Tier 2 Fighter Types

[Yogibear41]

On that basis that Tier 1 basically means god like power with infinite options, and Tier 2 means god like power with limited options, wouldn't it technically be possible to make a tier 2 fighter type? Couldn't a fighter type with enormous pluses to hit, damage, saves, AC, abilities like flight, high damage reduction, high spell resistance, regeneration etc more or less be on par with a high level sorcerer or even better in some situations? Sure a normal human or dwarf fighter probably couldn't do it, but what if you used a powerful race and/or powerful templates with powerful feats such as troll-blooded, etc, etc. To clarify I don't specifically mean the fighter class: I basically mean "full bab" class when I say Fighter types, and no I don't mean DMM Divine Power Clerics.

[NigelWalmsley]

I'm not sure what you're asking. Are you saying "can you build a martial character that's T2" or "can you imagine a class that's T2 which is recognizably martial"?

The former is, according to most definitions of the tiers, meaningless, because the tiers are supposed to be about "Class Potential" rather than actual characters. The latter mostly comes down to the degree to which you think "martial" means "not getting good abilities". I personally think you could do it fairly easily, but there are some people who seem to believe that if you made a martial class that was as effective as the full casters, that class wouldn't count as martial for whatever reason.

Also, your definition of the tiers is off. T1 isn't "unimaginable godlike power", it's just "about as good as a Wizard". The former comes from a lazy post hoc definition of the tiers that focuses on things that come up a lot in TO discussions rather than in real gameplay. The thing that makes the Wizard good isn't the gamebreaking power of Planar Binding, it's the fact that he has spells that are powerful and effective in combat.

[Esprit15]

On that basis that Tier 1 basically means god like power with infinite options, and Tier 2 means god like power with limited options, wouldn't it technically be possible to make a tier 2 fighter type? Couldn't a fighter type with enormous pluses to hit, damage, saves, AC, abilities like flight, high damage reduction, high spell resistance, regeneration etc more or less be on par with a high level sorcerer or even better in some situations? Sure a normal human or dwarf fighter probably couldn't do it, but what if you used a powerful race and/or powerful templates with powerful feats such as troll-blooded, etc, etc. To clarify I don't specifically mean the fighter class: I basically mean "full bab" class when I say Fighter types, and no I don't mean DMM Divine Power Clerics.

No, because generally speaking you would need to give them abilities that are decidedly not ‘fighter’ types of abilities: teleportation, mind reading, ability to summon minions of the appropriate type as needed. The problem is that it’s not a question of how hard to kill you are - monks have AC and saves for days, and they’re regarded as one of the weakest non-NPC classes in core. It’s how you can affect not just a battle but the whole story.

Let’s take Polymorph. A single medium level spell. What would you propose giving a fighter that matches that kind of versatility?

[King of Nowhere]

No, because generally speaking you would need to give them abilities that are decidedly not ‘fighter’ types of abilities: teleportation, mind reading, ability to summon minions of the appropriate type as needed.

It’s how you can affect not just a battle but the whole story.


i had a barbarian in my game that was just that. granted, it required many plot powers and several powerful homebrewed artifacts, but it was a thing.
among others, he had consummable magic tattoos for one-off teleportation (most high level people in my world had those, but he had enough to outlast most wizards), he was regarded as a messiah by the orcs, which definitely gave him the "summon minion" ability (those orcs included a fair amount of high level barbarians, and a few mid-high level clerics and druids) and the power to cast limited wish once per day at no cost (also courtesy of the orcs, it's basically a case of "their minds make it real"; though aquiring a minor divine nature after being suffused by divine energy helped).
it's not something you can get as a build, but he certainly affected the story more than any powerful wizard ever could.
before you wonder, the rest of the party was close behind in power.

in fact, if you define the tier as the capacity to affect the story, then it depends very little on the build, and a lot on the player, and even more on the dm.
if you have a restrictive railroading dm, then you won't be able to affect much the story no matter how many spells you can use to reshape the world. and if you can immerse yourself in the campaign world and figure out your villain's motivations and bring them to your side, you can alter the global plot without a single dice roll.

[Unavenger]

T1 fighter-types can and have been done, but they require a lot of different and shockingly powerful abilities written up (see also: hypermundanes) and/or a healthy disregard for the laws of physics (see also: mythos). I also tried something similar (https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?588051-New-Powerful-Mundane-Classes-for-3-5-(PEACH)) myself, though they're not quite finished and I'm not sure whether or not they breach the limits of "Obnoxiously-high T3", although the intent is that they can play well with wizards and sorcerers until people go splat-diving for broken polymorph forms.

[Gnaeus]

Yes. They look like cuchulain or Heracles or Beowulf. I throw a rock and take out 30 people. I sack cities by myself. Reroute rivers. Create mountains. Hold my breath for days while I swim across the ocean fighting sea monsters. Leap over castle walls.

D&D wise? If you gestalt all the ToB classes with barbarian, rogue, scout, monk, spellless ranger and paladin, fighter, samurai, Marshall basically everything without spells or spell likes, you get a T2. Kind of a wonky T2 in the sense that the comparative power curve is inverted, and it is clearly better at some kinds of problems and worse at others than is say a favored soul. But if you stick together enough powers and make yourself good enough at them then the fact that the FS can do some things you can’t easily do is balanced by the fact that you can do things he can’t easily do.

[Biffoniacus_Furiou]

Wildshape Ranger is considered Tier 3, and several prestige classes are considered to improve the character's tier as long as the entry isn't with a spellcasting class (Master of Many Forms, Warshaper).

So if you're looking to build a martial character that's Tier 2, go Frostblood Half-Orc, Wildshape Mystic Ranger 5/ Master of Many Forms 7/ Warshaper 4/ MoMF 3/ Ranger 1. Since you get Endurance from your race, trade your Ranger 4 Endurance bonus feat for Sword of the Arcane Order. Use the Half-Humans and Humanlike Races variant in RoD p150 to count as human for prerequisites, and get Magical Training for a spellbook that you're able to add more spells to (per Rules Compendium, since you prepare and cast spells from a spellbook). This way you have 2nd level Ranger spell slots by 4th level, and can prepare and cast Wraithstrike with those spell slots without borrowing someone else's spellbook.

[Gnaeus]

Wildshape Ranger is considered Tier 3, and several prestige classes are considered to improve the character's tier as long as the entry isn't with a spellcasting class (Master of Many Forms, Warshaper).

So if you're looking to build a martial character that's Tier 2, go Frostblood Half-Orc, Wildshape Mystic Ranger 5/ Master of Many Forms 7/ Warshaper 4/ MoMF 3/ Ranger 1. Since you get Endurance from your race, trade your Ranger 4 Endurance bonus feat for Sword of the Arcane Order. Use the Half-Humans and Humanlike Races variant in RoD p150 to count as human for prerequisites, and get Magical Training for a spellbook that you're able to add more spells to (per Rules Compendium, since you prepare and cast spells from a spellbook). This way you have 2nd level Ranger spell slots by 4th level, and can prepare and cast Wraithstrike with those spell slots without borrowing someone else's spellbook.

Mystic SoTAO ranger alone is T2. But it kind of pushes the definition of what is a martial character when you beat sorcerers on the strength of your casting.

[Rhyltran]

It isn't that hard to do there are many prestige classes that can raise a base class by a tier or two so by building a character carefully you can take it up a tier or so. This means you can take a tier 4 Fighter and easily bring it to around Tier 3 or even Tier 2.

[Blackhawk748]

You'd look like an anime character and probably wind up being an early Saga DBZ character, but ya, you can have Martials at that tier. It just feels really odd to us.

[Liquor Box]

I don't think it has to be cartoonish.

Depending on how set you are on limiting yourself to the fighter archetype (as opposed to simply remaining non-magical), but one way to expand the versatility of the class would be to allow it access to the powers and abilities of not just fighter types, but also other mundane classes. It could have the suite of roguish abilities, and also be a powerful user of the social skills (which are extremely powerful).

The other option is to make the fighter able to avoid most of the tricks magical classes use. Given that magic is an in-game construct, I don't think it would seem odd for a class ability to allow someone to ignore the effects of magic (eg. step out of a force cage).

[Evoker]

The other option is to make the fighter able to avoid most of the tricks magical classes use. Given that magic is an in-game construct, I don't think it would seem odd for a class ability to allow someone to ignore the effects of magic (eg. step out of a force cage).

I'm not sure how relevant this is to the discussion at hand, as it clearly isn't enough to bring a class up to Tier 2, and martial types typically aren't skill-monkeys, but your comment of stepping out of a force cage reminded me of the epic uses of skills (https://www.d20srd.org/srd/epic/skills.htm). They're bad in comparison to a caster type (DC 100 climb to replicate the effect of a spider climb spell to climb sheer surfaces and ceilings, for instance), but while they primarily replace some mediocre to good spells, they are explicitly non-magical, and include detecting magic, making people into fanatic followers, detecting surface thoughts, defeating illusions, walking on clouds, and escaping a force cage. So if you gave fighters huge bonuses to escape artist, they could indeed step out of a force cage. (With a DC 120 check)

[daremetoidareyo]

I'm not sure how relevant this is to the discussion at hand, as it clearly isn't enough to bring a class up to Tier 2, and martial types typically aren't skill-monkeys, but your comment of stepping out of a force cage reminded me of the epic uses of skills (https://www.d20srd.org/srd/epic/skills.htm). They're bad in comparison to a caster type (DC 100 climb to replicate the effect of a spider climb spell to climb sheer surfaces and ceilings, for instance), but while they primarily replace some mediocre to good spells, they are explicitly non-magical, and include detecting magic, making people into fanatic followers, detecting surface thoughts, defeating illusions, walking on clouds, and escaping a force cage. So if you gave fighters huge bonuses to escape artist, they could indeed step out of a force cage. (With a DC 120 check)

https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?555939-Tying-Down-Escapology-An-Escape-Artist-Reference-Guide

Sometimes some of the work is already done

[Gnaeus]

I don't think it has to be cartoonish.

Depending on how set you are on limiting yourself to the fighter archetype (as opposed to simply remaining non-magical), but one way to expand the versatility of the class would be to allow it access to the powers and abilities of not just fighter types, but also other mundane classes. It could have the suite of roguish abilities, and also be a powerful user of the social skills (which are extremely powerful).

The other option is to make the fighter able to avoid most of the tricks magical classes use. Given that magic is an in-game construct, I don't think it would seem odd for a class ability to allow someone to ignore the effects of magic (eg. step out of a force cage).

That, essentially, is what the all non magic gestalt looks like. Fighter/barbarian/scout make it a combat specialist. Rogue/Marshall/ranger make it a skill specialist. And TOB gives it stuff like iron heart surge and auto saves + it has evasion and a pile of immunities. And it has a pet and some group buffs.


I'm not sure how relevant this is to the discussion at hand, as it clearly isn't enough to bring a class up to Tier 2, and martial types typically aren't skill-monkeys,

How so? Rangers are clearly martial skill monkeys. Monks were intended to be. Thematically, there’s Conan, Aragorn, Legolas, Batman, tons of examples.

And yes I pretty firmly believe this is tier 2. By the modern definition. By which I mean, it will beat a favored soul or spirit shaman in Combat and overall utility for at least 10 levels, and it won’t be totally outclassed for more levels than the levels where it totally outclasses the casters. Yes, it looks like a chump at level 20. But the favored soul looks like a chump at level 3. I’ve played a lot more at 3 (virtually every campaign) than 20 (never actually played past 19).

[NigelWalmsley]

No, because generally speaking you would need to give them abilities that are decidedly not ‘fighter’ types of abilities: teleportation, mind reading, ability to summon minions of the appropriate type as needed.

That's the wrong way of looking at it. You don't need to make something that has all the abilities of the Wizard, you need something that can overcome the challenges the Wizard can. Just as a Cleric is different from a Druid is different from a Wizard, you can easily imagine a martial character that could solve the same problems with different tools.


You'd look like an anime character and probably wind up being an early Saga DBZ character, but ya, you can have Martials at that tier. It just feels really odd to us.

Or just Thor. There are any number of high power martial characters throughout whatever source material you care to name. It's just that most people have a vision of "Martials" that is "Conan". But if you don't restrict things like that, you can make high tier martial characters with ease.

[Psyren]

Yes, it's quite possible to design such a martial class (or combination of classes into one chassis, as Gnaeus suggested.) I wouldn't hold your breath on expecting to see such a class in a first-party sourcebook anytime soon, at least outside of a system like Exalted that's designed around that, but if it's just your table, go nuts.

[Gnaeus]

That's the wrong way of looking at it. You don't need to make something that has all the abilities of the Wizard, you need something that can overcome the challenges the Wizard can. Just as a Cleric is different from a Druid is different from a Wizard, you can easily imagine a martial character that could solve the same problems with different tools.
.

This. Take a Favored Soul 11. Clearly T2. Minionmancy? Yes. But primarily Animate Dead (combat mooks well below a well built Martial’s power level.) Planar Ally (can’t pick the ally, has a cost, 6HD) and Summon monster. Summon monster is good, but very short term, and again not likely to exceed the martial. Martial has a pet and can likely swing help with social checks.

Teleportation? Nope. Actually the gestalt would beat the FS here. By 11 we have some monk D Door and some shadow hand tricks.

Mind reading? Nope. But let’s be broader and call this information gathering. You do have some decent divinations. True seeing and Commune. We have permanent blindsense and better perception skills and sense motive. Also track. Trapfinding.

Movement? You have air walk and water breathing. We have spider climb and limited air walk but at will. We are insanely faster. Flawless Stride.

And note: if the favored soul has that (commune, true seeing, SM3-5, Air Walk, Lesser planar ally, animate dead, water breathing) he has NOTHING ELSE. That’s all our 5th level spells. 3/4 of our 4ths and half our thirds. Weighed against a character with overwhelmingly superior attacks, defenses and stealth. We can both magic mart it up, but that only hurts the favored soul, I can UMD wizard as well as cleric stuff and don’t need to spend as much shoring up basic defenses.

The casters do have one overwhelming advantage. Magic item creation. In a creation friendly environment (no magic Marts, lots of downtime, can break WBL by crafting) that’s huge. In a less creation friendly environment (WBL is treated as a rule, limited downtime, magicmart) not so much. And functionally, in a cooperative party, while that is something the FS brings to the table, It doesn’t matter who has CWI as long as someone does.

[Elves]

There are a lot of traditionally "magical" abilities you can approximate with different fluff. The easiest part is countering magic - smashing walls of force, cutting open prismatic walls, instakilling summoned monsters, forcing a shapechanged or wildshaped caster back into their native form, all these things make sense. And effects equivalent to celerity, time stop and its ilk can easily be (Ex).


teleportation, mind reading, ability to summon minions of the appropriate type as needed.

Mind reading can be fluffed as superhuman intuitiveness, a rapid interrogation technique, or in the case of a skillmonkey as a rapid administration of truth serum or something.

Minions, you can easily give a martial character a stable of followers. Calling them up on the spot is maybe hard to fluff unless it's semi-magical ("spirits of ancient warriors", that kind of thing) but that's where you get to the fact of martials' reliance on gear, which I don't think you need to wholly eliminate to have them reach Tier 2. With magic items you should be able to call in your followers as needed.

And as for the creation of magic items, there's no reason why this should be exclusively the province of spellcasters anyway. Skilled artisan or craftsman + special magical reagents should be enough.

You can give them their own forms of minionmancy. Maybe intelligent enemies are so impressed by your fighting that they switch sides. Maybe you turn people against each other with social skills. Whatever.

Long-range teleportation is hard to fluff, but short-range tactical teleportation is easily refluffed as movement so long as it doesn't involve going through solid barriers. When it does, that can be solved with items or abilities that give short-term incorporeality or to a limited extent with abilities that let you bash through obstacles.


You can't make "Conan the barbarian" a tier 2 character, because he isn't one. But I'm pretty sure you could make a 3.5 base class that's recognizably a martial but edges into T2 without going all "Cuchulain smashes mountains". It would still be more reliant on gear than a caster, but 3.5 characters are supposed to have gear.

[Ruethgar]

Spheres of Might including Legendary talents in the potential playing field could potentially reach T2, more probably T3. It would be nearer anime martial. Flash Step was ripped straight from anime as an example but grants basically teleportation. Detect Surface Thoughts is another seeming magical ability explained as basically being very perceptive.

If you include the Tech sphere and all that comes with it, you would definitely reach T2 since you can potentially have access to your choice of 4 spells per spell level(from limited schools mind you but you pick the schools), on top of whatever else you pick to be able to do.

[Blackhawk748]

Or just Thor. There are any number of high power martial characters throughout whatever source material you care to name. It's just that most people have a vision of "Martials" that is "Conan". But if you don't restrict things like that, you can make high tier martial characters with ease.

I don't use Gods as examples because they are getting their power from being a God more so than from Class. Cu and Beowulf are good examples as while Cu is related to a God, he doesn't seem to get anything for being so.

Now, that being said, I have no issue with a Barbarian archetype screaming lightning at people.

[Soranar]

The only ''tier 2'' martial character I can think of would be a master of many forms.

Start with wildshape ranger 5
Then go Master of many forms 7
Dip a little into Warblade or Swordsage and Crusader
Finish Master of many forms
Top it off with more levels of Warblade or Crusader

Since a MMOF's wildshape is significantly stronger than polymorph (since it lasts hours and you get ex abilities at level 7) you essentially have a campaign ''nuke'' that can handle just about everything

As for your STATS, every physical stat is irrelevant except CON so you can go

Mongrelfolk + dragonborn of bahamut and gain blindsense in all of your forms with +6 to CON

And your main STAT is CON

Until you can pull off the blink dog trick, you can still use exalted wildshape + fast wildshape to teleport as a free action (as a blink dog) then use a move action to turn into something else then attack normally

If you want something really cheesy, you can make a dumb crusader build (using martial study to gain the right maneuver as a crusader to have automatic recovery) that uses insightful strike and eventually greater insightful strike (Concentration check = your damage or Concentration check x2 = your damage) and just use that to optimize your damage (Concentration checks are really easy to optimize)

Now, as a blink dog, you can teleport and insightful strike

As a crusader you can always take 11 on all your skills (due to a high level stance)

So, in essence, you always have a backup plan of blinkdog teleporting + insightful strike
you can wildshape into humanoids to spy
you can wilsdhape into anything you need depending on the situation (using pounce, swallow whole, grappling or flight) to deal with enemies
you can always take 11 for skills (so diplomacy, bluff, search for traps, disarm traps, track, autohipnosis, you can always take 11 once per round


Maybe you can't curbstomp everything but, as most tier 2, you can curbstomp just about anything since master of many forms is essentially shapechange light but way sooner than shapechange

[Gnaeus]

I’m still a bit uncomfortable calling a MOMF a martial. I feel like a swordsage with some shadow hand may still be on the right side of the line. But the guy who changes into magical creatures seems like a magic user by another name.

[Biffoniacus_Furiou]

I’m still a bit uncomfortable calling a MOMF a martial. I feel like a swordsage with some shadow hand may still be on the right side of the line. But the guy who changes into magical creatures seems like a magic user by another name.

Wild Shape only targets yourself, so it's a far cry from a magic user. If you were to take Aberration Wild Shape and Assume Supernatural Ability: Eye Rays, then use the forms of various types of Beholders to spam eye ray effects every round, it would be a spellcaster by another name. If you turn into a Fleshraker, or a Cave Troll, or a War Troll with a big sword, in order to melee your opponents, it's not much different from a Barbarian that goes into Bear Warrior, you've just got a lot more versatility and much, much stronger forms to choose from.


An Arcane Swordsage is Tier 2, especially if he learns Ruby Ray of Reversal. An Arcane Swordsage who learns Heroics as a maneuver, and uses it to temporarily gain Martial Study to gain any Abjuration, Evocation, or Transmutation as a maneuver to buff himself with everything under the sun and have an answer to literally any challenge he faces, he's broken through to Tier 1. That's exactly a spellcaster by another name, though.

[NigelWalmsley]

The easiest part is countering magic - smashing walls of force, cutting open prismatic walls, instakilling summoned monsters, forcing a shapechanged or wildshaped caster back into their native form, all these things make sense.

I don't think those things make sense as "not magic" in any meaningful sense. You could call them a different type of magic (in the same way that Binding is different from Meldshaping). But the idea that you could be a mundane dude who is hard core enough to punch a ghost into another dimension is honestly kind of stupid. But I think that's fine, because there's no reason that solving your problems by punching or stabbing has to preclude effects taht we would consider magical.


I don't use Gods as examples because they are getting their power from being a God more so than from Class. Cu and Beowulf are good examples as while Cu is related to a God, he doesn't seem to get anything for being so.

I don't think that's really true. In the MCU, there's a clear distinction between Loki's abilities (trickster magic), Thor's abilities (storm magic), and Hela's abilities (death and sword magic). I don't know that its reasonable to say that those characters all get their power from being gods while claiming that Captain America, Iron Man, and Doctor Strange represent distinct classes. Regardless, even if you want to claim that "God" is a race or a template or something, there's still a clear lack of support for getting from Barbarian to Thor in published material.


I’m still a bit uncomfortable calling a MOMF a martial. I feel like a swordsage with some shadow hand may still be on the right side of the line. But the guy who changes into magical creatures seems like a magic user by another name.

Part of the issue is that the distinction is not as clear-cut as you might like to imagine. Is a Duskblade martial? Is a Desert Wind Swordsage martial? Is a Paladin? And many people define "caster" in ways that are quite closely tied to the Vancian core classes. I tend to thing the categories are, to a large degree, orthogonal. I think there are many characters in the source material who are clearly martial, but use magic to accomplish their goals. I'm not at all convinced there's a compelling reason for the game to make a distinction. In-setting, magic is just a part of the world. Having someone who is "magic free" is like having someone in the real world who is "gravity free".

[Blackhawk748]

I’m still a bit uncomfortable calling a MOMF a martial. I feel like a swordsage with some shadow hand may still be on the right side of the line. But the guy who changes into magical creatures seems like a magic user by another name.

Think of it as a very, very fancy werewolf. Or a martial with a really good self-buff. Like Super Saiyan except you turn into a dragon.


I don't think that's really true. In the MCU, there's a clear distinction between Loki's abilities (trickster magic), Thor's abilities (storm magic), and Hela's abilities (death and sword magic). I don't know that its reasonable to say that those characters all get their power from being gods while claiming that Captain America, Iron Man, and Doctor Strange represent distinct classes. Regardless, even if you want to claim that "God" is a race or a template or something, there's still a clear lack of support for getting from Barbarian to Thor in published material.

MCU Thor is just taking Outsider HD and those are all his Asgardian God abilities. Cap, Iron Man and Strange are all humans with lots of class levels and gear.

If you wanna be Thor in DnD you play a Cleric who goes into Stormlord, that's really the only way to pull it off outside of literally getting the Divine Ranks to BS the powers he has. I still agree that Barbarians screaming lightning at people is totally a thing that needs to happen.

[Gnaeus]

Part of the issue is that the distinction is not as clear-cut as you might like to imagine. Is a Duskblade martial? Is a Desert Wind Swordsage martial? Is a Paladin? And many people define "caster" in ways that are quite closely tied to the Vancian core classes. I tend to thing the categories are, to a large degree, orthogonal. I think there are many characters in the source material who are clearly martial, but use magic to accomplish their goals. I'm not at all convinced there's a compelling reason for the game to make a distinction. In-setting, magic is just a part of the world. Having someone who is "magic free" is like having someone in the real world who is "gravity free".

Duskblade and paladin definitely not. I already pointed out being uncomfortable with the SU Swordsage powers. But if that’s the definition, what is the argument? Can we Hypothetically imagine classes that use spells that equal classes that use spells? Yes. Obviously we can. You can’t answer a question that is functionally “Can a martial character equal a spell caster” when your definition of martial characters includes both spellcasters and shapeshifters. You don’t have to define Martial as Conan. But if you define him as a guy who turns into dragons or casts spells the term martial is absolutely meaningless. There is obviously no set of abilities that I can imagine a wizard having that I cannot imagine a wizard holding a sword having.

[Elves]

I don't think those things make sense as "not magic" in any meaningful sense. You could call them a different type of magic (in the same way that Binding is different from Meldshaping). But the idea that you could be a mundane dude who is hard core enough to punch a ghost into another dimension is honestly kind of stupid. But I think that's fine, because there's no reason that solving your problems by punching or stabbing has to preclude effects taht we would consider magical.
The point is that magic isn't real so there's no standard for realism in interacting with it. You can kill ghosts with a special ki touch? Why not. You can cut through spells by severing their threads of magic at just the right angle? Why not. You can punch a polymorphed wizard so hard they revert to their normal form? Makes sense.


In-setting, magic is just a part of the world. Having someone who is "magic free" is like having someone in the real world who is "gravity free".
Agreed. And it's strange that in this kind of thread the definition of "martial" seems to suddenly be, as you said, Conan, rather than the standard 3.5 martial character, who habitually uses pseudo-magical effects.

[Lans]

Minions, you can easily give a martial character a stable of followers. Calling them up on the spot is maybe hard to fluff unless it's semi-magical ("spirits of ancient warriors", that kind of thing) but that's where you get to the fact of martials' reliance on gear, which I don't think you need to wholly eliminate to have them reach Tier 2. With magic items you should be able to call in your followers as needed.



The Shounen Protagonist defeat means friendship

[Remuko]

You don’t have to define Martial as Conan. But if you define him as a guy who turns into dragons...term martial is absolutely meaningless.

Cant say I agree here. A werewolf shifting, isnt magic, its biological. A Caterpillar turning into a butterfly isnt magic, its biological. Its all fluff. Theres no reason physical transformations have to inherently be considered magical.

[PoeticallyPsyco]

As I understand it, what separates the existing martial classes from the T2 and T1 classes isn't raw power; there are dozens of ways to bring a martial character's damage up to snuff, and for the martial initiators extra optimization isn't even necessary. No, the real difference is utility. None of the martial classes have an answer for mid- to long-range teleportation, creating magic items, minionmancy (this is admittedly an easy one to replicate with non-class resources or homebrew), scrying, flight, water-breathing, or the other numerous things that Wizards, Sorcerers, and the like have access to by merit of using a spell list designed to replicate most conceivable magical effects.

For any given problem, there is a spell or power designed specifically with it in mind, while martials will almost always have to make due with skill ranks and roleplay for anything but combat. A T2 martial would have to provide that utility.

How would you do that while maintaining the martial aesthetic? I dunno. Stretching the definition of martial to include soulmelds or similar could work, but "stretch" is the operative word there. A meatier skill system that's also more grounded in rule-of-cool than realistic physics could be another solution. I've also seen it suggested that all martials of mid-to-high level get limited wish as an Ex ability with a long cool-down, called "Feat of Strength" or similar and letting them pull off their own crazy stunts, fluffed as them performing some suitably heroic and impressive task to get it done.

[AntiAuthority]

On that basis that Tier 1 basically means god like power with infinite options, and Tier 2 means god like power with limited options, wouldn't it technically be possible to make a tier 2 fighter type? Couldn't a fighter type with enormous pluses to hit, damage, saves, AC, abilities like flight, high damage reduction, high spell resistance, regeneration etc more or less be on par with a high level sorcerer or even better in some situations? Sure a normal human or dwarf fighter probably couldn't do it, but what if you used a powerful race and/or powerful templates with powerful feats such as troll-blooded, etc, etc. To clarify I don't specifically mean the fighter class: I basically mean "full bab" class when I say Fighter types, and no I don't mean DMM Divine Power Clerics.

To be honest, the line between Tier 1 and 2 is sort of blurry for me except one gets a lot more options than the other, but both can break the game. Anyway, I'd like to add on to what you wrote, the ability to buff yourself and allies (either through a rallying cry type of thing) or debuff your enemies (such as making them do less damage or mortally wounding them), along with a wider list of Class Skills and Skill Points. As well as the ability to shape the geography in some form, such as splitting large boulders/hills/mountains, possibly being dependent on the BAB+Strength for how much of it they could affect at once... They'd probably look like a higher powered anime or comic book character...




There are a lot of traditionally "magical" abilities you can approximate with different fluff. The easiest part is countering magic - smashing walls of force, cutting open prismatic walls, instakilling summoned monsters, forcing a shapechanged or wildshaped caster back into their native form, all these things make sense. And effects equivalent to celerity, time stop and its ilk can easily be (Ex).



Mind reading can be fluffed as superhuman intuitiveness, a rapid interrogation technique, or in the case of a skillmonkey as a rapid administration of truth serum or something.

Minions, you can easily give a martial character a stable of followers. Calling them up on the spot is maybe hard to fluff unless it's semi-magical ("spirits of ancient warriors", that kind of thing) but that's where you get to the fact of martials' reliance on gear, which I don't think you need to wholly eliminate to have them reach Tier 2. With magic items you should be able to call in your followers as needed.

And as for the creation of magic items, there's no reason why this should be exclusively the province of spellcasters anyway. Skilled artisan or craftsman + special magical reagents should be enough.

You can give them their own forms of minionmancy. Maybe intelligent enemies are so impressed by your fighting that they switch sides. Maybe you turn people against each other with social skills. Whatever.

Long-range teleportation is hard to fluff, but short-range tactical teleportation is easily refluffed as movement so long as it doesn't involve going through solid barriers. When it does, that can be solved with items or abilities that give short-term incorporeality or to a limited extent with abilities that let you bash through obstacles.


Pretty much this, of note on Mind Reading are characters capable of effectively reading minds through observing the subtlest of expressions in a person. Being given soldiers is something many warrior types tended to get in mythology, so that also works. The short range teleportation is also thematically appropriate, though long range teleportation could also be refluffed as you just moving 100 miles/BAB in a round or so like you're the Flash or something, or just Hulk Leap there...





MCU Thor is just taking Outsider HD and those are all his Asgardian God abilities. Cap, Iron Man and Strange are all humans with lots of class levels and gear.

If you wanna be Thor in DnD you play a Cleric who goes into Stormlord, that's really the only way to pull it off outside of literally getting the Divine Ranks to BS the powers he has. I still agree that Barbarians screaming lightning at people is totally a thing that needs to happen.

You could still use Thor as an inspiration for what a Tier 2 Fighter would look like, just without the Asgardian bits but keep his abilities as a Fighter. For example, 616 Thor was Marvel's solution to Superman, who in turn was inspired by Hercules and Samson... All four of these characters have immense, god-like strength, but one's a literal god (maybe, depending on who you ask), one's an alien powered by sunlight (and lower gravity), another one is a demi-god and the last one gains power from his blessed hair. Superman is vulnerable to magic, while Thor, who's based on him, actually knows a thing or two about magic...

With that in mind, you could use the Fighter-like aspects (master of plenty of weapons, super strength, super durability, super endurance, strong resistance to most poisons, quick reflexes, a nigh unbreakable will, etc.) for inspiration on what such a character can do, as they're inspired by Thor but aren't a 1:1 copy of him.




The point is that magic isn't real so there's no standard for realism in interacting with it. You can kill ghosts with a special ki touch? Why not. You can cut through spells by severing their threads of magic at just the right angle? Why not. You can punch a polymorphed wizard so hard they revert to their normal form? Makes sense.


Agreed. And it's strange that in this kind of thread the definition of "martial" seems to suddenly be, as you said, Conan, rather than the standard 3.5 martial character, who habitually uses pseudo-magical effects.

Magic (and martial abilities) are only really defined by the writers, so if a particularly skilled, non-magic (but fantastic) swordsman decides, "Yeah, that fireball that's coming my way? I'm gonna skewer it on my blade." then they should be able to go for it. Being able to cut impossible things (https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/AbsurdCuttingPower) has its own trope page for a reason...

Conan only really works at lower levels since he's still a soft, squishy dude... Ok, an Action Hero human, but still relatively squishy.




Duskblade and paladin definitely not. I already pointed out being uncomfortable with the SU Swordsage powers. But if that’s the definition, what is the argument? Can we Hypothetically imagine classes that use spells that equal classes that use spells? Yes. Obviously we can. You can’t answer a question that is functionally “Can a martial character equal a spell caster” when your definition of martial characters includes both spellcasters and shapeshifters. You don’t have to define Martial as Conan. But if you define him as a guy who turns into dragons or casts spells the term martial is absolutely meaningless. There is obviously no set of abilities that I can imagine a wizard having that I cannot imagine a wizard holding a sword having.


Cant say I agree here. A werewolf shifting, isnt magic, its biological. A Caterpillar turning into a butterfly isnt magic, its biological. Its all fluff. Theres no reason physical transformations have to inherently be considered magical.


Think of it as a very, very fancy werewolf. Or a martial with a really good self-buff. Like Super Saiyan except you turn into a dragon.


To each their own, but I agree with Remuko and Blackhawk, it's not necessarily magic, just a fantastic ability that they can do. This refers to transformation, but can also be extended to any fantastic ability of martial characters simply because they (like magical characters) are just fantastic beings.

Beorn from Lord of the Rings was pretty much just a warrior that could transform into a bear. He might not be a "normal human", but he sets a precedent that warriors can do that (along with being inspired by Viking berserkers IIRC)

Shin Megami Tensei IV humans are capable of becoming demons and monsters through just reading ordinary books (manga, novels, ect.)

Sekiro has human warriors being able to become demons through losing themselves to their hatred or blood lust.

Devilman Lady has humans capable of becoming Devil Beasts that often reflect something about their personalities.

Humans in One Punch Man can become literal monsters if they dedicate themselves to something.

Kaido from One Piece is a musclebound warrior that can turn into a dragon.

Dark Souls in particular lets humans transform either through magical experiments, being blessed (maybe, this one isn't too clear) by the gods or... Just being a human and meeting some other trigger. This one is particularly important, as humans aren't just "normal people plopped down into a fantastic setting", but are just as fantastic as the gods and dragons in the setting. This is something related to the human nature and not just magic or anything like that.

Only real explanation for why these fantastic beings work that way is because... They're fantastic beings with fantastic abilities that had fantastic triggers or were born with the innate potential to get these forms.

So if we treat PC Fighters as being fantastic beings, you could fluff them being able to transform as just something Fighters can do with enough experience, like how Dark Souls humans can eventually become eldritch abominations, nigh indestructible giants, blob monsters or laser spamming death angels just from being born human. Fantastic? Yes, definitely. Magical? Not necessarily... I can understand why that might bother Gnaeus (I'm more partial to Warriors getting a Warp Spasm/Super Saiyan/Hulk type deal myself, but dragons are cool too... And even Goku just naturally turned into a giant monkey when he had his tail, as did his entire warrior race, so even that part fits into the warrior archetype) but transforming into something not human can be justified by them being fantastic beings that found a way to unlock a higher level of power.

[NigelWalmsley]

Duskblade and paladin definitely not.

Why not? They're both classes that primarily contribute by fighting in melee with physical strength. I don't think having magic invalidates that. Look at Thor. If you're trying to set up a martial/spellcaster binary, it seems like he pretty clearly falls on the martial side of that. But it's equally obvious that he's using magic. It seems like you're equating "martial" and "mundane", and while you can do that, it inevitably results in the mundanes being underpowered, because having superpowers is better than not doing that.


But if you define him as a guy who turns into dragons or casts spells the term martial is absolutely meaningless.

I don't think that's true, any more than the fact that Druids and Wizards both cast spells makes those terms meaningless. Or that you can have a skill monkey that casts spells like a Beguiler makes that term meaningless. A martial character is someone who primarily fights with weapons and relies on personal combat skill. You can do that while still casting spells.


The point is that magic isn't real so there's no standard for realism in interacting with it. You can kill ghosts with a special ki touch? Why not. You can cut through spells by severing their threads of magic at just the right angle? Why not. You can punch a polymorphed wizard so hard they revert to their normal form? Makes sense.

I don't understand how you could, or even should, meaningfully claim those things as "not magic".


As I understand it, what separates the existing martial classes from the T2 and T1 classes isn't raw power; there are dozens of ways to bring a martial character's damage up to snuff, and for the martial initiators extra optimization isn't even necessary. No, the real difference is utility. None of the martial classes have an answer for mid- to long-range teleportation, creating magic items, minionmancy (this is admittedly an easy one to replicate with non-class resources or homebrew), scrying, flight, water-breathing, or the other numerous things that Wizards, Sorcerers, and the like have access to by merit of using a spell list designed to replicate most conceivable magical effects.

Yes, that's the largest issue. You probably do need to buff martials in combat some, as their combat options are limited and require asymmetric levels of optimization. But for the most part the issue is that a 9th level Wizard gets Teleport and a 9th level Fighter gets 2 skill points.

[AntiAuthority]

Why not? They're both classes that primarily contribute by fighting in melee with physical strength. I don't think having magic invalidates that. Look at Thor. If you're trying to set up a martial/spellcaster binary, it seems like he pretty clearly falls on the martial side of that. But it's equally obvious that he's using magic. It seems like you're equating "martial" and "mundane", and while you can do that, it inevitably results in the mundanes being underpowered, because having superpowers is better than not doing that.

I don't think that's true, any more than the fact that Druids and Wizards both cast spells makes those terms meaningless. Or that you can have a skill monkey that casts spells like a Beguiler makes that term meaningless. A martial character is someone who primarily fights with weapons and relies on personal combat skill. You can do that while still casting spells.

I don't understand how you could, or even should, meaningfully claim those things as "not magic".


The distinction between martial and magic sometimes breaks down, as some mythological (Sun Wukong) and comic heroes (Like 616 Thor) that are categorized as martials might know some spells, but aren't exactly relying on them to win fights and usually just default to using their fighting skills in a battle... They're still relying on their martial prowess for the most part though, so I'd consider them martials. There's also the martials like Hulk, Goku, Saitama, Ryu from Street Fighter, Hercules, Kenpachi Zaraki, Allmight, Asta, Kenshiro and such that don't know any spells but eh. I think being able to play either option should be fine (off the top of my head, you can choose to learn magic and maybe get some magic items like Thor's belt and hammer/Wonder Woman's magic gear and ability to use spells such as Teleport for example... Or you could ignore learning magic and focus on increasing your combat power and become more like the Incredible Hulk's potentially limitless strength and healing factor and possibly Professor Hulk levels of intelligence (basically becoming World War Hulk/World Breaker Hulk/Immortal Hulk)/Doomsday's ability to adapt to nearly any situation on top of his already absurd durability, just as an example), but being required to learn magic in some form to stay relevant isn't something I'm cool with.

That said, I have to disagree that doing impossible things automatically means you're magic. To me, being able to cut through spells isn't automatically magical, just fantastic. In the same way that creating a fire ball in your hands makes you magical, which is a part of being fantastic. Both are things that could never happen in reality, both are fantastic by the result of them only being able to occur in fantasy. That said, and maybe it's just me, but I'd consider "mage" to be something that involves casting spells while a "fantastic martial" to be someone who mostly uses their fighting abilities but turned up to an impossible degree. Whether it be through just having the ability to cast spells or becoming so superhumanly skilled and durable than anyone in the real world has any business of being, these characters have stepped into the realm of fantasy, even if only some of them know spells and the others can perform impossible physical feats.

[Gnaeus]

Fine. Tier 1 martials.
Wizard but with a sword.
Archivist but with a sword.
Cleric who already had a sword.
Druid with a bear sword.
Artificer with a sword he made.

You win, but I do not lose, because I am immune to spells with the reclassification/redefinition descriptor.

[Rhyltran]

If you wanna be Thor in DnD you play a Cleric who goes into Stormlord, that's really the only way to pull it off outside of literally getting the Divine Ranks to BS the powers he has. I still agree that Barbarians screaming lightning at people is totally a thing that needs to happen.

Thor is mostly a martial character and fights very often with his weapon and strength and doesn't at all need to be a cleric to have a similar character in dnd. Thor doesn't have many abilities that a dndn cleric and I'd argue a dnd cleric has far more versatility than Thor himself. A Fighter can resemble Thor almost completely via high stats and magical equipment. Thor would be a high level character and remember by level 20 a character has 760,000 to spend on magical equipment. It isn't hard to have a martial who can fly, have items that enable him to teleport (even if it's a few times per day use), have magical abilities, have true sight, and many many more by just having the right equipment. Heck, Thor's hammer can be completely duplicated by a magical weapon.

[Psyren]

Cant say I agree here. A werewolf shifting, isnt magic, its biological.

It is absolutely magical, unless you're talking about some other game that is not D&D or PF in this subforum.


Alternate Form (Su)
A werewolf can assume a bipedal hybrid form or the form of a wolf.

With that said, I don't think having some magical abilities makes a martial stop being a martial. Monks would fail that standard fairly quickly, as would high-level rogues, and I don't think a barbarian who uses totems stops being a barbarian either.

[Biffoniacus_Furiou]

So make a martial character with Item Familiar for a super-special weapon (https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?265506-How-would-you-build-Thor-12th-lvl#14). Get a strong Figurine of Wondrous Power like Drizz't has and/or UMD with an Eternal Wand of Hound of Doom (CW) and/or Wild Cohort for a Dire Eagle (RoS) to use a flying mount. Max out skills like Sense Motive and Gather Information and use your Item Familiar to buff those skill checks into the stratosphere. Be sure to have all the necessary magic item effects covered. You won't be higher than tier 3 until the higher levels, but it's a start.

You could make that a multiclass of Warblade, Paladin 2+, Bard 3, and PrCs, picking Inspirational Boost and something like Feather Fall and Comprehend Languages for your 1st level Bard spells. Get a Badge of Valor and take Devoted Performer, Song of the Heart, and Song of the White Raven. You wouldn't even need UMD to activate Eternal Wands with this. Use the Underdark Knight ACF in CC for Paladin if you take 5+ levels, use the non-spellcasting variant in CW if you prefer but Rhino's Rush is amazing. I'd prefer more Warblade in the build but Paladin 6 or even 12 is worthwhile if you keep the mediocre spellcasting and get pearls of power.

[Telonius]

I think that a big part of the problem is that the discussion is limited by what "feels" like a martial character. If you're defining that in a way that excludes both the power and the versatility that make higher-tier classes, higher-tier classes, then the answer you're going to get is, "No, Fighter Types can't be T2." I might want them to compete with spellcasters, but without giving them godlike powers or godlike versatility, they're not going to measure up to classes that have either or both.

If you're having some trouble trying to figure out the sorts of things that godlike fighter-types could do, step outside the medieval European inspiration. Wuxia often mentioned as the inspiration for a lot of the Tome of Battle sources. If that doesn't match the setting, maybe turn to more recent or more ancient folklore and mythology. Paul Bunyan and Finn MacCool could give a template of what a more "godlike" melee brute could do.

[daremetoidareyo]

Bouncing off felonious, comic book martials (wolverine, colossus, daredevil etc) are good approximations. They are imbued with magic stuff, but their arcs and abilities are martial in scope

[Ruethgar]

None of the martial classes have an answer for mid- to long-range teleportation, creating magic items, minionmancy (this is admittedly an easy one to replicate with non-class resources or homebrew)

Jaunter for teleportation, Create Device for item creation, Wild Cohort, Leadership, Undead Leadership(LibMort), Undead Leadership(Web) are minionmancy-able.

[Rhyltran]

Bouncing off felonious, comic book martials (wolverine, colossus, daredevil etc) are good approximations. They are imbued with magic stuff, but their arcs and abilities are martial in scope

I don't know to me daredevil would be level 6 at best. Colossus and Wolverine might come closer. Personally.. as mentioned I see marvel "dnd martials" or "DC" in the realms of wonder woman, thor, etc. At least their movie counterparts rather than the comic counterparts. I mean, you can't really compare daredevil to the guy who can kill a gargantuan sized dragon by punching it or the girl who can cleave it in two with a single charge/leap. What are "Gods" or "Demi Gods" in other media are simply "High level dnd characters" in dnd. I think people underestimate how high powered a setting dungeons and dragons is or a character that has a magic item in every slot with a fully enchanted armor/weapon. People say Thor is a God for example and is a bad example of a martial character forgetting his abilities pale in comparison what dnd God's can do.

[Gnaeus]

Plenty of clerics and druids engage in melee combat, thats pretty much the definition of CoDzilla. A non trivial number of arcane casters as well.

If thor were magic because of his gear (which I don’t think is correct but not very relevant) then those powers wouldn’t change the storm demigod class tier. You can give a rogue a billion GP. At which point he functions indistinguishably from a Tier 1. It doesn’t make Rogue tier 1.


I think that a big part of the problem is that the discussion is limited by what "feels" like a martial character. If you're defining that in a way that excludes both the power and the versatility that make higher-tier classes, higher-tier classes, then the answer you're going to get is, "No, Fighter Types can't be T2." I might want them to compete with spellcasters, but without giving them godlike powers or godlike versatility, they're not going to measure up to classes that have either or both.

If you're having some trouble trying to figure out the sorts of things that godlike fighter-types could do, step outside the medieval European inspiration. Wuxia often mentioned as the inspiration for a lot of the Tome of Battle sources. If that doesn't match the setting, maybe turn to more recent or more ancient folklore and mythology. Paul Bunyan and Finn MacCool could give a template of what a more "godlike" melee brute could do.

I think you are wrong on all counts.

1. It’s not impossible to bring muggles (since wizards, clerics and druids are martials, best to use a different term) to tier 2. It isn’t that hard.

2. I don’t have any difficulty calling Heracles, Finn MacCool or Paul Bunyan martials. Nor with Wuxia (Wuxia looks like Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, not DragonBall Z or other fantasy anime, which are Xianxia). Some swordsage/monk bits touch on the line, in their more clearly SU powers, like teleportation. A martial can be better than a human. Stronger. Faster. More cunning. A martial can run across a football field while dodging enemy fire and emptying his guns and have every bullet be a headshot. A martial may even be able to run across the room faster than you can see or hide in plain sight like Drax. A martial cannot turn into a dragon or teleport across a continent or summon demons. That’s a refluffed wizard.

[Biffoniacus_Furiou]

The problem with comparing 3.5 mundanes to comic book mundanes is that the opponents in comic books are also mundane, or if not they've only got one or a few special abilities. They look like they can solve every challenge because every challenge is tailored to them. Comic book tier 1-2 equivalents are very few and far between and often hinge on plot powers, such Apocalypse, or Dr. Manhattan whose power is godlike.

If Tier 1-2 characters in D&D were so rare that every time one showed up they could conquer the world like in the comics, it would be a suitable challenge for another Tier 1-2 (Superman) or an entire team of Tier 3 and lower characters. The power and capability disparity in D&D 3.5 is more like protagonists and sidekicks, but the sidekicks often aren't even necessary because the protagonists can do everything the sidekicks can do just as well as they do it. It's Angel Summoner and BMX Bandit.

[Rhyltran]

Plenty of clerics and druids engage in melee combat, thats pretty much the definition of CoDzilla. A non trivial number of arcane casters as well.

If thor were magic because of his gear (which I don’t think is correct but not very relevant) then those powers wouldn’t change the storm demigod class tier. You can give a rogue a billion GP. At which point he functions indistinguishably from a Tier 1. It doesn’t make Rogue tier 1.

I'm aware a cod zilla can function just like thor and fight in melee. I'd also argue that a dnd cleric is capable far more than Thor through spell casting alone. As is a druid. You also don't need a billion gold. A high level martial can easily have freedom of movement, invisibility, stat increases, flight, true seeing, and so much more. In fact the necessary item list covers various ways you can get these special abilities and just about any martial is going to want some form of them.

[Elves]

I don't understand how you could, or even should, meaningfully claim those things as "not magic".

Smashing a computer with a sword doesn't make you a computer programmer.

A spell is magical but how it interacts with nonmagical things is free to be defined, since there's no real world basis. Why shouldn't a magic spell be able to be ended with the right application of mundane force.

[Gnaeus]

I'm aware a cod zilla can function just like thor and fight in melee. I'd also argue that a dnd cleric is capable far more than Thor through spell casting alone. As is a druid. You also don't need a billion gold. A high level martial can easily have freedom of movement, invisibility, stat increases, flight, true seeing, and so much more. In fact the necessary item list covers various ways you can get these special abilities and just about any martial is going to want some form of them.

True. Merely irrelevant. King Arthur is a martial. He’s a dude. Maybe a demigod power level dude, with superhuman stats, depending on which stories we are looking at. A dude who can kill giants and dragons. But essentially a dude. Who happens to have a magic sword and scabbard. King Arthur can’t turn into a dragon. Merlin could do that, but he’s a wizard. If Arthur were a MoMF, he wouldn’t be a martial anymore. He would be a refluffed wizard.

[Rhyltran]

True. Merely irrelevant. King Arthur is a martial. He’s a dude. Maybe a demigod power level dude, with superhuman stats, depending on which stories we are looking at. A dude who can kill giants and dragons. But essentially a dude. Who happens to have a magic sword and scabbard. King Arthur can’t turn into a dragon. Merlin could do that, but he’s a wizard. If Arthur were a MoMF, he wouldn’t be a martial anymore. He would be a refluffed wizard.

I agree with that too 100% but I feel the same way about Thor (cinematic universe not comic universe who is definitely not a mundane.). The asgardians would be low levels. Who is Thor? A dude with a magic hammer. He can achieve feats of great strength but that's just his high stats (I mean a Fighter can start with 18 strength and hit 22 leveling up putting him at some super human level abilities. Can be higher with a manual of gainful exercise alone.) Later he can channel lightning but that could easily be a sup ability he picked up. In the end most of what Thor can do King Arthur could (in certain stories) or even a high level Fighter. Thor can't summon minions, he can't teleport, he can't willy nilly open planes or cast miracles. He isn't outside the realms of a high end martial characters. Same with Wonder Woman. She is just naturally tough with her bracers of armor and magic weapons. As for their feats of durability? A fireball can kill a room full of commoners. A suped up fireball can blow up large beasts. A high level Fighter can shrug it off or withstand a direct hit from a dragons breath or the punch from a titan or being stepped on by a tarrasque even without magic armor and weapons. This certainly puts a martial outside the likes of daredevil.

Not disagreeing with you but it's why I answered what I did. So how does one make a tier 1 or 2 martial? You just need the right magic equipment, pick a prestige class or two that can raise one's tier, and etc. I also argue.. while a martial is a "Guy with magic equipment." once you start loading up on said equipment you begin to look a lot like a caster anyway. You are emulating their advantages through gear like a magically empowered batman. It's really confusing at times to discuss what is a martial since everyone's views are different. Especially when you have classes like warblade and swordsage.

I think if you want to emulate that with class features or character features look to such marvel characters. Jumping hundreds of feet, leaping so high it's questionable if you're flying, able to shatter mountains, rip up the ground, moving excessible quickly, creating aoe shockwaves with a heavy clap.

[Gnaeus]

I agree with that too 100% but I feel the same way about Thor (cinematic universe not comic universe who is definitely not a mundane.). The asgardians would be low levels. Who is Thor? A dude with a magic hammer. He can achieve feats of great strength but that's just his high stats (I mean a Fighter can start with 18 strength and hit 22 leveling up putting him at some super human level abilities. Can be higher with a manual of gainful exercise alone.) Later he can channel lightning but that could easily be a sup ability he picked up. In the end most of what Thor can do King Arthur could (in certain stories) or even a high level Fighter. Thor can't summon minions, he can't teleport, he can't willy nilly open planes or cast miracles. He isn't outside the realms of a high end martial characters. Same with Wonder Woman. She is just naturally tough with her bracers of armor and magic weapons. As for their feats of durability? A fireball can kill a room full of commoners. A suped up fireball can blow up large beasts. A high level Fighter can shrug it off or withstand a direct hit from a dragons breath or the punch from a titan or being stepped on by a tarrasque even without magic armor and weapons. This certainly puts a martial outside the likes of daredevil.

Ok. I think our disagreements are trivial. And mostly based on irrelevant distinctions on what comic characters can do, rather than with anything D&D related. (Thor can still summon lightning without the hammer (because “he’s not the god of hammers) and comic universe Daredevil can do absurd things like land a spaceship in a crowded field without hurting anyone by listening to their heartbeats. But otherwise I agree).

[Blackhawk748]

I think that a big part of the problem is that the discussion is limited by what "feels" like a martial character. If you're defining that in a way that excludes both the power and the versatility that make higher-tier classes, higher-tier classes, then the answer you're going to get is, "No, Fighter Types can't be T2." I might want them to compete with spellcasters, but without giving them godlike powers or godlike versatility, they're not going to measure up to classes that have either or both.

If you're having some trouble trying to figure out the sorts of things that godlike fighter-types could do, step outside the medieval European inspiration. Wuxia often mentioned as the inspiration for a lot of the Tome of Battle sources. If that doesn't match the setting, maybe turn to more recent or more ancient folklore and mythology. Paul Bunyan and Finn MacCool could give a template of what a more "godlike" melee brute could do.

Honestly Charlamagne's Paladins and the Knights of the Round Table work great too. Those guys got up to some pretty crazy stuff. Hell, Tristan shoots sound lasers out of his bow, and I'm pretty sure that's a him thing and not a bow thing.


P2. I don’t have any difficulty calling Heracles, Finn MacCool or Paul Bunyan martials. Nor with Wuxia (Wuxia looks like Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, not DragonBall Z or other fantasy anime, which are Xianxia). Some swordsage/monk bits touch on the line, in their more clearly SU powers, like teleportation. A martial can be better than a human. Stronger. Faster. More cunning. A martial can run across a football field while dodging enemy fire and emptying his guns and have every bullet be a headshot. A martial may even be able to run across the room faster than you can see or hide in plain sight like Drax. A martial cannot turn into a dragon or teleport across a continent or summon demons. That’s a refluffed wizard.

Still disagreeing on the Shapeshifting thing because Shapeshifting can be a racial trait and now that's suddenly disqualifying everyone who does that from being a Martial, which is silly.

Also, you can't bring a Muggle up to Tier 2, because that's just The Guy at the Gym and that's what we have now, which doesn't work because one person has to obey physics (more or less) and the other is allowed to make it cry in a corner.

[PoeticallyPsyco]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I feel like the point of this thread isn't to identify high-power martials in fiction, but to come up with class features that would be enough to push a martial into T2? (Ideally class features that are themselves martial, rather than e.g. gestalt with Adept.)

[Rhyltran]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I feel like the point of this thread isn't to identify high-power martials in fiction, but to come up with class features that would be enough to push a martial into T2? (Ideally class features that are themselves martial, rather than e.g. gestalt with Adept.)

You are correct and I apologize for being one of the posters who went off track. Still, I did provide my ideas on that. Clapping so hard you create aoe shockwaves that do damage and deafen. Leaping so high and so fast it rivals flight. Tearing the ground asunder. Smashing through boulders/small mountain tops. Physical feats that can enable you to solve problems wizards can would be a good place to start.

[Gnaeus]

Still disagreeing on the Shapeshifting thing because Shapeshifting can be a racial trait and now that's suddenly disqualifying everyone who does that from being a Martial, which is silly

Spell casting is also a racial trait. Neither one has anything to do with your class. No one is discussing Expert rules.



Also, you can't bring a Muggle up to Tier 2, because that's just The Guy at the Gym and that's what we have now, which doesn't work because one person has to obey physics (more or less) and the other is allowed to make it cry in a corner.

Again, you absolutely can. No one yet has come up with a convincing argument for why a Favored Soul 11 beats a Fighter//Barbarian//Scout//Rogue//Marshall//Warblade//Crusader//Swordsage//Monk//spellless Ranger11. And that’s not even an exhaustive list of everything a muggle could have. Just what a collection of non spell using classes happen to have. You could easily tack on another half dozen class features, from strength of Hercules to army of warriors to toughness of John McClane. Social powers like the PF vigilante. A network of spies. An acquired immunity to iocane powder. Some kind of always prepared power where you pull shark repellent off your belt. 2 dozen languages. The sex appeal of James Bond. All you have to do is build a character with enough or powerful enough abilities that they can solve more problems than a Favored Soul or Spirit Shaman for more levels than they can’t.

I was running a game yesterday with a dragon descended magical ninja, a leprechaun, and a half Grey alien super scientist. And the character who won the spotlight was the archaeologist with her research skill. The half Grey is psionically reading victims bones and got half what she got from digging out records from the town hall and library.

[Lans]

I think an important thing is whose definition of Tier 2 are we using?

[Gnaeus]

The retiering project I assume. But I don’t think it matters much. I agree with community ranking that it is easier to show “better than a favored soul” than “better than a beguiler”.

Oh. I see what you mean. I certainly don’t think the Post Hoc old tier definitions are relevant. How many ways the class can nuke the campaign was always a bad standard.

[AntiAuthority]

Mmm... Well, being able to tear open portals (https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/DimensionalCutter) (either to distant locations or other planes) counts as something that I think would help put them into Tier 2, if they get it as a class feature. Helps the character and party get around, avoid unnecessary dangers, remove enemies from the battle and ups their utility greatly.

[Rebel7284]

In general, the game has rules and then has spells that break those rules. For the most part, you will clearly be able to solve more problems by breaking the rules, than by following them.

With that said, there certainly are a builds that can solve a lot of problems with minimal spells involved and/or by re-flavoring the spells as natural abilities.

With that said, in general, what's left with no spells? Basic combat actions, mobility, and skill use, so optimizing those would be key.

- Master of Many forms has already been mentioned with a ranger entry, you get a bunch of skills and your forms give you movement modes and nice stats. It's still tier 3 for the most part, but if you squint right, it could be considered tier 2 with the right build choices. Although, many of those choices that makes it tier 2 make it more caster-y (like those beholder eye rays).

- Factotum has SLAs, but generally excels at skills, and have a way to take extra actions. If a DM rules that Cunning Surge can be stacked to take multiple actions on the same turn, Factotum becomes tier 2 just from the pure action economy combined with the aforementioned +Skills. Of course, if you take the right spells/SLAs, those can be flavored as being natural talents of the Factotum instead of spells, ie: take Heroics instead of Fireball and suddenly you are "inspired" to learn an extra figher feat for a while...

- Factorum/Warblade Gestalt. With an amazing Chasis and a bunch or explicitly martial ways to buff, debuff, along with all the problem solving that Factotum brings, makes this a very good class and may even reach tier 2 with a more conservative ruling on Cunning Surge.

- Telflamar Shadowlord is certainly based on hitting your opponent with weapons. Between amazing mobility, the ability to take multiple full attacks per round, and the ability to be sneaky and skillful, it can rise to tier 2. But as Factotum, it's a handful of spells and SLAs that let it do its things and even if you enter with Swordsage to teleport as an EX ability, you still get spell slots from the class itself.

- Swiftblade your Haste already turns Supernatural as your progress in the class. Just take spells that give your martial abilities and skill based abilities. You don't need a magical explanation why you can make touch attacks (Wraithstrike) or can suddenly gain Evasion (Ruin Delver's Fortune). I think a sorcerer works slightly better for this than a Wizard due to the nature of spontaneous casting.

- Making your own class. So the elephant in the room is that while skills can get some things done, they are also, in general really weak when compared to spellcasting even when you consider EPIC uses of skills! Something like:
d12 HD
All TOB maneuvers/stances usable at will
All skills as class skills
Whenever you make a skill check, add 20 to that skill check
Ways to take extra actions or act out of turn
Some defensive abilities would be nice too.

[NotASpiderSwarm]

The problem is, at level 10, an optimized Warblade or a Dread Necromancer or a Rogue can win encounters fairly handily. An optimized Wizard or Cleric can solve entire plotlines. Teleport, Speak with Dead, Raise Dead, Control Weather, Planar Binding, Contact Other Plane, even Overland Flight, these spells are capable of turning what would normally be the better part of a campaign into 15 minutes of work. Are there ways to duplicate these effects or similar ones for martial characters? Sure. Are those ways going to be obvious hacks to turn magical effects into mundane ones? Absolutely. You can have healers so good they can bring back the dead, a guy who can swing his sword hard enough to take out armies, someone jumping hundreds of miles at a time, even go with punching a hole in dimensions so you can drag a demon through it and beat him until he obeys you.

But why? It's even less realistic than using magic to do those things, it's a PILE of homebrew work, and at the end all you've done is unbalanced the game further. If you want to balance the caster/martial dichotomy, ban the broken arcanists, homebrew up a Conj version and a Trans version of the Dread Necro, split the Druid into 2 classes, and you're like 90% of the way there.

Hulk's not tier 2, Wolverine isn't, Batman isn't, Thor might be depending on the writer. A Tier 2 martial character looks like Goku*. And a lot of people out there have an automatic negative reaction to the idea that they can start out as a lvl 1 Monk and be Goku at lvl 10. That's not why they're playing a monk.

*Alternate options: Neo, Silver Age Superman. It's less about raw power, more about the million-and-one BS abilities that they can break out

[AntiAuthority]

- Making your own class. So the elephant in the room is that while skills can get some things done, they are also, in general really weak when compared to spellcasting even when you consider EPIC uses of skills! Something like:
d12 HD
All TOB maneuvers/stances usable at will
All skills as class skills
Whenever you make a skill check, add 20 to that skill check
Ways to take extra actions or act out of turn
Some defensive abilities would be nice too.

Probably, also throw in some class features like Sneak Attack and Rage, let high enough skills be able to do impossible things "High enough Perception lets you figure out where something walked by 5 years ago" type of deal or some such.




The problem is, at level 10, an optimized Warblade or a Dread Necromancer or a Rogue can win encounters fairly handily. An optimized Wizard or Cleric can solve entire plotlines. Teleport, Speak with Dead, Raise Dead, Control Weather, Planar Binding, Contact Other Plane, even Overland Flight, these spells are capable of turning what would normally be the better part of a campaign into 15 minutes of work. Are there ways to duplicate these effects or similar ones for martial characters? Sure. Are those ways going to be obvious hacks to turn magical effects into mundane ones? Absolutely. You can have healers so good they can bring back the dead, a guy who can swing his sword hard enough to take out armies, someone jumping hundreds of miles at a time, even go with punching a hole in dimensions so you can drag a demon through it and beat him until he obeys you.

But why? It's even less realistic than using magic to do those things, it's a PILE of homebrew work, and at the end all you've done is unbalanced the game further. If you want to balance the caster/martial dichotomy, ban the broken arcanists, homebrew up a Conj version and a Trans version of the Dread Necro, split the Druid into 2 classes, and you're like 90% of the way there.

Hulk's not tier 2, Wolverine isn't, Batman isn't, Thor might be depending on the writer. A Tier 2 martial character looks like Goku*. And a lot of people out there have an automatic negative reaction to the idea that they can start out as a lvl 1 Monk and be Goku at lvl 10. That's not why they're playing a monk.

*Alternate options: Neo, Silver Age Superman. It's less about raw power, more about the million-and-one BS abilities that they can break out

Actually, I'd say Hulk is Tier 2 (I'm still confused on the differences between 1 and 2, as I thought it was just both had immense power, but a Tier 1 has way more utility than Tier 2, though people seem unable to agree on what the difference is, so whatever) like Silver Age Superman and possibly Thor, but should explain. If we take just the big brutish Hulk, probably not, he's just a beat stick... But if we look at Hulk as a whole... He can remove enemies from the environment, see and interact with spirits, can intimidate things that shouldn't be able to be intimidated and cause enemies to flee on sight, resist mind control/is immune to some forms of it, can paralyze a younger version of himself's healing factor by taking advantage of his physiology, can restart a person's heart by roaring, can punch through dimensions, can travel huge distances via leaping, can resist being forcibly removed from the battlefield, has access to Bruce Banner's intelligence and can create technology to fill in the gaps for things he can't do by himself. Even the solution to minionmancy is something he could overcome, as one version can create sentient robot dogs that enforce his will through intelligence, along with gathering information by essentially using his intelligence to hack cellphones.

Anyway, I'd say he has plenty of power and tons of utility to make him an example of a Tier 2 martial. Only real thing he seems to lack is Flight (but he can jump really high), though he could easily build something to overcome that with his genius level intellect.

Adding onto this, maybe allowing the Fighter to be able to craft incredibly powerful weapons and armor as a class feature would probably be a good step in the right direction to bring them up, along with creating minions from metals by using their Engineering skill. Along with Frightful Presence to help stop fights before they begin, thus preventing any loss in party resources or damage. Finally being able to restart someone's heart if they fall unconscious/are dying is VERY useful for this hypothetical character to be able to do. Once again, removing enemies from the environment (either through just tossing them over the horizon/into space/into another dimension) is a good way to prevent the party from expending resources, and allows the Fighter to not worry if an enemy has 1000 HP or something. The ability to self buff and be able to temporarily turn off someone's healing factor is also pretty useful for the enemies that can't just be tossed away or something... These also stop the character from being someone just goes, "I Full Attack again" or something, as they can affect the game in ways beyond just bigger numbers.

[Gnaeus]

The problem is, at level 10, an optimized Warblade or a Dread Necromancer or a Rogue can win encounters fairly handily. An optimized Wizard or Cleric can solve entire plotlines. Teleport, Speak with Dead, Raise Dead, Control Weather, Planar Binding, Contact Other Plane, even Overland Flight, these spells are capable of turning what would normally be the better part of a campaign into 15 minutes of work. Are there ways to duplicate these effects or similar ones for martial characters? Sure. Are those ways going to be obvious hacks to turn magical effects into mundane ones? Absolutely. You can have healers so good they can bring back the dead, a guy who can swing his sword hard enough to take out armies, someone jumping hundreds of miles at a time, even go with punching a hole in dimensions so you can drag a demon through it and beat him until he obeys you.

1. Not all T2s have all those. In fact virtually no tier 2 has all those without high opti fu. That favored soul has Speak with Dead and Raise Dead. He can duplicate others with Miracle or Gate. But that’s only the last 3 levels of the game.

2. I dispute your relative ranking of the value of powers. So the wizard has overland flight. So? You plan to fly to Mordor by yourself? Good luck with that. It’s definitely useful, but not revolutionary. I’ve seen a lot more clues get found with perception checks and Sense Motive than Speak with Dead. I’ve seen Raise Dead used a handful of times. A rogue could get a scroll of it and hold it for months. I’ve seen Trapfinding used half a dozen times a game. It’s a freaking workhorse. It’s like every door, every chest.

3. Aside from all the ways that a clever DM can short circuit those (which you can call “adapting to a world with different natural rules” or “breaking a game”), and there are tons, and aside from the fact that breaking the game is a rude move anyway, what makes those powers better than a city? I can walk into a city and pay someone to Raise Dead or Teleport me across the continent the couple of times I need that a lot more easily than you can pay for a high level NPC to wander through the dungeon finding traps and reading trails with you.

4. I dispute that there aren’t real mundane equivalents. Yeah, contact other plane (with DM fiat) can tell me that the enemy wizard is in a city 400 miles away. So can my spy network. I’ve seen more information retrieved by having a sneaky guy spy on targets than playing 20 questions with a spirit. Why is it only campaign solving when a wizard does It?


So the elephant in the room is that while skills can get some things done, they are also, in general really weak when compared to spellcasting even when you consider EPIC uses of skills!

Well, are they really? I mean, ok, sometimes, yes. Jump is trash when there is fly. But knowledges are often more useful than spells. Spot, listen and search are good. Tumble is equivalent to a low level spell. Open locks, search, disable device are arguably better than knock and find traps. Hide and move silently (with dark stalker, and maybe hips) are sometimes better than invisibility. Social skills often > spells. You can diplomacy the dragon but if you start casting on him you better hope he doesn’t save. It’s true most are low level spell equivalents. But if you put together enough of those you contribute, at least through most levels.

We underrate skills on this forum. Yeah, at 15, a sorcerer won’t care about his low level slots and can toss invisibility and knock around whenever. But at 6 the rogue is more efficient at sneaking and opening and trapfinding, so the sorcerer will find a comparative advantage not playing in that pool.

[Rebel7284]

Contact Other Plane
Casting Time: 10 minutes


Of course, it becomes 8 hours and 10 minutes if you need to prepare it.

How fast can a mundane spy network get this info, especially if it involves checking connections in multiple cities that are far apart?
This is the core issue with spells, a challenge can be a full on quest/story arc for a mundane or a standard action for a caster. Skill checks often need to be WAY into epic to start replicating the lowest level spells.

[Gnaeus]

Of course, it becomes 8 hours and 10 minutes if you need to prepare it.

How fast can a mundane spy network get this info, especially if it involves checking connections in multiple cities that are far apart?
This is the core issue with spells, a challenge can be a full on quest/story arc for a mundane or a standard action for a caster. Skill checks often need to be WAY into epic to start replicating the lowest level spells.

For a 1 word answer. Which is blocked by mind blank. And runs the risk of driving your sorcerer insane. It takes no great imagination to see how a Raven with a message that Gorval the Black was seen boarding the HMS Queens Bounty from Nightport to Grey Harbors Is going to be more information than you will ever timely get from playing 20 questions. Spies can proactively tell you things you want to know. Contact answers yes/no questions you already knew to ask.

[NotASpiderSwarm]

3. Aside from all the ways that a clever DM can short circuit those (which you can call “adapting to a world with different natural rules” or “breaking a game”), and there are tons, and aside from the fact that breaking the game is a rude move anyway, what makes those powers better than a city? I can walk into a city and pay someone to Raise Dead or Teleport me across the continent the couple of times I need that a lot more easily than you can pay for a high level NPC to wander through the dungeon finding traps and reading trails with you.
Stone Shape, Dimension Door, or Summon Monster(anything with a Burrow Speed). You spend a session or two going through the dungeon, checking for traps, fighting guards, a Sorcerer/Cleric/Bard just casts 1 spell and cuts directly to the end of the dungeon.

[Bucky]

Making inconvenient walls disappear is conceptually in-bounds for a high end martial. So is super-tunneling, by extension.

[Gnaeus]

Stone Shape, Dimension Door, or Summon Monster(anything with a Burrow Speed). You spend a session or two going through the dungeon, checking for traps, fighting guards, a Sorcerer/Cleric/Bard just casts 1 spell and cuts directly to the end of the dungeon.

Congratulations. You have simultaneously screwed yourself out of most of the loot and experience, turned 2 nights of gaming into an hour and pissed off the DM. That’s amazing. You have a spell that lets you do everything any player can do by peeing in the guacamole. Then you can pretty much count on every future dungeon being in a wonderflonium mine that you can’t scry through or teleport through, because no one enjoys spending hours preparing Level appropriate challenges just to watch them get ignored. Have you encountered poison stone? Because I have.

[PoeticallyPsyco]

1. Not all T2s have all those. In fact virtually no tier 2 has all those without high opti fu. That favored soul has Speak with Dead and Raise Dead. He can duplicate others with Miracle or Gate. But that’s only the last 3 levels of the game.

2. I dispute your relative ranking of the value of powers. So the wizard has overland flight. So? You plan to fly to Mordor by yourself? Good luck with that. It’s definitely useful, but not revolutionary. I’ve seen a lot more clues get found with perception checks and Sense Motive than Speak with Dead. I’ve seen Raise Dead used a handful of times. A rogue could get a scroll of it and hold it for months. I’ve seen Trapfinding used half a dozen times a game. It’s a freaking workhorse. It’s like every door, every chest.

3. Aside from all the ways that a clever DM can short circuit those (which you can call “adapting to a world with different natural rules” or “breaking a game”), and there are tons, and aside from the fact that breaking the game is a rude move anyway, what makes those powers better than a city? I can walk into a city and pay someone to Raise Dead or Teleport me across the continent the couple of times I need that a lot more easily than you can pay for a high level NPC to wander through the dungeon finding traps and reading trails with you.

4. I dispute that there aren’t real mundane equivalents. Yeah, contact other plane (with DM fiat) can tell me that the enemy wizard is in a city 400 miles away. So can my spy network. I’ve seen more information retrieved by having a sneaky guy spy on targets than playing 20 questions with a spirit. Why is it only campaign solving when a wizard does It?



Well, are they really? I mean, ok, sometimes, yes. Jump is trash when there is fly. But knowledges are often more useful than spells. Spot, listen and search are good. Tumble is equivalent to a low level spell. Open locks, search, disable device are arguably better than knock and find traps. Hide and move silently (with dark stalker, and maybe hips) are sometimes better than invisibility. Social skills often > spells. You can diplomacy the dragon but if you start casting on him you better hope he doesn’t save. It’s true most are low level spell equivalents. But if you put together enough of those you contribute, at least through most levels.

We underrate skills on this forum. Yeah, at 15, a sorcerer won’t care about his low level slots and can toss invisibility and knock around whenever. But at 6 the rogue is more efficient at sneaking and opening and trapfinding, so the sorcerer will find a comparative advantage not playing in that pool.

So, skills alone might be enough to bridge the utility gap? At least until the highest levels?

So perhaps give every mundane class a skill bonus, kind of equivalent to caster level, that brings their numbers up to the point that they can start doing cool stuff reliably. Call it "Mastery Level (ML)" or something, and add 2xML to skills you have at least 1 rank in. You could also have 'half-mundanes' that only get a fraction of the bonus, like half-casters and CL, and ML from different classes stacks.

Reduce the DCs on some of the Epic skill uses into the realm of the reasonable, maybe homebrew a few more skill options.

Too much? Not enough? Potential problems?

[NotASpiderSwarm]

Congratulations. You have simultaneously screwed yourself out of most of the loot and experience, turned 2 nights of gaming into an hour and pissed off the DM. That’s amazing. You have a spell that lets you do everything any player can do by peeing in the guacamole. Then you can pretty much count on every future dungeon being in a wonderflonium mine that you can’t scry through or teleport through, because no one enjoys spending hours preparing Level appropriate challenges just to watch them get ignored. Have you encountered poison stone? Because I have.Hence why I said that the proper balance is to ban the broken casters and focus on Tier 3, not to upgrade everything to that level of broken. This is what people mean when they say the core balance of 3.5 is really bad. If you pay attention to what spells actually do, then you either have to ignore those spells or you break the game.

[Gnaeus]

Hence why I said that the proper balance is to ban the broken casters and focus on Tier 3, not to upgrade everything to that level of broken. This is what people mean when they say the core balance of 3.5 is really bad. If you pay attention to what spells actually do, then you either have to ignore those spells or you break the game.

Except that again, breaking games is easy and doesn’t require high level spells. RAW Epic Diplomacy is JUST as broken as unrestricted planar binding, and I have seen both in the same number of actual games (0). When I make a party face with obscene diplomacy I assume that he will be getting us the most favorable results in social encounters (useful), not that he will turn every NPC into a fanatic follower (Broken).

And DMs have plenty of incentive to plan plots that counter those spells that are totally unrelated to comparative class balance. There is a whole range of solutions, like:

Hey man, let’s all agree not to break the game or

The following spells are banned or

You can’t teleport to the base because it is warded by strange magic or

You can’t teleport to the base because you are following a set of clues that require you to find landmarks (that you can’t see from 15000 feet up).

Which is not to say that teleport, commune, and stone shape (Or diplomacy) are useless. Far from it. Teleporting away from a TPK or back to base to sell loot is wildly convenient. SOMETIMES there are puzzles that you know the right 20 yes/no questions to solve, that aren’t blocked by mind blank. But ideally you want someone with teleport and commune and social skills and trapfinding. Because all those things are useful in non game breaking ways. You can (and in most games should) hard block full casters from end-running the game. Tier 2s are still powerful, flexible characters without that.

And what levels are these things really coming on line for a T2? 1 5th level spell at 10. 2 at 11 and 12. Are you really going to use your 2 5th level spells on contact other plane and teleport? I’d probably take SM V and Shadow Evocation, as generalist spells helpful in a fight or otherwise.


So, skills alone might be enough to bridge the utility gap? At least until the highest levels?

I’d say rather that they are a part of the toolkit that low/no majs bring to the table. Like most other muggle tools, you’d rather have a rogue at level 1, you could find a magic workaround but it’s easier not to in maybe 5-12 (depending on a lot of factors like optimization, and which exact flavor of skills and casters we are discussing) and mostly fail at really high level play. But high level play is comparatively rare, and can fail for a lot of reasons. And of course you can adjust that mechanically (give boosts to skills. Give increased results like the PF skill mastery mechanic (ideally without the feat cost)) or narratively (include opportunities for skill use in play. Reward gather information or knowledge checks or scouting with useful stuff.) You can also increase the distinction between skill use and the spell equivalent (Knock spell makes a loud sound. So it’s useful, but you wouldn’t want to use it to sneak into a monster lair.)

Look at Track. Cinematically implemented, its as good as a spell. Legolas glances down while running. “The Orcs are 10 leagues from here. Running like they are scared of something, they just turned north.” Mundanely implemented “A bunch of humanoids passed this way in the last few days”. Narratively implemented, its almost useless (you can track the bandits to the evil hideout. But the AP stops if you don’t. So if you don’t have it or you fail an escaped prisoner staggers up to you with a map in hand and then dies.)

[AntiAuthority]

So, skills alone might be enough to bridge the utility gap? At least until the highest levels?

So perhaps give every mundane class a skill bonus, kind of equivalent to caster level, that brings their numbers up to the point that they can start doing cool stuff reliably. Call it "Mastery Level (ML)" or something, and add 2xML to skills you have at least 1 rank in. You could also have 'half-mundanes' that only get a fraction of the bonus, like half-casters and CL, and ML from different classes stacks.

Reduce the DCs on some of the Epic skill uses into the realm of the reasonable, maybe homebrew a few more skill options.

Too much? Not enough? Potential problems?

I like this idea, and would like to expand on it.

See, I notice people bring up attracting followers (basically free Leadership) as a Fighter advances, but coupled with you said about Mastery Levels... Being able to intimidate enemies to a great degree is fine, but being able to create is also something a Fighter could potentially do. I mentioned earlier in the thread, but the Fighter could advantage of having Engineering as a Class Skill to be able to use materials to craft things like weapons, armors and mechanized constructs. Possibly have these constructs just be able to attack things like Summon Monster, transport them around or have these golems build things like buildings or other constructs (assuming the appropriate materials are around). Possibly having a high enough Engineer check lets you fight a Golem (or examine one that's working), realize how it works, and be able to reverse engineer your own. If you want to go sci-fi with it, you could, engineer a mech suit to boost the Tier 2 Fighter's physical attributes.

[rel]

Once long, long ago I tried to write up a Tier 2 martial class.
I never quite finished but I worked at it over the years and I think I got close.
The basics are there at least.
Might give people some ideas on the direction to take.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1bvCZH3azorD2NidSWV3jJ_7tSxPWhEi1nN6iIEj7iMg/edit?usp=sharing

[NigelWalmsley]

Congratulations. You have simultaneously screwed yourself out of most of the loot and experience, turned 2 nights of gaming into an hour and pissed off the DM. That’s amazing. You have a spell that lets you do everything any player can do by peeing in the guacamole. Then you can pretty much count on every future dungeon being in a wonderflonium mine that you can’t scry through or teleport through, because no one enjoys spending hours preparing Level appropriate challenges just to watch them get ignored. Have you encountered poison stone? Because I have.

It seems to me that if the DM creates a set of encounters where the best solution is to ignore them and have the Wizard diddle around with a limited selection of spells, the fault lies with the DM, not the Wizard, for that state of affairs being unfun. You don't have to turn off Teleport to make people engage with encounters, you just have to design encounters people want to engage with. Which you really should be doing anyway. No one enjoys having to fight an enemy just because they happen to be between them and what they want.


So, skills alone might be enough to bridge the utility gap? At least until the highest levels?

That depends on what you mean by "highest levels". There are certainly levels where skills and spells are of comparable utility. A 3rd level Rogue using Open Lock and a 3rd level Wizard casting Knock are pretty well balanced, and you can imagine situations where either might be the party member best-suited to solving a particular problem. But that doesn't last very long. By the time casters get 5th level spells, there's no skills you can hand out that are really equivalent. Even Epic Skills don't help that much, and to the degree that they do help, they do so by giving out abilities that are magical in every meaningful sense.

[Psyren]

Congratulations. You have simultaneously screwed yourself out of most of the loot and experience, turned 2 nights of gaming into an hour and pissed off the DM. That’s amazing. You have a spell that lets you do everything any player can do by peeing in the guacamole. Then you can pretty much count on every future dungeon being in a wonderflonium mine that you can’t scry through or teleport through, because no one enjoys spending hours preparing Level appropriate challenges just to watch them get ignored. Have you encountered poison stone? Because I have.It seems to me that if the DM creates a set of encounters where the best solution is to ignore them and have the Wizard diddle around with a limited selection of spells, the fault lies with the DM, not the Wizard, for that state of affairs being unfun. You don't have to turn off Teleport to make people engage with encounters, you just have to design encounters people want to engage with. Which you really should be doing anyway. No one enjoys having to fight an enemy just because they happen to be between them and what they want.

There is considerable middle ground between "you can never have an encounter that could be beaten with teleport ever again once the PCs learn it" and "Do everything you can to ban teleport without actually banning it." Having the power work most of the time but not all the time, as well as letting it work but be a potentially dangerous option that the PCs need to be careful about using, are both alternatives.

[Gnaeus]

It seems to me that if the DM creates a set of encounters where the best solution is to ignore them and have the Wizard diddle around with a limited selection of spells, the fault lies with the DM, not the Wizard, for that state of affairs being unfun. You don't have to turn off Teleport to make people engage with encounters, you just have to design encounters people want to engage with. Which you really should be doing anyway. No one enjoys having to fight an enemy just because they happen to be between them and what they want

1. I think at any point when Nigel says “Nobody wants X” there is about a 90% chance that I do in fact want X.

2. There are often differences between player motivations and character motivations. I want to play D&D for what it is actually good at. I want challenging tactical combats that test my character build and tactics with a healthy sprinkling of luck. I want to spend hours with my friends exploring the dungeon that my DM carefully prepared, with little boosts of gold, exp and items to make me feel like I’m accomplishing things.

My Wizard, on the other hand, probably wants to achieve his goal in the most straightforward path possible, with a minimal risk of death. He’d likely be delighted to teleport in. Save the princess. Teleport home, and spend the next 6 weeks drinking his reward money. Not much fun for the player though.



That depends on what you mean by "highest levels". There are certainly levels where skills and spells are of comparable utility. A 3rd level Rogue using Open Lock and a 3rd level Wizard casting Knock are pretty well balanced, and you can imagine situations where either might be the party member best-suited to solving a particular problem. But that doesn't last very long. By the time casters get 5th level spells, there's no skills you can hand out that are really equivalent. Even Epic Skills don't help that much, and to the degree that they do help, they do so by giving out abilities that are magical in every meaningful sense.

That just isn’t true. Take Diplomacy for example.
1. You are chatting with a high power NPC. Maybe a dragon or a Lich. They have all the typical immunities that money and casting can buy. You COULD MAYBE get lucky and somehow land a charm or dominate, past the SR and the spell immunity and the immunity to mind affecting and high will saves and protection from good. And if you fail you get your own free boss fight. Or you could flatter them, point out how it is in their interest to give you information and let you go. I suppose you could limited wish for glibness and try to just lie to them. But that’s a 7th level spell, and it isn’t like your skillmonkey might not beat a +30 at those levels, and the diplomacy DC is likely way easier than their sense motive.
2. You are trying to track a band of bad guys in a city. They are employing Mind blank. You scry them. It fails. You commune or contact. Gods respond with unanswerable, because they are immune to Divinations. Gather Information (Diplomacy in PF) checks reveal that a group of strangers chartered a ship to the Isle of Bones and paid with strange foreign coins. Maybe you could ultimately get that information, by phrasing your questions just right, and then asking another dozen questions like (is the the ship hired with strange coins headed East/west of the city, north/south of the city, north/south of the sea of storms, east/west of Botany Bay etc...) but the gather information has a very good chance to get you better information faster.

Or just good old trapfinding. There’s a dozen ways to try to fake it, but trapfinding is generally just better. You can use a reserve feat to scout with cheap summons, but that doesn’t actually get you past the traps, and it could set off alarms. You can turn the party to bats or mist or walk on the ceiling, all of which will stop some traps. But not all. And if you run into something bad that can detect the party isn’t in position to fight. Etc...

And Maybe, just Maybe, you are in a universe without time constraints, where the DM doesn’t have intelligent badguys who understand wizards, so the dungeons are predominantly warded against scry and die tactics or whatever. And you somehow end run the first dungeon and the DM doesnt respond in any of the 3 most common manners, which are to figure out ways to stop you from doing that or ban your spell or hand you a little trophy saying “you won D&D” and now the campaign is over and he is pulling out Settlers of Catan. So basically wizard heaven.

But we aren’t talking about equaling a wizard, with every relevant spell in his book. We are talking about tier 2, so at best a sorcerer. Who knows 2 level 5 spells at level 12. You have Passwall and Contact? Then you don’t have SM5 or Teleport or Dominate or anything for a fight.

So just maybe you could make a sorcerer 12 who can obsolete skills like Diplomacy, Search/trapfinding, knowledges, etc. But you probably shouldn’t if you have a skillmonkey on team. Not just because it is rude to pee in another player’s pool. But because both the Sorcerer and the Skillmonkey have limited skills/powers and it is poorly optimized to get in an arms race with your ally over who is better at X when you could be doing Y instead.

For those 5th level spells to obsolete the skillmonkey, you need to have enough spells that they are really, reasonably your best option. Or to be at a point where you just psychic reformat for every spell. Either way, highest levels.


There is considerable middle ground between "you can never have an encounter that could be beaten with teleport ever again once the PCs learn it" and "Do everything you can to ban teleport without actually banning it." Having the power work most of the time but not all the time, as well as letting it work but be a potentially dangerous option that the PCs need to be careful about using, are both alternatives.

Sure. We had a campaign with lots of High level overland encounters. There was one whole section where we had to follow a golem back to his master’s lab, which was warded from our divinations. And another where we had to follow clues on the ground. And another where the magical compass that helped us find the McGuffins would get screwed up by teleporting. In every case, Teleport was useful. Primarily by getting us to/from the Bad place once we were done or to rest. As I said before, I assume that Teleport is a useful/powerful spell. I just don’t think it necessarily negates big sections of campaigns, at least not more than once. It’s more that it is a superior logistical tool. Although again, I think you can WBL Teleport (with a couple of scrolls say, or going to a city and paying for someone to teleport you near where you want to be) easier than you can WBL Trapfinding or Diplomacy.

[Blackhawk748]

That just isn’t true. Take Diplomacy for example.
1. You are chatting with a high power NPC. Maybe a dragon or a Lich. They have all the typical immunities that money and casting can buy. You COULD MAYBE get lucky and somehow land a charm or dominate, past the SR and the spell immunity and the immunity to mind affecting and high will saves and protection from good. And if you fail you get your own free boss fight. Or you could flatter them, point out how it is in their interest to give you information and let you go. I suppose you could limited wish for glibness and try to just lie to them. But that’s a 7th level spell, and it isn’t like your skillmonkey might not beat a +30 at those levels, and the diplomacy DC is likely way easier than their sense motive.

The Diplomacy DC IS lower than anything else, because it maxes out at like 25 and a first level Bard can hit that with a bit of optimization. And your example is Diplomacy? The skill that is universally agreed upon to be one of the most broken things about 3.5 because of how stupidly easy it is to snap over your knee?

How about Jump or Climb? You know, the skills that a muggle is supposed to take, but never does because they suck.

And as for Trapfinding, 90% of Traps exist for the Rogue to do something or are just an HP tax. Yes, the last 5% are alarms and actually useful things, but outside of low levels those are magical and anyone with Detect Magic can find them.

[Gnaeus]

The Diplomacy DC IS lower than anything else, because it maxes out at like 25 and a first level Bard can hit that with a bit of optimization. And your example is Diplomacy? The skill that is universally agreed upon to be one of the most broken things about 3.5 because of how stupidly easy it is to snap over your knee?

How about Jump or Climb? You know, the skills that a muggle is supposed to take, but never does because they suck.

And as for Trapfinding, 90% of Traps exist for the Rogue to do something or are just an HP tax. Yes, the last 5% are alarms and actually useful things, but outside of low levels those are magical and anyone with Detect Magic can find them.

I’m pretty sure I addressed these points already. But ok.

RAW diplomacy is just as broken as Planar Binding. Agreed. But if we are talking about ways to break the game, why are we only talking about spells. And if we aren’t just talking about ways to break the game but about how skills are or could be equivalent to spells, either in the current context or ramped up, Diplomacy is clearly functional at pretty much all levels. Yeah, the DCs are borked. But every game I’ve ever played in, when I try to convince an NPC of something, the DM says “roll diplomacy”. Again, I don’t assume Raw diplomacy making fanatic followers everywhere I go. But I do assume that high diplomacy will tend to get better results in most social encounters which is hella useful.

Jump and Climb suck. I mentioned jump before. Those skills are obsolete by 5. Swim too. I never said all skills are useful. Only that Skills are useful. I can make a sorcerer with trap spells too. So? You can compare the skillmonkey with Jump Climb and Swim with a Sorc 12 who has seeming, animal growth and Blight in his 5 and 6 slots.

But even there they aren’t unsalvagable if rewritten cinematically. If epic swim was like Beowulf (I swim underwater for days, holding my breath and battling monsters) it would be a 3-4 level spell equivalent. If Jump was like Cuchulainn’s Salmon Leap or Wuxia it would be better than levitation and only slightly worse than fly. Maybe even with a little captain America style feather fall thrown in, although that might be acrobatics. On the really demigod level like Hulk or early Superman it’s practically DDoor/weak Teleport as you jump for miles.

It doesn’t really matter why the traps exist. It doesn’t even matter if they are good game design or meant to justify the rogue. The fact is they are there. In every printed game I’ve ever seen and every homemade game I’ve ever played. Maybe it’s to justify the rogue. Maybe it’s because Dragons Lair and Indiana Jones and Quatermain and Conan all have these freaky traps in them. It doesn’t matter. They are there.

And yes, detect magic can find some of them. Of course, DM is duration concentration, so that’s every standard action. And detecting magic doesn’t mean it’s a trap. And detection =\ disarming. You could try spamming dispel magic at everything you come across, but that’s really spell intensive, not as effective as a good disarm, and potentially disastrous (I cast dispel magic on the chest: the explosive runes destroy the contents). Maybe I’m an outlier, but my 18th level sorcerer never touched a chest until the rogue cleared it, and I certainly stood back and let him disarm any traps we located, magical or otherwise. (I did, at very high levels, send waves of summons out to trigger door/hallway traps, but only at very high levels when I had spells to burn and he generally wound up ultimately disarming anyway.) And that’s without considering epic trapfinding uses or PF talents that give automatic trapfinding checks or anything like that.