't work on beings more powerful than himself and magic users tend to be weaker than martial artists.

Kratos in God of War is pretty much a Barbarian/Fighter that tears through plenty of magic wielding enemies, including the Greek pantheonand some of the Norse pantheon so far.

Ryu Hayabusa from Ninja Gaiden is a ninja with weapons who defeats creator deities, armies of demons and magic users.

Dante from Devil May Cry is a martial who defeats plenty of powerful demons, is mentioned to have surpassed the power of his legendary father, has defeated several magic (or elemental) wielding demons as well as Demon Lord-category demons... He rarely takes the god-like beings seriously in some games as well. Mundus, for example, can apparently create his own dimension, create projections of himself, strike enemies down from a distance with lightning and Dante... Is just a half-demon with weapons he takes/transforms his enemies into and can become a demon for short periods of time.

Asura from Asura's Wrath beat the creator deity of his world to death with his bare fists and wrath.

Link from Legend of Zelda is usually just a guy with a sword who picks up magic/non-magical items and techniques along the way, but ends up routinely defeating Ganondorf, who is very competent with the magic he performs (the curses, the creatures he creates, being able to harness the power of his Triforce more completely than the other two).

Asta from Black Clover has Anti-Magic flowing through his body and exists in a world where literally everyone can perform magic.

Samurai Jack defeats magic users, and his main antagonist is basically a magic user that he (eventually) killed... It was clear Aku was perfectly aware he couldn't beat Jack so just hid himself for 50 years because he thought Jack would eventually kill him. Jack won their first fight by all means, regardless of whatever shape shifting Aku pulled out, and Jack's Father beat Aku too in the past.

He-Man defeats Skeletor constantly.

There was that time Mythological Thor was tricked by a giant magic user and ended up making valleys, lifting the world serpent and wrestling with the personification of Old Age, scaring the giant magic user so much that he decided to just teleport away for fear of revenge. Thor was apparently the most terrifying enemy to face, regardless of magic.

Just off the top of my head, definitely more that I'm not aware of, but I don't think it's like a super rare thing for martials to defeat dedicated magic users or anything. Probably fairly common in older stories where the protagonists often used their strength of arms to defeat the evil mage.



Point of the list (Not really directed at just you, but I feel this needs to be said because of the original post and other threads and comments like it) is there isn't anything in reality saying that magic should be superior to martial prowess, or that martial prowess should be superior to magic. Neither exist, thus there is no reason to try to apply realism to say "magic should be stronger than martials because magic doesn't exist and martials do exist" when magic is inherently unrealistic, much like there is no reason to apply realism to say "superhuman martials should be stronger than magic because magic doesn't exist while martials do so magic shouldn't do anything at all" when superhuman martials are equally as unrealistic. Either one can be as strong or weak as the creators want them to be, neither is inherently superior or inferior to the other in terms of power because neither one exist. Arguing either one should be inherently superior or inferior to another might as well be like arguing Santa Clause should be better than Paul Bunyan because, "It just makes sense Santa Clause is more powerful than Paul Bunyan, he's magic!" when neither one of these fantastic characters exist and someone could just as easily say the opposite has to be true because, "It just makes sense Paul Bunyan is more powerful than Santa Clause, he's a giant!" One has magic, the other's an impossibly big guy, neither exist, both do impossible things just by existing and there is no precedent that one should be better than the other... It's only entirely subjective which one people believe should be better, but nothing objective.

If anyone sees a superhuman Fighter deflect a boulder with a sword lose to a Wizard throwing Fireballs, ok, cool... If you see a Wizard that's hurling lightning get decapitated by a swordsman who can dodge lightning bolts, great... I will change my thoughts entirely if either of these two fantastic individuals exist in real life, but until then, neither one of those two exist, so arguing which one is supposed to be better goes back to the Paul Bunyan vs Santa Clause thing and "It just makes sense because it just does." Which isn't an argument for anything beyond feelings and circular reasoning.

Ok I see your point. If this was different roleplaying system such as Mutants & Masterminds my opinions will changed But at the end of the day in D&D 3.5 Wizard will always trumps Fighter.

[AntiAuthority]

Ok I see your point. If this was different roleplaying system such as Mutants & Masterminds my opinions will changed But at the end of the day in D&D 3.5 Wizard will always trumps Fighter.

As it stands, Wizards definitely reign supreme. I won't deny that in the slightest. I don't like it, but it's the truth lol.

I'm more bothered people seem to think that there's a logical reasoning to one class being superior to another, as if having magic inherently means, "I win and am better than those without magic."

[Lord Raziere]

As it stands, Wizards definitely reign supreme. I won't deny that in the slightest. I don't like it, but it's the truth lol.

I'm more bothered people seem to think that there's a logical reasoning to one class being superior to another, as if having magic inherently means, "I win and am better than those without magic."

Exactly my problem as well. its all nonsense, its just wizard nonsense lines up with a nerds fantasy of book smarts-based empowerment which creates a bias.

also Aragorn and others like him are only interesting for one story, and the more you retread it, the more generic it gets: oh that badass with a sword? he becomes a king I never could've guessed, does he get a princess to marry to? he does? oh what a surprise. oh but wait the princess wants to be more than that and has a stubborn rebellious side to show she is more than a delicate princess? not even special anymore. do we get lessons on how rulership is more than just X? yes we probably do. oh how heavy the burden of leadership is blah blah blah, interferes with love life blah, must put up a front to give people hope blah blah, and so on.
though even then, a fighter does that badly: they simply don't have the charisma stats, or the ability to train those stats up or grow into them as the levels progress to become a leader of people, DnD simply isn't built for that, even less so than allowing the Wuxia. the Wuxia can at least fight on the same scale as wizards, a king character has to have a way to flex his leadership in mechanics or its all just fluff and GM allowance, and we already have Bards for support through shouting beautifully at people. and if your king, why go out and do things yourself, don't you have knights and such to kill things for you? doesn't really gel with adventuring. a king can be powerful but their power isn't really relevant to the adventuring lifestyle.

[Bartmanhomer]

As it stands, Wizards definitely reign supreme. I won't deny that in the slightest. I don't like it, but it's the truth lol.

I'm more bothered people seem to think that there's a logical reasoning to one class being superior to another, as if having magic inherently means, "I win and am better than those without magic."

That because there are Tiers for each class by showing how versatile and good each class are for Roleplaying situation. Wizard are Tier 1 because they can do just about everything in any situation. The fighter is Tier 5 because they are little useful but not that much.

[Kelb_Panthera]

I have really been enjoying this discussion. However, to me the bottom line is CASTERS are better than MUNDANES because that is the way the game is designed. Let's face it. Wizard 20 with just the SRD is how much more powerful than a fighter 20 with full splatbook support?

See, this is the kind of statement that's just so blatantly wrong that it could only be born from an echo-chamber.

You can more than close the gap on wealth alone in that scenario.

I'm not, and never have been, denying that casters have a substantial advantage over non-casters within the overall frame of the sytsem. I've always been arguing that they're not at nearly as massive a one as people think when you look at actual characters in play, with all that entails, rather than focusing exclusively on class based build options.

[Psyren]

I'm more bothered people seem to think that there's a logical reasoning to one class being superior to another, as if having magic inherently means, "I win and am better than those without magic."

That's exactly what it means, but it doesn't mean that you have to be a caster to acess it. "Magic" means more than just spells after all - in D&D terms it also means SLAs and Supernatural abilities, both of which could easily be made available to non-spellcasting classes.

[AntiAuthority]

Exactly my problem as well. its all nonsense, its just wizard nonsense lines up with a nerds fantasy of book smarts-based empowerment which creates a bias.

There is never a reason for one imaginary thing to be more powerful than another imaginary thing because, "It just makes sense." lol

But really, there's also nothing stopping say, a Skill Check, from being so high that it does things that are impossible by our standards... But that'd be unrealistic in a world full of dragons, trolls, gods, wizards who can replicate mythological feats of power and Lovecraftian horrors, that's the part that's too wild to believe. Not that this person isn't a bloody red paste or that these ungodly powerful beings are having so much trouble apparently (if we use abstractions) even hitting this mere mortal, the ability to do something impossible by our standards without magic is where the line is crossed... Sigh.


also Aragorn and others like him are only interesting for one story, and the more you retread it, the more generic it gets: oh that badass with a sword? he becomes a king I never could've guessed, does he get a princess to marry to? he does? oh what a surprise. oh but wait the princess wants to be more than that and has a stubborn rebellious side to show she is more than a delicate princess? not even special anymore. do we get lessons on how rulership is more than just X? yes we probably do. oh how heavy the burden of leadership is blah blah blah, interferes with love life blah, must put up a front to give people hope blah blah, and so on.

Well, Tolkien (and CS Lewis) wanted to read those types of stories, but nobody was writing such fiction at the time, so decided to write them themselves. It's not particularly original, but it's meant to emulate fantasy stories of older tiimes... Not too sure how common these tropes were before Lord of the Rings and Chronicles of Narnia got into the spotlight though.


though even then, a fighter does that badly: they simply don't have the charisma stats, or the ability to train those stats up or grow into them as the levels progress to become a leader of people, DnD simply isn't built for that, even less so than allowing the Wuxia. the Wuxia can at least fight on the same scale as wizards, a king character has to have a way to flex his leadership in mechanics or its all just fluff and GM allowance, and we already have Bards for support through shouting beautifully at people. and if your king, why go out and do things yourself, don't you have knights and such to kill things for you? doesn't really gel with adventuring. a king can be powerful but their power isn't really relevant to the adventuring lifestyle.


Agreed, a Fighter is currently just limited to the role of unskilled brute who just pounds on the enemy until they go down from a mechanical point of view.

Maybe being given something to add to their Charisma based skill checks or something would help. It's a bad way to replicate something like Lord of the Rings without multi-classing or being very careful with how you set up your character... And Kings aren't really the best for adventuring, they'd tend to be too busy in navigating the political theater than going around and risking their lives by fighting monsters. Having knights fight for you is great, but it's not really your power at that point, and anyone with a similar amount of money could probably pull off what the King is doing...

A Wuxia style warrior would be able to remain competitive and feel like a character worthy of having a number higher than 6. To me, it feels like something like the Fighter has big numbers, but not abilities appropriate for a character of that level. Best way to to describe a Fighter 1 is, "I move and hit stuff" and a Fighter 20 as, "I move and hit stuff OR I move slightly and hit stuff." The way to describe a Wizard 1 is, "I can do a variety of different things with plenty of different spell load outs that vary in utility" and a Wizard 20 is "Reality Warper that's a few steps away from God." A Fighter is superhuman by that point, but it seems the D&D version doesn't want to do anything with it, while the Pathfinder version sort of does but doesn't commit and doesn't give you feats that show off amazing feats of power pass Level 9.





That because there are Tiers for each class by showing how versatile and good each class are for Roleplaying situation. Wizard are Tier 1 because they can do just about everything in any situation. The fighter is Tier 5 because they are little useful but not that much.

I'm aware of the Tiers, but this ties back into there not really being any reason for magic to let the Wizard be able to do as much they can. The Wizard is only as strong or weak as the designers allow them to be.

The inverse is that there's no reason to have Fighters be as low as they are, when they could have given them more class skills, more skill points, more passive bonuses to skills, the ability to Full Attack and move at full speed as something Fighters can just do, better Saves, more abilities, etc. to remain competitive at higher levels... But they don't have magic so they're not allowed to be as cool or fantastic as the magic users is something people seem to believe.

[Rater202]

Let's look at a different genre: Less High Fantasy and more Modern Fantasy: superhero comics:

Who are the most powerful Superheroes? DC's got Superman, who has his powers inherently but is explicitly not magic, and the Green Lanterns who use science to manipulate cosmic forces.

Marvel Has Powerhouse, who has a genetic mutation that makes him omnipotent but is otherwise a normal human with no special training.

Magic-Users tend to be high up in both sets, but never the top and on average Magic-Users in MArvel are weaker than most superheroes becuase of the costs of using magic.

Going back to more High Fantasy like Kulan Gath is one of the most powerful sorcerers Marvel Comics ever created. His first modern-day appearance had him killing a dozen superheroes and being such a big threat that they had to basically reset the timeline and make it so his soul was never able to get a host int he first place. He was explicitly stronger than Doctor Strange

He regularly got his ass handed to him by Conan the Barbarian and Red Sonja back in the Hyborean age(Marvel had the Conan license for a very long time.)

So no, Magic does not automatically mean "better than non-magic.

It comes down entirely to the setting and the constraints of the setting and there's no reason for non-magic users to be limited to being the Wizard's sidekick.

I've already explained how Fighter is the best class option for a build to get theoretically infinite attacks in a single round.

[Bartmanhomer]

There is never a reason for one imaginary thing to be more powerful than another imaginary thing because "It just makes sense." lol

But really, there's also nothing stopping say, a Skill Check, from being so high that it does things that are impossible by our standards... But that'd be unrealistic in a world full of dragons, trolls, gods, wizards who can replicate mythological feats of power and Lovecraftian horrors, that's the part that's too wild to believe. Not that this person isn't a bloody red paste or that these ungodly powerful beings are having so much trouble apparently (if we use abstractions) even hitting this mere mortal, the ability to do something impossible by our standards without magic is where the line is crossed... Sigh.



Well, Tolkien (and CS Lewis) wanted to read those types of stories, but nobody was writing such fiction at the time, so decided to write them themselves. It's not particularly original, but it's meant to emulate fantasy stories of older times... Not too sure how common these tropes were before Lord of the Rings and Chronicles of Narnia got into the spotlight though.



Agreed, a Fighter is currently just limited to the role of an unskilled brute who just pounds on the enemy until they go down from a mechanical point of view.

Maybe being given something to add to their Charisma-based skill checks or something would help. It's a bad way to replicate something like Lord of the Rings without multi-classing or being very careful with how you set up your character... And Kings aren't really the best for adventuring, they'd tend to be too busy in navigating the political theatre than going around and risking their lives by fighting monsters. Having knights fight for you is great, but it's not really your power at that point, and anyone with a similar amount of money could probably pull off what the King is doing...

A Wuxia style warrior would be able to remain competitive and feel like a character worthy of having a number higher than 6. To me, it feels like something like the Fighter has big numbers, but not abilities appropriate for a character of that level. Best way to describe a Fighter 1 is, "I move and hit stuff" and a Fighter 20 as, "I move and hit stuff OR I move slightly and hit stuff." The way to describe a Wizard 1 is, "I can do a variety of different things with plenty of different spell load-outs that vary in utility" and a Wizard 20 is "Reality Warper that's a few steps away from God." A Fighter is superhuman by that point, but it seems the D&D version doesn't want to do anything with it, while the Pathfinder version sort of does but doesn't commit and doesn't give you feats that show off amazing feats of power pass Level 9.






I'm aware of the Tiers, but this ties back into there not really being any reason for the magic to let the Wizard be able to do as much they can. The Wizard is only as strong or weak as the designers allow them to be.

The inverse is that there's no reason to have Fighters be as low as they are when they could have given them more class skills, more skill points, more passive bonuses to skills, the ability to Full Attack and move at full speed as something Fighters can just do, better Saves, more abilities, etc. to remain competitive at higher levels... But they don't have magic so they're not allowed to be as cool or fantastic as the magic users are something people seem to believe.

If the Fighter were homebrew then maybe it might turn the tables around and most homebrew Fighter class are meh in my opinion.

[sorcererlover]

Let's look at a different genre: Less High Fantasy and more Modern Fantasy: superhero comics:

Who are the most powerful Superheroes? DC's got Superman, who has his powers inherently but is explicitly not magic, and the Green Lanterns who use science to manipulate cosmic forces.

Superman is not human. Green Lantern uses science. The inventor of the Green Lantern is worlds more powerful than the user of the Green Lantern.


Marvel Has Powerhouse, who has a genetic mutation that makes him omnipotent but is otherwise a normal human with no special training.

Not human. For example: My human fighter got a genetic mutation so I get to start with a STR score of 100.



Magic-Users tend to be high up in both sets, but never the top and on average Magic-Users in MArvel are weaker than most superheroes becuase of the costs of using magic.

OP is comparing brain v.s. brawn. Magic, Science, Technology, Genetic Manipulation, Alien Artifacts, or just aliens, etc. > all humans in super hero settings. Hell even Batman beats all of his supernatural foes using brain. In order for this analogy to work in your favor, you need to use a superhero without any super powers or advanced technology. If you find one that uses everyday or readily available tools to take down mad scientist villains let me know.

Closest I could think of is Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles because the turtles are explicitly shown to be no better than humans seeing how they consistently get bested by other humans and triumph solely through skill. And even then they usually win with high technology either stolen from their foes or that purple turtle makes.

[Lucas Yew]

As it stands, Wizards definitely reign supreme. I won't deny that in the slightest. I don't like it, but it's the truth lol.

I'm more bothered people seem to think that there's a logical reasoning to one class being superior to another, as if having magic inherently means, "I win and am better than those without magic."


Exactly my problem as well. its all nonsense, its just wizard nonsense lines up with a nerds fantasy of book smarts-based empowerment which creates a bias.

All so true, and I'd like to add one more thought of mine.

I don't think external help (like WBL gear or GM fiat) truly count as a D&D character's true capability. They are, as stated, external/extra; on a no-gear plus high level situation, guess which archetype, warrior or spellcaster, is more toast.

...probably my (South) Korean cultural upbringing influenced me quite much too, though (AFAIK, modern Korean gamers in general tend to detest cashmancy in any gaming and heavily mock and ridicule who does so).

[OrbanSirgen]

OP is comparing brain v.s. brawn. Magic, Science, Technology, Genetic Manipulation, Alien Artifacts, or just aliens, etc. > all humans in super hero settings. Hell even Batman beats all of his supernatural foes using brain. In order for this analogy to work in your favor, you need to use a superhero without any super powers or advanced technology. If you find one that uses everyday or readily available tools to take down mad scientist villains let me know.

Closest I could think of is Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles because the turtles are explicitly shown to be no better than humans seeing how they consistently get bested by other humans and triumph solely through skill. And even then they usually win with high technology either stolen from their foes or that purple turtle makes.

Probably the best example (albeit non-comics) I can think of would be MacGuyver... The man can do pretty much anything with just random stuff...

[Peat]

As it stands, Wizards definitely reign supreme. I won't deny that in the slightest. I don't like it, but it's the truth lol.

I'm more bothered people seem to think that there's a logical reasoning to one class being superior to another, as if having magic inherently means, "I win and am better than those without magic."

This.

And honestly, I'm okay with it rolling that way in D&D. Why not have stories like that? But its the idea that this is the only logical way for it to be, and that stories where the very human hero tears a hole through severely limited (albeit powerful in their sphere) mages don't exist, is what galls me.

[AntiAuthority]

Let's look at a different genre: Less High Fantasy and more Modern Fantasy: superhero comics:

Who are the most powerful Superheroes? DC's got Superman, who has his powers inherently but is explicitly not magic, and the Green Lanterns who use science to manipulate cosmic forces.

Marvel Has Powerhouse, who has a genetic mutation that makes him omnipotent but is otherwise a normal human with no special training.

Magic-Users tend to be high up in both sets, but never the top and on average Magic-Users in MArvel are weaker than most superheroes becuase of the costs of using magic.

Going back to more High Fantasy like Kulan Gath is one of the most powerful sorcerers Marvel Comics ever created. His first modern-day appearance had him killing a dozen superheroes and being such a big threat that they had to basically reset the timeline and make it so his soul was never able to get a host int he first place. He was explicitly stronger than Doctor Strange

He regularly got his ass handed to him by Conan the Barbarian and Red Sonja back in the Hyborean age(Marvel had the Conan license for a very long time.)

So no, Magic does not automatically mean "better than non-magic.

It comes down entirely to the setting and the constraints of the setting and there's no reason for non-magic users to be limited to being the Wizard's sidekick.

I've already explained how Fighter is the best class option for a build to get theoretically infinite attacks in a single round.

I like the way you think, and yes, we should look to the most powerful comic character... And anime characters lol. So I suppose Superman Prime might be a good place to start, as he's basically an evil version of Superman, was inspired by Silver Age Superman's abilities, is very resistant it not outright immune to magic and faster than the Flash. Nothing saying he should be weaker or stronger than anyone in the story because that's how he was written.




If the Fighter were homebrew then maybe it might turn the tables around and most homebrew Fighter class are meh in my opinion.

Not sure how I'd distribute them at levels, but I wrote an example of what I think a realistic Fighter would be capable of...
(https://forums.giantitp.com/showsinglepost.php?p=24389164&postcount=118)




Superman is not human. Green Lantern uses science. The inventor of the Green Lantern is worlds more powerful than the user of the Green Lantern.



Not human. For example: My human fighter got a genetic mutation so I get to start with a STR score of 100.




OP is comparing brain v.s. brawn. Magic, Science, Technology, Genetic Manipulation, Alien Artifacts, or just aliens, etc. > all humans in super hero settings. Hell even Batman beats all of his supernatural foes using brain. In order for this analogy to work in your favor, you need to use a superhero without any super powers or advanced technology. If you find one that uses everyday or readily available tools to take down mad scientist villains let me know.

Closest I could think of is Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles because the turtles are explicitly shown to be no better than humans seeing how they consistently get bested by other humans and triumph solely through skill. And even then they usually win with high technology either stolen from their foes or that purple turtle makes.

First... A Fighter can be a Tiefling, Orc, whatever, so not human by default.

Second... This argument is meaningless and an unnecessary nerf to martial characters.

Fighters can't be like Superman because they're not aliens, so need to be as strong as a normal human? Cool, Superman isn't allowed to be as powerful as he is because he doesn't have divine hair (Biblical Samson), is a literal magic golem (the Golem) or has the blood of the King of Olympus running through his veins (Hercules). That super strength? Doesn't matter, he's not a demi-god/blessed by a god/a construct. That nigh invulnerability? Doesn't matter, he doesn't have an impenetrable fur pelt from a magic lion he slew. Well he's powered by the sun and lower gravity than his home planet...? That's stupid, his inspirations weren't powered by the sun, so he has to be divinely gifted or a literal golem to have his powers. By your logic. Why can he have powers similar to (and surpass) these beings he was inspired by? Because he's a fictional character and doesn't exist.

Green Lantern is a guy with high tech abilities... Cool, guess he can't surpass his inspiration of a normal railroad worker who was holding up a green lantern or the genie from Aladdin. So now Green Lantern needs to be a railroad worker and needs magic and is not allowed to use hyper advanced alien technology, by your own logic, because his inspirations didn't have those things. Why can he though? Because he's a fictional character and doesn't exist. By the way, the original Green Lantern did have magic... But nobody cares that the later ones began using alien tech because they're fictional characters and don't exist.


Goku was inspired by Sun Wukong... Goku wasn't born from a stone egg, a literal monkey god thing (pre-Super anyway), or anything... So, by this logic, Son Goku isn't allowed to be anything awesome because he's just a lowly alien and needs to be a literal monkey god who did a ritual where Heaven would try to assassinate him a bunch or times or some such to be awesome... Why can he though? Because he's a fiction character and doesn't exist.

Speaking of Goku, I guess all non-Saiyan Shonen Protagonists inspired by Goku must be bound by the limitations of real life humans because they're not Saiyans like the character they were inspired by... And Goku's not allowed to have god-like powers like Sun Wukong because he's just a lowly alien and not an immortal god like his inspiration. By this logic that, "You must be X to be able to do X", so Goku being a mortal alien means he shouldn't have the powers that would be considered god-like, and anyone inspired by Goku must be a Saiyan to have similar levels of strength to a Saiyan, if we're sticking to this logic for some reason. Congratulations, now every single Shonen Battle character with god-like strength (like Goku) or inspired by Goku that isn't a god must be limited to real-life human levels of power... Anything else is a double standard.

Nobody's saying we want a 100% copy of Superman, Green Lantern or Goku. We're saying we want to use them as inspirations for what martial characters should be capable of. Inspirations, not copies.

Anyone wants to bring up, "Superman's an alien, so he doesn't work for mortal warriors as inspirations for their powers" then congratulations, you've now opened the door to, "Hercules, Samson and the Golem were all divine or magic in some way, so they don't work as inspirations for a completely mortal, unblessed, none magic alien's powers." So now Superman isn't allowed to have powers either because, "He's not magic or divine like the people he was based on." Goku's not allowed to be cool either since aliens don't exist, and he HAS to be a god (pre-Super) like his mythological inspiration to have his powers. Green Lanterns aren't allowed to be anyone but railroad workers who find magic lamps because they were inspired by a railroad worker and a literal genie, so hyper advanced alien rings can't do anything since it's not a magic lamp/a genie.

We're looking at inspirations, not 100% copies of these characters. Forbid if any of these characters actually surpass their inspirations in terms of power... Except Goku can multiply his power by going Super Saiyan, shoot fireballs out of his hands, read minds, sense energy and teleport (unlike Sun Wukong), Superman has super speed, shoots lasers out of his eyes, can fly, punch the walls of reality and can potentially grow infinitely in power from sunlight (unlike Samson, the Golem and Hercules), and the Green Lanterns are capable of interplanetary travel through flight and can recharge their power supplies instead of having a finite number of wishes (unlike a magic lamp). Why? Because they're fictional characters and don't exist.

If it were up to people using this argument as some kind of defense, 100% of superheroes and anime characters who do blatantly impossible things would have divine blood and magic in some form to explain why they can do what they do. No aliens (goodbye Superman and Goku, you're not gods so you don't get super powers), no martial arts/ training (Goku again, the entire cast of Dragon Ball, most Shonen Battle manga, Ryu and Akuma from Street Fighter and Saitama... They all gotta go because there's not a drop of divine blood or magic in them), no super devices (Sayonara Green Lantern and all science fiction based heroes, you're only allowed magic), no radiation (Goodbye Spider-Man and the Incredible Hulk, no divine blood, magic or blessings... Don't bring up that Other or Immortal Hulk story lines, these characters were steeped in science fiction as to the cause of their powers and given their powers through radiation for decades, trying to use this as an excuse would be pedantic and ignores the literal decades of backstory and AUs where those mystical storylines don't exist... This isn't even getting into how those story lines might be rectonned at a later date) and no mutations/evolutionary based superpowers (goodbye to the entirety of My Hero Academia, the X-Men, etc.). Only beings with magic, divine blood or blessings are allowed to do impossible things by this logic. But why are all these explanations accepted despite not being magic, having divine blood or being blessed by a god? Because they're fictional characters and don't eixst.

This argument is meaningless and says nothing. They're only as powerful as the creators want them to be.

Why? Because they're fictional characters and don't exist.




All so true, and I'd like to add one more thought of mine.

I don't think external help (like WBL gear or GM fiat) truly count as a D&D character's true capability. They are, as stated, external/extra; on a no-gear plus high level situation, guess which archetype, warrior or spellcaster, is more toast.

...probably my (South) Korean cultural upbringing influenced me quite much too, though (AFAIK, modern Korean gamers in general tend to detest cashmancy in any gaming and heavily mock and ridicule who does so).

Hm... I agree.

I'd rather a character's power come from their own abilities rather than their gear. A Fighter can fly with magic boots? That's not impressive, guy either found the books or just has a lot of money. The gear's impressive, the person wearing it isn't and anyone wearing such equipment could do similar things.

If a Fighter lacks magic equipment to fly, let them jump their way up to their enemy or something.




This.

And honestly, I'm okay with it rolling that way in D&D. Why not have stories like that? But its the idea that this is the only logical way for it to be, and that stories where the very human hero tears a hole through severely limited (albeit powerful in their sphere) mages don't exist, is what galls me.

Yep, no reason to say one or the other should be superior other than belief.

[danzibr]

@AntiAuthority: thanks!

"Cut through space" is a bit vague - technically every sword swing ever "cuts through space." If you mean something like teleportation or planar travel, I'd put heavy limitations on it, e.g. probably wouldn't be any more powerful than dimension door etc.
lolol

It’d be great (and has probably been done) for someone to do absolutely mundane “feats” but state them in such a way to make it sound extraordinary.

[sorcererlover]

First... A Fighter can be a Tiefling, Orc, whatever, so not human by default.

Second... This argument is meaningless and an unnecessary nerf to martial characters.

Fighters can't be like Superman because they're not aliens, so need to be as strong as a normal human? Cool, Superman isn't allowed to be as powerful as he is because he doesn't have divine hair (Biblical Samson), is a literal magic golem (the Golem) or has the son of the King of Olympus running through his veins (Hercules). That super strength? Doesn't matter, he's not a demi-god/blessed by a god/a construct. That nigh invulnerability? Doesn't matter, he doesn't have an impenetrable fur pelt from a magic lion he slew. Well he's powered by the sun and lower gravity than his home planet...? That's stupid, his inspirations weren't powered by the sun, so he has to be divinely gifted or a literal golem to have his powers. By your logic. Why can he have powers similar to (and surpass) these beings he was inspired by? Because he's a fictional character and doesn't exist.

Green Lantern is a guy with high tech abilities... Cool, guess he can't surpass his inspiration of a normal railroad worker who was holding up a green lantern or the genie from Aladdin. So now Green Lantern needs to be a railroad worker and needs magic and is not allowed to use hyper advanced alien technology, by your own logic, because his inspirations didn't have those things. Why can he though? Because he's a fictional character and doesn't exist. By the way, the original Green Lantern did have magic... But nobody cares that the later ones began using alien tech because they're fictional characters and don't exist.


Goku was inspired by Sun Wukong... Goku wasn't born from a stone egg, a literal monkey god thing (pre-Super anyway), or anything... So, by this logic, Son Goku isn't allowed to be anything awesome because he's just a lowly alien and needs to be a literal monkey god who did a ritual where Heaven would try to assassinate him a bunch or times or some such to be awesome... Why can he though? Because he's a fiction character and doesn't exist.

Speaking of Goku, I guess Luffy and Naruto must be bound by the limitations of real life humans because they're not Saiyans like the character they were inspired by... And Goku's not allowed to have powers like Sun Wukong (and then some, like teleportation) because he's just a lowly alien and not an immortal god like his inspiration. By this logic that, "You must be X to be able to do X", so Goku being a mortal alien means he shouldn't have the powers that would be considered god-like, if we're sticking to this logic for some reason.

Nobody's saying we want a 100% copy of Superman, Green Lantern or Goku. We're saying we want to use them as inspirations for what martial characters should be capable of. Inspirations, not copies.

Anyone wants to bring up, "Superman's an alien, so he doesn't work for mortal warriors as inspirations for their powers" then congratulations, you've now opened the door to, "Hercules, Samson and the Golem were all divine or magic in some way, so they don't work as inspirations for a completely mortal, unblessed, none magic alien's powers." So now Superman isn't allowed to have powers either because, "He's not magic or divine like the people he was based on." Goku's not allowed to be cool either since aliens don't exist, and he HAS to be a god (pre-Super) like his mythological inspiration to have his powers. Green Lanterns aren't allowed to be anyone but railroad workers who find magic lamps because they were inspired by a railroad worker and a literal genie, so hyper advanced alien rings can't do anything since it's not a magic lamp/a genie.

We're looking at inspirations, not 100% copies of these characters. Forbid if any of these characters actually surpass their inspirations in terms of power... Except Goku can multiply his power by going Super Saiyan, shoot fireballs out of his hands, read minds, sense energy and teleport (unlike Sun Wukong), Superman has super speed, shoots lasers out of his eyes, can fly, punch the walls of reality and can potentially grow infinitely in power from sunlight (unlike Samson, the Golem and Hercules), and the Green Lanterns are capable of interplanetary travel through flight and can recharge their power supplies instead of having a finite number of wishes (unlike a magic lamp). Why? Because they're fictional characters and don't exist.

If it were up to people using this argument as some kind of defense, 100% of superheroes and anime characters who do blatantly impossible things would have divine blood and magic in some form to explain why they can do what they do. No aliens (goodbye Superman and Goku, you're not gods so you don't get super powers), no martial arts/ training (Goku again, the entire cast of Dragon Ball, most Shonen Battle manga, Ryu and Akuma from Street Fighter and Saitama... They all gotta go because there's not a drop of divine blood or magic in them), no super devices (Sayonara Green Lantern and all science fiction based heroes, you're only allowed magic), no radiation (Goodbye Spider-Man and the Incredible Hulk, no divine blood, magic or blessings... Don't bring up that Other or Immortal Hulk story lines, these characters were steeped in science fiction as to the cause of their powers and given their powers through radiation for decades, trying to use this as an excuse would be pedantic and ignores the literal decades of backstory and AUs where those mystical storylines don't exist... This isn't even getting into how those story lines might be rectonned at a later date) and no mutations/evolutionary based superpowers (goodbye to the entirety of My Hero Academia, the X-Men, etc.). Only beings with magic, divine blood or blessings are allowed to do impossible things by this logic. But why are all these explanations accepted despite not being magic, having divine blood or being blessed by a god? Because they're fictional characters and don't eixst.

This argument is meaningless and says nothing. They're only as powerful as the creators want them to be.

Why? Because they're fictional characters and don't exist.

Ok. So I have a Pit Fiend Wizard, Gibbering Mouth Sorcerer, a Hagunemnon Cleric, and a Hecatoncheries Psion. Lets compare them to a human fighter and see which is better.

Yeah, using a mix of species in a discussion regarding pursuing martial crafts v.s. pursuing the magical and or scientific craft totally makes sense.

Whatever. Later.

[AntiAuthority]

@AntiAuthority: thanks!


You're welcome!





Ok. So I have a Pit Fiend Wizard, Gibbering Mouth Sorcerer, a Hagunemnon Cleric, and a Hecatoncheries Psion. Lets compare them to a human fighter and see which is better.

Yeah, using a mix of species in a discussion regarding pursuing martial crafts v.s. pursuing the magical and or scientific craft totally makes sense.

Whatever. Later.

That didn't address anything I said, but ok. Later then.