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View Full Version : Can we build the math from the ground up? (And does Vancian help or hurt that?)



Quertus
2020-08-08, 06:58 AM
So suppose - say, for 6th edition - people wanted to build the game from the ground up, build the math from the ground up to make all D&D classes "balanced", by which I mean "able to contribute, and occasionally shine", and no more "linear Fighter, quadratic Wizard".

So, let's take… "6th level". The wizard has Fireball, SoL spells like Hold Person, buffs, BFC.

Fighting an army of orcs, Fireball is probably optimal. How many orcs should take how long to dispatch the Wizard? How many orcs should the Wizard have killed before that happens? How can the Fighter contribute "equally"? By killing orcs roughly as quickly? By surviving to finish off the orc army one at a time? By leading their own army?

Fighting a few Ogres, BFC is likely the best option, perhaps followed up with some summons. How can the Fighter contribute "equally"? By greatly outpacing the summons' DPS (perhaps with their own "scales by round" mechanic, like "automatic study: add a d6 of damage to every attack for every consecutive round the Fighter has made an attack on this creature type" or something)? By being their own BFC (3e chain tripper says hi)? By leading their own army?

Fighting a Troll, SoL may be the best bet for the Wizard. If it works, the Wizard gets to shine; if not, they didn't contribute. How do we make the Fighter "balanced" here?

Talking to people, the Wizard has effects like Charm and ESP. Which… have negative reproductions, and, in earlier editions, can drive the Wizard bonkers. How do we make the Fighter "balanced" here?

Dealing with traps, the Wizard could use summons (and scrying for maximum safety). How do we make the Fighter "balanced" here?

And, of course, all this was only considering Schrödinger's Wizard with unlimited spells. Should we keep the Wizard that way? How do we balance those encounters of the Wizard only packed Detect Magic, Alarm, Invisibility, and Sending? How do we make the Fighter "balanced" here?

Also, what if, rather than the microscope of "a single challenge", we look at a larger scenario, like "rescue the Dragon from the evil princess", or "close an underwater extradimensional portal protected by invisible, incorporeal guardians", or "save the NPC writer with massive gambling debts from loan sharks"? What should each class bring to the table in each of these scenarios, and how do we make that "balanced"?

NigelWalmsley
2020-08-08, 07:34 AM
Starting from the character abilities is approaching the problem wrong. You need to start with the challenges. Don't ask "what abilities should a 6th level Wizard have", ask "what challenges should a 6th level character be able to overcome". Then, once you've defined what characters need to be able to do, writing a balanced game is as simple as writing classes that can do those things.

johnbragg
2020-08-08, 09:43 AM
One rule-of-thumb I used in homebrewing a distant descendant of E6 with some 4E and 5E DNA spliced in and a largely-rewritten spell list is:

The beatstick should always be better at doing direct damage than the spellcaster.
The optimum damage output should be produced by the spellcaster buffing the beatstick.
So Caster STrike << Sword << BigAssAnimeSword.

Lagtime
2020-08-08, 09:53 AM
Well, there is an easy fix for the "math" and it's the 0E/1E/2E/BECMI way: Wizards do NOT get automatic free access to every published spell on a whim. Spells are treasure. This also needs the 0E/1E/2E/BECMI way that making magic items...any items, but more so scrolls and wands...is hard and difficult and expensive. So again: magic items are treasure. Not something a character can just make on a whim.

This alone puts fighters and wizards on the same starting base: they must both adventure for things to get more powerful. Also, you might as well throw in feats/class abilities too....make it so a character must either find a trainer or a special location or such. Maybe even add a mechanic, like an experience upgrade that can be earned and then used to get an ability. So the player has to have the character do something in the game to get the experience upgrade, based on the character and the game world.

Downgrading the spells would also be a good thing. Other then reducing damage and effects, a big thing to add is the twist that magic can't effectively do mundane things. Magic can do magic things, but alone can't do mundane things well. The basic idea something like magic can greatly enhance a character that has a skill or ability, but can not give you a skill or ability and gets better depending on the power level of the target.

NigelWalmsley
2020-08-08, 10:02 AM
If your solution to the problem "Wizards > Fighters" is "nerf Wizards", it is the wrong solution. Fiction is replete with martial characters who can compete with anything D&D casters can dish out. If your martials are not competitive with your casters, that is a problem with your martials, not your casters.

JNAProductions
2020-08-08, 10:07 AM
Well, there is an easy fix for the "math" and it's the 0E/1E/2E/BECMI way: Wizards do NOT get automatic free access to every published spell on a whim. Spells are treasure. This also needs the 0E/1E/2E/BECMI way that making magic items...any items, but more so scrolls and wands...is hard and difficult and expensive. So again: magic items are treasure. Not something a character can just make on a whim.

This alone puts fighters and wizards on the same starting base: they must both adventure for things to get more powerful. Also, you might as well throw in feats/class abilities too....make it so a character must either find a trainer or a special location or such. Maybe even add a mechanic, like an experience upgrade that can be earned and then used to get an ability. So the player has to have the character do something in the game to get the experience upgrade, based on the character and the game world.

Downgrading the spells would also be a good thing. Other then reducing damage and effects, a big thing to add is the twist that magic can't effectively do mundane things. Magic can do magic things, but alone can't do mundane things well. The basic idea something like magic can greatly enhance a character that has a skill or ability, but can not give you a skill or ability and gets better depending on the power level of the target.

Limiting access to broken things does not make the broken things any better-it just means that you only sometimes get to use them.

From a 5E perspective, there are definitely some spells that shouldn't be available to players ordinarily-Simulacrum or Clone, for instance. Those shouldn't be spells in the normal sense at all-they should be something you quest for, or perform mighty rituals, or something like that.

But other things, like Fireball being overtuned? That's as simple as making it deal less damage.

Kyutaru
2020-08-08, 10:08 AM
Ground up developing is a common mistake in game development, at least the way I was taught. It makes sense from a logical perspective and outside the box but when you try it the problems become clear.

City of Heroes was a ground-up developed MMO beginning with very equivalent characters and branching out from there. Theoretically it should allow for balance, right? But that balance is bottom heavy and gets more and more shaky the higher the ladder goes up. You end up with a very balanced low level game and a very broken high level game. The designers went into dev blogs about why that was, explaining as many other RPG makers have learned that players do NOT want balance but controlled imbalance. Perfect balance is actually one of the worst ways to balance a game because people are not machines and do not recognize the value of the mathematically superior formulas. They will go for their own min-max builds that the system is not based around and build into disadvantage. Meanwhile hybrids will never shine because they are perfectly balanced, meaning ineffectual in both roles. Games where hybrids are valuable have them stacked to be superior to others but not quite reaching the level of specialization of pure classes.

The same has happened with roles over time. Tanks used to not deal any damage because they mitigate tons of damage. That's simple balance. But they learned over time that it's better to balance Tanks around doing LESS damage but still reasonably high damage. This leads to a character that is blatantly more powerful than another mathematically but still considered "balanced" because the pure damage role is that much more desired and prioritized.

Even the HEX TCG found that a perfectly balanced card shuffler was not desirable by players, who complained incessantly about getting screwed and calling the shuffler broken or rigged or not like real life when in fact it was real life shuffling that people would weight unfairly by weaving cards to prevent screw. Truly random shuffling would result in many many cases of suboptimal hands by natural distribution. The developers fixed the perception problem of a fake RNG shuffler by making it a fake RNG shuffler and removing many of the outliers that people hated to see from the possible results.

Another game that uses true RNG is XCOM and the amount of complaining about missed 99% shots is legendary. People don't like fair or balanced, they want smart decisions to be rewarded with expected results, even if a chance of failure was always there. It's so bad that some games implemented automatic crit/miss protection such that you if you fail to hit twice in a row your 3rd attack was guaranteed to hit, or that if you crit twice in a row your 3rd attack was guaranteed to be a normal hit, normalizing the struggle between lucky and unlucky strings of random variables that shifted the tide of battle.

Basically balance sucks, mathematically speaking. Ground up balance even more so. People WANT broken messed up logic but don't realize it because developers have had to get good at hiding the cheating in the background. In a tabletop RPG, this means even more DM fudging or rules that are so convoluted that you can't tell if they're balanced or not beyond your subjective play experience with them.

Pex
2020-08-08, 10:27 AM
Well, there is an easy fix for the "math" and it's the 0E/1E/2E/BECMI way: Wizards do NOT get automatic free access to every published spell on a whim. Spells are treasure. This also needs the 0E/1E/2E/BECMI way that making magic items...any items, but more so scrolls and wands...is hard and difficult and expensive. So again: magic items are treasure. Not something a character can just make on a whim.

This alone puts fighters and wizards on the same starting base: they must both adventure for things to get more powerful. Also, you might as well throw in feats/class abilities too....make it so a character must either find a trainer or a special location or such. Maybe even add a mechanic, like an experience upgrade that can be earned and then used to get an ability. So the player has to have the character do something in the game to get the experience upgrade, based on the character and the game world.

Downgrading the spells would also be a good thing. Other then reducing damage and effects, a big thing to add is the twist that magic can't effectively do mundane things. Magic can do magic things, but alone can't do mundane things well. The basic idea something like magic can greatly enhance a character that has a skill or ability, but can not give you a skill or ability and gets better depending on the power level of the target.

Training does nothing to fix balance. It's a waste of time, in game and out of game.

JNAProductions
2020-08-08, 10:32 AM
Training does nothing to fix balance. It's a waste of time, in game and out of game.

I disagree that it's always a waste of time! Training can be a valuable way to add verisimilitude to your game. I wouldn't have it as a core rule, but as an optional rule to make the game last longer, in-game, it's a good thing.

Though I would definitely have it be "Training takes X amount of time. Halve X if you find and pay a trainer to aid you." I would NOT require you to find a trainer just to level up, since sometimes, you're the biggest, baddest party around, and no one could feasibly train you.

I do agree it does jack all for balance, though.

johnbragg
2020-08-08, 12:44 PM
One rule-of-thumb I used in homebrewing a distant descendant of E6 with some 4E and 5E DNA spliced in and a largely-rewritten spell list is:

The beatstick should always be better at doing direct damage than the spellcaster.
The optimum damage output should be produced by the spellcaster buffing the beatstick.
So Caster STrike << Sword << BigAssAnimeSword.

Note for the file:

Something I'm not thrilled with in 5E. There's almost a graviational tendency for one tactic to just be better than the alternatives in almost all cases. For my 4th-5th-6th level cleric, "cast Toll The Dead" for 2d12 ranged damage is almost always a better use of actions and spell slots than making a melee attack or casting an attack spell. (It's foolish to spend spell slots on dealing damage instead of munchkined-out healing-after-combat, and 2d12 average 13 is better than a d8+2 average 6.5.)

In my current-to-next homebrew, I have a mechanic where spells are Exhausted (either for one minute, or until you can take a full-round action to refresh and reset yourself). That means full-casters need to know a lot of spells to get through a four- to five-round combat. It also means that maybe a lot of spells can be reduced in level--you're automatically limited to using them once per fight. (Healing may be an exception, or maybe each spellcasting class gets a spell or two that breaks the usual resource limits in whatever ways.)

johnbragg
2020-08-08, 01:12 PM
Well, there is an easy fix for the "math" and it's the 0E/1E/2E/BECMI way: Wizards do NOT get automatic free access to every published spell on a whim. Spells are treasure. This also needs the 0E/1E/2E/BECMI way that making magic items...any items, but more so scrolls and wands...is hard and difficult and expensive. So again: magic items are treasure. Not something a character can just make on a whim.

This alone puts fighters and wizards on the same starting base: they must both adventure for things to get more powerful. Also, you might as well throw in feats/class abilities too....make it so a character must either find a trainer or a special location or such. Maybe even add a mechanic, like an experience upgrade that can be earned and then used to get an ability. So the player has to have the character do something in the game to get the experience upgrade, based on the character and the game world.

I invoke Grod's Law.

Grod's Law: You cannot and should not balance bad mechanics by making them annoying to use

Taking the approach of "it's okay to put these troublesome abilities in the book, because we'll tell the GM (often in a different book) not to let the player have them" is not a great approach.


Downgrading the spells would also be a good thing. Other then reducing damage and effects, a big thing to add is the twist that magic can't effectively do mundane things. Magic can do magic things, but alone can't do mundane things well. The basic idea something like magic can greatly enhance a character that has a skill or ability, but can not give you a skill or ability and gets better depending on the power level of the target.

And anyway, if I remember right in 2E, you automatically added a spell to your spellbook when you levelled up. The results of your research and readings and tinkerings and whatnot. (I could be wrong about this, I haven't played 2E in 25 years and when we did play 2E we ignored whatever rules we damn well felt like, and fiddly non-murderhobo-ey stuff like training-to-level were the first things thrown out the window).

Ignimortis
2020-08-08, 01:40 PM
So suppose - say, for 6th edition - people wanted to build the game from the ground up, build the math from the ground up to make all D&D classes "balanced", by which I mean "able to contribute, and occasionally shine", and no more "linear Fighter, quadratic Wizard".


If you want balance, you'll have to take Wizards down a peg or two. You cannot allow a class to have semi-unlimited access to 95% of clearly defined effects in the game and expect it to be balanceable with anything that doesn't boast the same versatility. My proposed solution (which somehow has never been tried, perhaps of subconscious bias towards old archetypes and wizards in particular, as Rob Heinsoo described it) is to make every Wizard choose one favoured schools and two permitted ones, and then they can't access anything outside of those three schools. Ever.

Do something similar to other casters, too - Clerics should really think hard about their domains, and druids should probably just get a Nature Cleric's list if they even want to keep shapeshifting.

After that, a lot of problems are already solved, and the only thing that's needed for martials to shine is a more robust skill system where martials get to roll skills more and better than casters, and also produce tangible and level-appropriate results on a particular roll. Of course, that necessitates skill rolls that advance significantly over the course of 20 levels (perhaps with an average specialist roll of 15 at level 1, 25 at 6, 35 at 11, etc) - unlike 5e. Or skill feats that unlock new skill uses, I dunno.

NigelWalmsley
2020-08-08, 02:26 PM
Another game that uses true RNG is XCOM and the amount of complaining about missed 99% shots is legendary.

Complaining from people who've logged hundreds of hours on each of multiple different XCOMs. "That's XCOM, baby" is part of why people play the game, not something you should try to fix.


If you want balance, you'll have to take Wizards down a peg or two. You cannot allow a class to have semi-unlimited access to 95% of clearly defined effects in the game and expect it to be balanceable with anything that doesn't boast the same versatility.

Sure. Which is why there should be more effects in the game. The problem isn't that the Wizard has a variety of abilities and can do something useful in most situations. I mean, seriously, read those words and tell me with a straight face that you're describing a problem. It's that the Fighter doesn't and can't. If you look at the source material, there are plenty of characters who are competitive with mid or high level Wizards at reasonable optimization. This problem is really not nearly as hard as the "nerf Wizards" crowd seems to believe. Read something by Sanderson or Zelazny and you'll quickly discover that it's entirely possible to have both incredibly powerful characters and meaningful stakes.


the only thing that's needed for martials to shine is a more robust skill system where martials get to roll skills more and better than casters

Why not start with that? If we're going to buff martials anyway, why not start with that and see where it gets us? People don't like having their toys taken away, but they do like having new toys. Therefore, it behooves us to try a great deal of the latter before insisting on the former, rather than cramming a bunch of nerfs down the Wizard's throat and giving the Fighter some new toys as an afterthought. Until I can play Kaladin (Stormlight Archive), Thor (Marvel), Karsa Orlong (Malazan), and Ranger (A Practical Guide to Evil) in D&D, I see no reason that we need to do anything to nerf the Wizard.

Lagtime
2020-08-08, 02:40 PM
Limiting access to broken things does not make the broken things any better-it just means that you only sometimes get to use them.


Somewhat true. But there will never be a perfect balance: no matter what someone will always find something unbalanced. But limiting things does work: exhibit A is easy as D&D has done it for nearly everything except spells forever. Even all the way up to 5E, the DM gets the final say on what magic items and even mundane items are found in the game. If a DM thinks an item is 'broken', is simply never shows up in the game.


Training does nothing to fix balance. It's a waste of time, in game and out of game.

I guess that is true for a quick 'post byte'. To just dismiss training is a bit unfair though. I'd agree that the traditional "training" found in many RPGs like "ok, so your character goes and trains for like six weeks or whatever and pays 1000 gold...ok, on with the adventure" is lame and does nothing but waist time.

But like I suggested, making getting training something the player and character must do. Simply put making it a "quest". The idea being the character must gain an Experience Badge BEFORE they get a new ability. So characters don't just get stuff for free as they level up.



Taking the approach of "it's okay to put these troublesome abilities in the book, because we'll tell the GM (often in a different book) not to let the player have them" is not a great approach.

It does work though.




And anyway, if I remember right in 2E, you automatically added a spell to your spellbook when you levelled up. The results of your research and readings and tinkerings and whatnot. (I could be wrong about this, I haven't played 2E in 25 years and when we did play 2E we ignored whatever rules we damn well felt like, and fiddly non-murderhobo-ey stuff like training-to-level were the first things thrown out the window).

2E has a lot of froggoten rules that really balanced wizards and other spellcasters:

1.No free spells when you level up. Even more so you could not just grab any random book and then say your character had a spell from the book: as the DM could always say "No."

2.A wizard had to Learn each spell....and there was a chance that they could fail and not be able to learn, cast or use the said spell.

3.The number of spells a wizard could know and cast per level was set. Once a spell is learned, it cannot be unlearned. It remains part of that character'srepertoire forever. Thus, a character cannot choose to "forget" a spell so as to replace itwith another.

4.Lots of spells had built in cost and drawbacks.

5.Spells were not the free for all in later editions where a player could pick and published spell. Many spells were unique and only know to some, so player characters could not pick them.

Also 2E had the idea that spells had a rating: Common, Uncommon, Rare, Very Rare and Unique. Only Common ones would often be found at a magic shop or such.

In addition, from back in d20 times....the Monte Cook players handbook had the idea that spells be Simple, Complex and Exotic. So simple spells were just 'point and cast", Complex need advanced intelligence and Exotic were very weird and strange.

A simple chart making 'broken' spells both Rare and Exotic would keep them out of common every day hands in a game world. And work very well.

Again, you will never have a perfectly balanced system....but if the system has safeguards in place, the "broken" stuff won't be an issue.

johnbragg
2020-08-08, 02:46 PM
Sure. Which is why there should be more effects in the game. The problem isn't that the Wizard has a variety of abilities and can do something useful in most situations. I mean, seriously, read those words and tell me with a straight face that you're describing a problem. It's that the Fighter doesn't and can't. If you look at the source material, there are plenty of characters who are competitive with mid or high level Wizards at reasonable optimization. This problem is really not nearly as hard as the "nerf Wizards" crowd seems to believe. Read something by Sanderson or Zelazny and you'll quickly discover that it's entirely possible to have both incredibly powerful characters and meaningful stakes.

The martials pretty much need an Author twisting the plot in their favor though.


Why not start with [improved skills for martials]?

Because we've played 3X, and we've seen what rogues with +30 to skills can do compared to what casters can do with a few 1st-3rd level spell slots?


If we're going to buff martials anyway, why not start with that and see where it gets us? People don't like having their toys taken away, but they do like having new toys. Therefore, it behooves us to try a great deal of the latter before insisting on the former, rather than cramming a bunch of nerfs down the Wizard's throat and giving the Fighter some new toys as an afterthought.

I dunno, it worked out okay for 5th edition. It may not be your game, but it supplanted 4th Edition and Pathfinder as the market-dominant least-common-denominator game.


Until I can play Kaladin (Stormlight Archive), Thor (Marvel), Karsa Orlong (Malazan), and Ranger (A Practical Guide to Evil) in D&D, I see no reason that we need to do anything to nerf the Wizard.

Thor shoots lightning out of his hands. Kaladin is a Surgebinder and a Windrunner and a Stormlight and has healing powers and can turn his weapon into a shardblade and can fly (from a quick reading of a fan wiki). I don't know what most of that means, but it sounds magic.

So if you want to play those guys in 3X, I think Cleric is the way to go, and rewrite the spell lists to match whatever you're trying to do. You can't do that stuff and still be Conan.

Part of the issue is, you can't have a game where Conan and Dr Manhattan are anything like equally contributing party members. If you're playing a game with Conan, you have to limit the casters accordingly. If you're playing Elric Stormbringer or Kaladin or Thor, your big beatstick guys need to do magic.

JNAProductions
2020-08-08, 02:50 PM
There's a difference between "Your character works, and the DM controls what additional goodies you get," and "Your character has limited access to their defining abilities."

In 5E, yes, magic items are in the purview of the DM, excepting an Artificer for some items. But no class NEEDS magic items to function-the most an ordinary Fighter or Barbarian needs is a weapon that counts as magical, if they're commonly fighting foes who resist/are immune to non-magical weapon damage. But you could run a game from 1-20 without any magic items, and provided you're careful with enemy selection, have no issues.

Now, try running that 1-20 game, only Wizards only get their initial 6 spells. They can upcast them with new slots, but they don't get any higher level spells or even any newer low level spells. You'll find that no one wants to play a Wizard. That's because getting new spells is the CORE FUNCTIONALITY of the Wizard class-they have other features, but a Wizard without their appropriate spells is a bad PC.

It'd be much, much better to simply make it so the spells are relatively well-balanced. Sure, remove some like Wish or whatnot, but being able to pick from a big list is a good thing. It's fun, for the type of player that likes Wizards-and this is a game that's supposed to be fun.

Quertus
2020-08-08, 03:05 PM
I'm not sure I really got my intentions across in the OP. I may need to address that. In the meantime…


Starting from the character abilities is approaching the problem wrong. You need to start with the challenges. Don't ask "what abilities should a 6th level Wizard have", ask "what challenges should a 6th level character be able to overcome". Then, once you've defined what characters need to be able to do, writing a balanced game is as simple as writing classes that can do those things.

Two seemingly contradictory responses:

1) and that differs from what i did how?

2) and what would be wrong with designing the character first, then defining the challenges each level, then deciding which abilities the class gets at each level based on the expected challenges?

Back to #1… I can see that my examples were more… finely tuned… for level 6 combat challenges. A Troll, a few Ogres, an Orc army. Perhaps a level 6 social challenge might be… broker a treaty between two tribes, have two SO's accept each other, not be humiliated by unfriendly nobles.

Traps are probably a whole 'nother can of worms. However, perhaps we could generally say, when the Wizard's Simmons trivialize traps, the Cleric's Divinations, Rogue's skills, and Fighter's… something… should also trivialize those same traps.

Still, I suspect that the two - challenges and characters - should be tuned together, regardless of their initial creation order.


The beatstick should always be better at doing direct damage than the spellcaster.
The optimum damage output should be produced by the spellcaster buffing the beatstick.

That's… one way. And, for some purposes, it's good; for others, it's made of fail. Lemme explain.

Suppose the *only* thing your caster can do is deal damage. In D&D, the Fighter has more HP, better AC, and more staying power. Even if you make the spells all usable at will, it should be obvious that the Fighter that can deal more damage is OP compared to the damage-dealing Wizard.

So I firmly disagree with your principle.

And it sounds like how the math fails in what little I've heard about Pathfinder 2e.

For a generalist Wizard, though, it may be worth discussing.

If the Fighter has a better chassis, *and* can contribute to an equal number of challenges, then the Wizard must contribute *more* with their spells to make up for the weaker chassis.

If the Fighter has a stronger chassis, but the Fighter can contribute to *fewer* scenarios than the Wizard, then, yes, the Wizard's contribution could be the same or lower than the Fighter's to balance their chassis differences.

Or you could give the Fighter an equal or weaker chassis than the Wizard. Although I'm not sure how you'd do that and still hit D&D's expectations.

So, for which combination of chassis, which distribution of contribution, and which version of spells (Vancian, at will, etc) would you see this working?


Downgrading the spells would also be a good thing. Other then reducing damage and effects,

Same question as above: for which chassis of Wizard, which distribution of contribution, and which paradigm of spells do you recommend this?


Well, there is an easy fix for the "math" and it's the 0E/1E/2E/BECMI way: Wizards do NOT get automatic free access to every published spell on a whim. Spells are treasure. This also needs the 0E/1E/2E/BECMI way that making magic items...any items, but more so scrolls and wands...is hard and difficult and expensive. So again: magic items are treasure. Not something a character can just make on a whim.

This alone puts fighters and wizards on the same starting base: they must both adventure for things to get more powerful.


Limiting access to broken things does not make the broken things any better-it just means that you only sometimes get to use them.

My experiences matches @JNAProductions here. Don't get me wrong - I love 2e, and i think it's the best (ie, the most fun) RPG. But random treasure and random spells guarantees imbalance. And I think that's great. But I don't see how it could lead to better balance. Except that it makes *combining* powers much harder, meaning you almost never get Force Cage plus Cloudkill, or (if they were items) Leap Attack plus Shock Trooper.

@Lagtime, care to explain your reasoning? Because I'd love if ideas from my favorite game were demonstrably beneficial for game balance.


a big thing to add is the twist that magic can't effectively do mundane things. Magic can do magic things, but alone can't do mundane things well. The basic idea something like magic can greatly enhance a character that has a skill or ability, but can not give you a skill or ability and gets better depending on the power level of the target.

Hmmm… this is a huge topic all by itself.

If "skill" can get you up to, say, a +20, and "buffs" can give you up to +5, then the best at, say, stealth, is the character with +20 skill who can give themselves a +5 buff. It means everyone is skilled, and everyone is a mage, or else they're suboptimal.

It also brings up "stacking" issues - he who can stack the most buffs, wins. Which, if the system limits how many of those buffs you can learn or maintain, favors numbers, the same way that action economy does. Is that a good thing?


If your solution to the problem "Wizards > Fighters" is "nerf Wizards", it is the wrong solution. Fiction is replete with martial characters who can compete with anything D&D casters can dish out. If your martials are not competitive with your casters, that is a problem with your martials, not your casters.

I'll not lie - I tend to be on this side of the equation. Of course, that's largely because when I ask, "how do you want muggles to contribute", the answers are usually "uh, they can't?". So, in that scenario (ie, the one I usually find myself in), I strongly agree.

However, the point of this thread seems like it should eliminate that scenario. Or so i hope.


From a 5E perspective, there are definitely some spells that shouldn't be available to players ordinarily-Simulacrum or Clone, for instance. Those shouldn't be spells in the normal sense at all-they should be something you quest for, or perform mighty rituals, or something like that.

Costs. Years. XP. Gold. Time. Or Pathfinder's "only 1". None of these, IME, actually work as a true balancing agent. Worse, most favor NPCs over PCs.


But other things, like Fireball being overtuned? That's as simple as making it deal less damage.

I can't say as I'm accustomed to hearing people talking about fireball being OP - at least, not since y2k.

Really, my fireball question was, "assuming fireball kills fodder in droves, how does one create a balanced Fighter?" Granted, I *suppose* a valid answer could be, "the Fighter isn't supposed to be good at combat", or "yeah, that's the Wizard's chance to shine".

2e had "sweep", and 3e had "great cleave" as answers to this question.

johnbragg
2020-08-08, 03:07 PM
I guess that is true for a quick 'post byte'. To just dismiss training is a bit unfair though. I'd agree that the traditional "training" found in many RPGs like "ok, so your character goes and trains for like six weeks or whatever and pays 1000 gold...ok, on with the adventure" is lame and does nothing but waist time.

But like I suggested, making getting training something the player and character must do. Simply put making it a "quest". The idea being the character must gain an Experience Badge BEFORE they get a new ability. So characters don't just get stuff for free as they level up.

One thing that worked very well in a 3.0 campaign was, the DM mandated that you train for your next level DURING your current level. So, during downtime, my 3rd or 4th level fighter took classes at the local magic academy, and when he leveled up he took Wizard 1 and started casting shield before fights. (All that character wanted was to be a beatstick, but he was smart enough to figure out that in a 3X world the best way to beatstick is to cast combat buffs)


2E has a lot of froggoten rules that really balanced wizards and other spellcasters:

1.No free spells when you level up. Even more so you could not just grab any random book and then say your character had a spell from the book: as the DM could always say "No."

2E was also from an age where splatbooks were barely a thing. You had the PHB, maybe a couple of setting books, maybe somebody had a Dragon magazine subscription. But probably not.


2.A wizard had to Learn each spell....and there was a chance that they could fail and not be able to learn, cast or use the said spell.

3.The number of spells a wizard could know and cast per level was set. Once a spell is learned, it cannot be unlearned. It remains part of that character'srepertoire forever. Thus, a character cannot choose to "forget" a spell so as to replace itwith another.


Limits on spells known were a big limitation. (Until you munchkined yourself into a 19 INT and escaped those limits)


Also 2E had the idea that spells had a rating: Common, Uncommon, Rare, Very Rare and Unique. Only Common ones would often be found at a magic shop or such.

Magic shops? Heh, you were lucky.
--The Four Yorkshiremen Play D&D


In addition, from back in d20 times....the Monte Cook players handbook had the idea that spells be Simple, Complex and Exotic. So simple spells were just 'point and cast", Complex need advanced intelligence and Exotic were very weird and strange.

A simple chart making 'broken' spells both Rare and Exotic would keep them out of common every day hands in a game world. And work very well.

Again, you will never have a perfectly balanced system....but if the system has safeguards in place, the "broken" stuff won't be an issue.

I ... don't really understand the logic of going through the effort of identifying the "broken", troublesome spells, and then....keeping them, in a box labeled "Do not open this box."

If you're putting in the work to identify the troublesome spells, ban and / or replace them.

Kaptin Keen
2020-08-08, 03:09 PM
What I'd do is depressingly simple: I'd make characters (casters, but everyone else too) specialise.

Bam. You make a 'Destruction' mage, you get the big badaboom aoe spells - but you don't get anything else. You pick a 'Demonologist' mage, you get all the fancy summons - but you don't get anything else.

If you play a 'Berserker' you get a great big 2-hander and possibly the highest damage in the game - but you get nothing else. Pick a 'Knight' you get sword-and-board, and the ability to tank forever - but you don't get anything else.

The problem is versatility. The solution is specialisation.

Oh, and obviously 2-dimensional characters would be boring. So maybe the 'Berserker' has his 2-hander, and some sort of nice gimmick in combat (in my games, Rage can break Charm and Hold effects, and so on), and then on top he gets a nice pallette of out-of-combat abilities. Maybe out-of-combat abilities are free-for-all, so any character can be charming, or diplomatic, or a juggler, or a musician.

JNAProductions
2020-08-08, 03:10 PM
Fireball, in 5E, just does more damage than spells of its level should.

It doesn't break anything, but it's a niggling little badness for legacy reasons.

Xuc Xac
2020-08-08, 03:14 PM
If your solution to the problem "Wizards > Fighters" is "nerf Wizards", it is the wrong solution. Fiction is replete with martial characters who can compete with anything D&D casters can dish out. If your martials are not competitive with your casters, that is a problem with your martials, not your casters.

It should be both. Wizards shouldn't have access to all the magic. "Magic can do anything and wizards can do magic, therefore wizards can do anything" is like saying "Every Olympic gold medalist is an athlete, therefore every athlete can get a gold medal in every event".

Martial characters need a lot more stuff, even supernatural stuff like "shoot arrows around corners" or "cut boulders in half by swinging a sword in their direction". And wizards need more severe limits like "access to spells over 3rd level require increasingly specific degrees of specialization".

"Why do we need to hire a ship when we've got a Wizard? Can't you just Teleport us there?"
"I wish I could, but I did my dissertation on 'Phlogistical Exacerbation of Ferrous Materials in a Pyrokinetic Field Array'. If you need anything burned or melted, I'm the guy to ask but I don't know much about folding space. If I dig out my old apprenticeship notes, I can cast a spell to bump you about 7 feet in a random direction. That's good if you're locked in a small room, but not much use in this situation."

johnbragg
2020-08-08, 03:28 PM
That's… one way. And, for some purposes, it's good; for others, it's made of fail. Lemme explain.

Suppose the *only* thing your caster can do is deal damage.

Wut? Let me google up the meme of the car with the engine on fire.
"Well that's your problem right there."

If the player really just wants to play a blaster-caster, then that's a corner case I can handle. Use a half-caster gish chassis, like a weapon-based warlock or a Durkon cleric, let them cast "Bigass Anime Sword" on their weapon and go smashing doodz. The math works out the same, except for some action economy effects.

But you want to strongly advise a player against building a character that, mechanically, can only do damage.


In D&D, the Fighter has more HP, better AC, and more staying power. Even if you make the spells all usable at will, it should be obvious that the Fighter that can deal more damage is OP compared to the damage-dealing Wizard.

Let's roll out some quick math I've been using, at 1st level to keep the numbers down.
Sword-and-board fighter is rolling a d8 for damage.
1st level blasting spell does d6 damage.
1st level buff spell elemental weapon bumps d8 to 2d6 (d6 element, d6 weapon).

So Wally Wizard casts elemental weapon on Fred Fighter, and everyone's happy. (2 actions)
Perry the Pyromaniac can play a gish, cast elemental weapon on his weapon (he can have a soul-weapon if it makes him happy--nobody ever, ever said the Soulknife was overpowered). It still takes him two actions, spread over two rounds. In a level or two when Perry unlocks the ability to cast-and-strike in one round, Wally the Wizard has better spells to buff Fred's attacks with.

Basically, Perry the Pyromaniac is what the 3X cleric was supposed to be. But the big difference is, the Wizard is incentivized to cast spells that buff Fred (or the entire party including Fred) rather than casting spells that defeat enemies directly.

Fred the Fighter has more HP, probably better AC, better BAB, more combat features. Perry can cast spells that let him match Fred's un-buffed combat output, but the optimum is Buffed Fred.


So I firmly disagree with your principle.

And it sounds like how the math fails in what little I've heard about Pathfinder 2e.

Pathfinder 2E just seems like such a slog.


For a generalist Wizard, though, it may be worth discussing.

My operating principle for thematic full-casters is that half of their spells should be thematic, and half from the basic Casters-R-Us list.


If the Fighter has a better chassis, *and* can contribute to an equal number of challenges, then the Wizard must contribute *more* with their spells to make up for the weaker chassis.

Take into account *how* they're contributing though. If Wally the Wizard casts Flaming Sword on Fred the Fighter's sword, and Fred does 15 damage and kills the bugbear, Wally's player feels like some of that damage is his. Which is good table play, in my opinion.


If the Fighter has a stronger chassis, but the Fighter can contribute to *fewer* scenarios than the Wizard, then, yes, the Wizard's contribution could be the same or lower than the Fighter's to balance their chassis differences.

I think that, unless the game is seriously crimped to only-combat scenarios, it's almost inevitable that spellcasters will contribute more than non-spellcasters. Fred and Wally killed the orc, but they have to run to escape from the ogre. That's a situation that having some magic is a huge help--cast Create Pit or an illusion or mass Expeditious Retreat.


Or you could give the Fighter an equal or weaker chassis than the Wizard. Although I'm not sure how you'd do that and still hit D&D's expectations.

So, for which combination of chassis, which distribution of contribution, and which version of spells (Vancian, at will, etc) would you see this working?

What I'm noodling is a 5-level structure, with Warriors (Barbarian chassis), Half-Casters (Cleric/Rogue chassis), Tricksters (Rogue chassis), and Fullcasters (Sorcerer/Wizard).

There are 4 levels of spells, 0 1 2 and 3.

Concentration and Exhaustion (only use a spell once per encounter) is a big limitation, so a lot of spells can be lower-level than they have been. And, if you reduce the numbers, a lot more spells can have lower level versions--a 1st level Wall of Fire maybe takes up 2 squares or hexes, does 2d6 damage if you bull your way through it.

A few things I munched:

"Fireball is over-tuned" I don't know that this means that "Fireball is OP", it means "If Fireball is OP you can fix that with math." As opposed to say illusions or charm spells.

"How do you balance the fact that casters are more useful out of combat than martials?" By having martials really shine in combat, personally.

Pex
2020-08-08, 03:41 PM
Two seemingly contradictory responses:

1) and that differs from what i did how?

2) and what would be wrong with designing the character first, then defining the challenges each level, then deciding which abilities the class gets at each level based on the expected challenges?

Back to #1… I can see that my examples were more… finely tuned… for level 6 combat challenges. A Troll, a few Ogres, an Orc army. Perhaps a level 6 social challenge might be… broker a treaty between two tribes, have two SO's accept each other, not be humiliated by unfriendly nobles.

Traps are probably a whole 'nother can of worms. However, perhaps we could generally say, when the Wizard's Simmons trivialize traps, the Cleric's Divinations, Rogue's skills, and Fighter's… something… should also trivialize those same traps.

Still, I suspect that the two - challenges and characters - should be tuned together, regardless of their initial creation order.



I'm not sure that's a fun way to balance. It would sound samey if everyone can do everything just in a different way. I could be wrong if the mechanics are significantly different. It's easier to see the point in high magic. The fighter doesn't need to be able to teleport just because the wizard can, no punching a hole in the multiverse. What he needs is to get something as awesome for him as the wizard likes teleporting when the wizard gets it, and the wizard cannot do that awesome thing too. What that awesome thing is is the conundrum, but I'm sure just bigger combat damage numbers is not it.

NigelWalmsley
2020-08-08, 04:23 PM
But like I suggested, making getting training something the player and character must do. Simply put making it a "quest". The idea being the character must gain an Experience Badge BEFORE they get a new ability. So characters don't just get stuff for free as they level up.

You do understand that people gain levels by going on adventures, right? You don't level up for free to begin with.


Because we've played 3X, and we've seen what rogues with +30 to skills can do compared to what casters can do with a few 1st-3rd level spell slots?

Be roughly competitive? That's actually substantially better than what a Rogue gets at those levels to begin with, and against the likes of Knock or Charm Person the fact that skills are at will is enough to make them meaningfully competitive. You can throw plenty of shade at 3e, but the fact is that it works very well at low levels.


I dunno, it worked out okay for 5th edition. It may not be your game, but it supplanted 4th Edition and Pathfinder as the market-dominant least-common-denominator game.

Every edition of D&D (except possibly 4e) has been the market-dominating game in its time. If you want to make the case that some design decision or other is correct, you need an example of a game that isn't synonymous with "TTRPG" to the general public doing it. Otherwise, we can just go around in circles pointing out that the various editions of D&D that didn't do that were successful in their own time.


Thor shoots lightning out of his hands. Kaladin is a Surgebinder and a Windrunner and a Stormlight and has healing powers and can turn his weapon into a shardblade and can fly (from a quick reading of a fan wiki). I don't know what most of that means, but it sounds magic.

Yes, exactly! In the source material, martial characters use magic. The idea that there are people who use magic and get to have cool abilities and other people (who are nominally co-equal with them) that do not is entirely a fabrication of D&D. The idea that you need to write a Wizard who is competitive with a guy who is "pretty strong" is one that exists only because grognards insist on it, and the game would be better mechanically and more accurately represent the fantasy stories people care about if it was discarded.


and that differs from what i did how?

The last part, not so much. The first part seemed like it was running through a list of caster abilities and going "what do martials need to solve the problem this solves".


and what would be wrong with designing the character first, then defining the challenges each level, then deciding which abilities the class gets at each level based on the expected challenges?

That's how you get the Monk.


It should be both. Wizards shouldn't have access to all the magic.

Wizards don't have access to all the magic. A Wizard can't just wake up in the morning and say "today, I would like to cast Raise Dead" or "today, I would like to bind Amon" or "today, I would like to bind the Incarnate Avatar to my Soul chakra". There's lots of magic Wizards don't have. In fact, they don't have most of the magic there is out there for the having. They may have the best magic, but that seems like it is at worst just as much a problem of the classes that aren't Wizard as the one that is.


"Why do we need to hire a ship when we've got a Wizard? Can't you just Teleport us there?"

"No, I've never seen our destination before."
"No, we're trying to land an army there and Teleport takes like ten people max."
"No, we're searching for the lost Isle of Gold, we don't know where 'there' is yet."
"No, we're supposed to patrol the shipping lane for pirates, what 'there' am I supposed to Teleport us to."

People bring up Teleport a lot in these discussions, but the more they do they less I believe they've actually read what the spell does.

ExLibrisMortis
2020-08-08, 04:25 PM
Basically balance sucks, mathematically speaking. Ground up balance even more so. People WANT broken messed up logic [...]
I think this is the crux.

(As usual for me, 3.5 bias incoming.)

"Mathematical" balance doesn't portray a world, or makes for an interesting setting. In a realistic setting, some things just work better. One way a rules-heavy RPG like D&D has an interesting meta is that you can figure out what works in the world you're given. As such, caster-martial disparity is not where D&D fails at all--it is a feature of the world. You can play a campaign with mundane characters, and experience the grind and misery of being nonmagical in a positively magic-saturated world, or you can play a campaign with magical characters, and you'll be the epic heroes who dine with the gods, because in this setting, that is what magic lets you do. (Eventually. If you survive.)

Now, that doesn't mean D&D gets it all right, either. D&D fails to explain correctly that there is an imbalance, what that means for the world, what sort of characters you can build under a system that is inherently imbalanced, how it allows for different power levels and optimization levels to live together in one party, and so on. Essentially, the problem is that WotC never leant in to the imbalance and made it part of the meta, and instead kept insisting the game was "balanced", as if that was ever the goal.

If a chess metaphor might be tolerated here: you can't improve chess by making all the pieces "balanced". Pawns are just ****, queens are amazing. That's what makes it interesting. No need to tell me pawns are very important, honest. And no need to remind me about go and checkers. I know they're interesting.

As an extention of this metaphor, clearly the way to balance D&D is to let everyone play eight fighters, two rogues, two paladins, two rangers, a wizard, and a cleric.

Kyutaru
2020-08-08, 05:11 PM
As an extention of this metaphor, clearly the way to balance D&D is to let everyone play eight fighters, two rogues, two paladins, two rangers, a wizard, and a cleric.
And that's precisely how the war tabletop games D&D was based on are balanced. :D

Modern stuff like Warhammer 40k is too. The game breaks when you try to put gun-toting Soldiers on the same level as daemon-summoning Psykers. One just costs more points to field because it's better.

JNAProductions
2020-08-08, 05:12 PM
So why should someone who wants to play a Fighter be necessarily worse than someone who wants to play a Wizard?

Why is their game fantasy less valid than the magic one?

johnbragg
2020-08-08, 05:22 PM
So why should someone who wants to play a Fighter be necessarily worse than someone who wants to play a Wizard?

Why is their game fantasy less valid than the magic one?

If the Fighter they want to play is Thor who can shoot lightning and fly and tear apart castles, or Iron Man who can solve problems with technobabble, then they can play in a high-fantasy campaign along with Loki.

If the Fighter they want to play is Conan, then they're not going to have much to do in a campaign built around the Loki power level. You have to be quite careful deciding what abilities Merlin can and cannot have if he's going to team up with King ARthur as anything close to a partnership.

EDIT: There is definitely room on the shelf for both games. But not at the same table at the same time.

NigelWalmsley
2020-08-08, 05:22 PM
So why should someone who wants to play a Fighter be necessarily worse than someone who wants to play a Wizard?

Pretty much. It's true that some things are better than other things. But we have a mechanism to represent that: level. If "mundane sword guy" is worse than "archmage", you can simply set up your level system so that the former is a 2nd level character and the latter a 15th level one. The whole notion that we need imbalance to represent a rich and detailed world is just false.


If the Fighter they want to play is Conan, then they're not going to have much to do in a campaign built around the Loki power level. You have to be quite careful deciding what abilities Merlin can and cannot have if he's going to team up with King ARthur as anything close to a partnership.

Well, sure, but that goes the other way too. If the Wizard is Merlin, the Barbarian can't be Thor. "Low level characters worse than high level characters" is not really a super meaningful argument about what the system as a whole should be doing.

johnbragg
2020-08-08, 05:32 PM
Pretty much. It's true that some things are better than other things. But we have a mechanism to represent that: level. If "mundane sword guy" is worse than "archmage", you can simply set up your level system so that the former is a 2nd level character and the latter a 15th level one. The whole notion that we need imbalance to represent a rich and detailed world is just false.

Early editions kinda sorta did this. After 9th level, you stopped getting Hit Dice and HP for Constitution and just added +1 to +3 based on your class. Before 2nd edition and THAC0, I believe your attacks stopped getting better. I think saving throw progression was also capped.

So the model wasn't even Linear Fighter, Quadratic Wizard. The Fighter's improvement slows down drastically at Name Level, because he's supposed to be growing in power by building a castle with an army. Meanwhile the Magic-User (and Cleric and Druid, and I suppose Bard)is continuing to grow in personal power, as he gets access to higher level spells.

johnbragg
2020-08-08, 05:38 PM
Well, sure, but that goes the other way too. If the Wizard is Merlin, the Barbarian can't be Thor. "Low level characters worse than high level characters" is not really a super meaningful argument about what the system as a whole should be doing.

But in 3X (this is mostly a 3X discussion, it's not as big an issue in any other edition), level is NOT an accurate measure of character power. A 5th level, 10th level, 15th level barbarian is Conan or Hercules or Rambo or Captain America. The only major difference is "+ Numbers." A 5th level, 10th level, 15th level wizard are different genres of fiction.

In 3X, a character who takes 20 levels of full BAB classes (excluding Tome of Battle) never gets beyond Conan or Aragorn.

Kyutaru
2020-08-08, 05:39 PM
Early editions kinda sorta did this.

Early editions also had different XP brackets for characters. Fighters needed 1000 xp to hit lvl 2 but Wizards needed 2500 xp. So even D&D recognized that wizards were better than fighters and gave fighters more levels faster to try and compensate.

Lagtime
2020-08-08, 06:00 PM
Now, try running that 1-20 game, only Wizards only get their initial 6 spells. They can upcast them with new slots, but they don't get any higher level spells or even any newer low level spells. You'll find that no one wants to play a Wizard. That's because getting new spells is the CORE FUNCTIONALITY of the Wizard class-they have other features, but a Wizard without their appropriate spells is a bad PC.


Odd you say getting new spells is the CORE FUNCTIONALITY of the Wizard class. I sure don't agree. I don't play a wizard sitting on the edge of my seat and saying "so what new spells do I get now"? And does not the wizard want new spells the same way every player of every character wants new abilities? Except the wizard is special and must get free access to all spells?


Same question as above: for which chassis of Wizard, which distribution of contribution, and which paradigm of spells do you recommend this?

Well, again, like D&D before 3E wizards and other spellcasters were limited as to what they could do. Wizards had a couple basic attack spells, a couple defensive ones, and a couple utility....but nothing like the 3E plus lists.





My experiences matches @JNAProductions here. Don't get me wrong - I love 2e, and i think it's the best (ie, the most fun) RPG. But random treasure and random spells guarantees imbalance. And I think that's great. But I don't see how it could lead to better balance. Except that it makes *combining* powers much harder, meaning you almost never get Force Cage plus Cloudkill, or (if they were items) Leap Attack plus Shock Trooper.

Well, my point is more if you limit the things that have a potential for imbalance, you will have less of or no balance problems. To make everything somehow perfectly balanced is impossible: someone will always disagree. But if you limit things, then they don't come up so much in the game. This is the idea also used by rituals: powerful spells that a character can't just 'dodge a troll and cast'.

If a wizard does not have the spells scry and teleport.....then the game effectively does not have to worry about the wizard using the "scry and die" exploit.



@Lagtime, care to explain your reasoning? Because I'd love if ideas from my favorite game were demonstrably beneficial for game balance.

It makes the DM the Balance Gatekeeper. Starting with 3E, with magic mostly, the core idea was "if it's printed in a book the players can automatically use it". Of course, it's enough to say that no system will ever be perfectly balanced. Even if you did try and make your Core rules somewhat balanced...you have no idea what might be published next.

In just about every D&D game ever, every DM has banned something. They just say "X is not in my game, and most every player is just fine with that. So....why not just make that part of the official rules?




Hmmm… this is a huge topic all by itself.

If "skill" can get you up to, say, a +20, and "buffs" can give you up to +5, then the best at, say, stealth, is the character with +20 skill who can give themselves a +5 buff. It means everyone is skilled, and everyone is a mage, or else they're suboptimal.

It also brings up "stacking" issues - he who can stack the most buffs, wins. Which, if the system limits how many of those buffs you can learn or maintain, favors numbers, the same way that action economy does. Is that a good thing?

My idea is magic can only enhance what is already there. If you have no ranks in a skill or no ability, then the magic can only add a very low bonus....like maybe max +5: it's low, but better then zero. If you do have ranks or the ability, then magic can increase it, based on how much you have, like maybe say double what you have. This way keeps all skilled ability characters relevant: they can't be replaced by magic. Magic can enhance what is there, but not create new skill ability from nothing.

You'd tweak the numbers so pure martial skills and abilities were always better then magic. Magic can help a low skilled or low ability character: but they will never be a match for a pure natural character (except for extremes like a 1st level character next to a 20th level character).


2E was also from an age where splatbooks were barely a thing. You had the PHB, maybe a couple of setting books, maybe somebody had a Dragon magazine subscription. But probably not.

2E had plenty of books....2E started the splat book spam. Not only did 2E have tons of soft cover splat books, but most adventure modules had stuff in them too. And Dragon was plenty popular too.



I ... don't really understand the logic of going through the effort of identifying the "broken", troublesome spells, and then....keeping them, in a box labeled "Do not open this box."

If you're putting in the work to identify the troublesome spells, ban and / or replace them.

Well, first off it's doubtful you could fix them "just right". And the trick is you, or a single writer or editor or such, might "think" they are fixed....but they won't be. D&D alone is full of such non fixes...right next to the ton of stuff that is beyond broken and they over look.


You do understand that people gain levels by going on adventures, right? You don't level up for free to begin with.


I'm introducing a new concept here.


Early editions kinda sorta did this.

Even better...in them old editions only fighters and fighter types got more then one attack.

JNAProductions
2020-08-08, 06:05 PM
Lagtime, feel free to play a 15th level Wizard knowing only six 1st-Level spells. Let me know how that goes.

johnbragg
2020-08-08, 06:35 PM
Odd you say getting new spells is the CORE FUNCTIONALITY of the Wizard class. I sure don't agree. I don't play a wizard sitting on the edge of my seat and saying "so what new spells do I get now"? And does not the wizard want new spells the same way every player of every character wants new abilities? Except the wizard is special and must get free access to all spells?


The academic wizard lusting after new spells, always looking for new magical knowledge, greedily hoarding scraps of arcane information is pretty deeply embedded in the lore of fantasy spellcasters.

Doesn't mean he has to get *free* access, but if he doesn't get *access*, that's a game-design and/or a table problem.

Spells, in the form of spellbooks and scrolls, are a physical object and treasure-type in the game. The spell-grubbing wizard searching for more and more arcane knowledge is a core part of the fiction. Fighters accumulating different exotic weapons is not.

It may not be THE core functionality of the class, but if the wizard isn't getting new spells over his career (whether by purchase, by finding them as treasure, getting them at level-up), it's a pretty big departure from most of D&D history.

Kyutaru
2020-08-08, 06:39 PM
Well, again, like D&D before 3E wizards and other spellcasters were limited as to what they could do. Wizards had a couple basic attack spells, a couple defensive ones, and a couple utility....but nothing like the 3E plus lists.

I agree in the literal sense but not in functionality. Wizards before 3E effectively had MORE spell potential because a lot of them weren't mechanical but roleplay oriented. The ones that did have mechanics also had compound effects and much less limited restrictions. Polymorph Any Object could do basically anything and players thought of ways to annihilate cities with it. Polymorph itself was quite powerful and Stoneskin blocked virtually anything completely. Stuff back then was few in number but very open in interpretation and versatile. Wizards had other limitations like fewer spell slots, fail chance on scroll learning, and inability to use armor.

Segev
2020-08-08, 07:01 PM
If the Fighter they want to play is Thor who can shoot lightning and fly and tear apart castles, or Iron Man who can solve problems with technobabble, then they can play in a high-fantasy campaign along with Loki.

If the Fighter they want to play is Conan, then they're not going to have much to do in a campaign built around the Loki power level. You have to be quite careful deciding what abilities Merlin can and cannot have if he's going to team up with King ARthur as anything close to a partnership.

EDIT: There is definitely room on the shelf for both games. But not at the same table at the same time.
I would argue that you could rephrase the above thusly:


If the Fighter they want to play is level 15+ and can shoot lightning and fly and tear apart castles, or can solve problems with technobabble about his high-magic items, then they can play in a high-fantasy campaign along with Loki.

If the Fighter they want to play is level 7 or lower, then they're not going to have much to do in a campaign built around the Loki power level. You have to be quite careful deciding what level the party wizard can and cannot be if he's going to team up with a level 9 fighter as anything close to a partnership.

EDIT: There is definitely room on the shelf for both levels of PCs. But not at the same table at the same time.

johnbragg
2020-08-08, 07:40 PM
I would argue that you could rephrase the above thusly:

I agree with what you sketched out there. It has been famously argued that Gandalf and Aragorn were 5th level. Conan could adventure with those guys and it's a perfectly playable game.

The break is in 3rd edition, where Loki and Dr Strange are reasonably playable concepts at 15th level, while the fighter is still Conan, not Thor. Before 3rd edition, the mid-teens weren't part of the core game--you're supposed to be off running a castle at those levels, your demihumans have hit their level caps, etc. In 5th edition, it works passably well. And I assume that 4th edition, balance-obsessed as it was and mathematically plotted, was the same game at 5th, 15th and 25th level that it was intended to be.

(Side note: Even in Avengers: Endgame, the Hulk is essentially written out of the story, and Thor has a breakdown because solving the Thanos problem beatstick-style was pointless).

Kyutaru
2020-08-08, 07:47 PM
And I assume that 4th edition, balance-obsessed as it was and mathematically plotted, was the same game at 5th, 15th and 25th level that it was intended to be.

That edition also highlights the subject matter of this topic and why perfectly balanced games can still be considered awful. Building the math from the ground up can be done. But it shouldn't be done.

NigelWalmsley
2020-08-08, 07:50 PM
Odd you say getting new spells is the CORE FUNCTIONALITY of the Wizard class.

You see a whole lot of functionality in the Wizard class that isn't "new spells"? If the Wizard doesn't get new spells on level-up, he gets actual nothing on level-up. The fact that the Wizard can get new spells as treasure is good. It allows for organic character growth, and can make particular campaigns more memorable. But player agency is also important, and Wizards can and should be able to select spells as they level up, just as other characters should be able to select the abilities they get.


Well, again, like D&D before 3E wizards and other spellcasters were limited as to what they could do.

People who have played 3e or read 3e books will note that this is also true in 3e.


If a wizard does not have the spells scry and teleport.....then the game effectively does not have to worry about the wizard using the "scry and die" exploit.

No, it just has to worry about the "Clairvoyance and Dimension Door" exploit, or whatever the next best thing turns out to be. And also you don't get scrying or teleportation, which are both iconic things for Wizards to do with their time. The reason Scry and Die is a problem is because of tactical and strategic incentives. It turns out that the optimal strategy for beating the big bad is very often "pop all your buffs and bum rush him". But if you look at the source material, that's not really the case. In Lord of the Rings, the Fellowship isn't trying to get directly into Sauron's stronghold and stab him in the face, they're trying to sneak around behind his back and undermine his power. If you want to fix Scry and Die, you should be looking at the underlying incentives, not just saying "no Teleport for you".


It makes the DM the Balance Gatekeeper.

Hey, I've got an idea: what if we had professional "Balance Gatekeepers" who designed the game so that it was balanced? We could call them, I don't know, "game designers" or something, and we could pay them to produce balanced rules so that we didn't have to fix things on the fly. I know it sounds like a crazy idea, but I think it could work.


You'd tweak the numbers so pure martial skills and abilities were always better then magic.

Why? There are plenty of characters in the source material who use magic to fight more effectively than normal warriors. Notably: every single superhero ever. What are we getting for declaring that none of those guys are allowed to exist?


I'm introducing a new concept here.

No, you aren't. "What if people went on adventures to get new abilities" is not a new concept, it's the exact way that D&D has always worked in every edition.


The break is in 3rd edition, where Loki and Dr Strange are reasonably playable concepts at 15th level, while the fighter is still Conan, not Thor.

That's not really a fair way of describing it. 3e didn't break things, it just presented a part of the game that has before (and, to be frank, since) been largely excluded. It's not like 2e, 4e, or 5e has a functional system for The Avengers either, they just don't even try.


That edition also highlights the subject matter of this topic and why perfectly balanced games can still be considered awful. Building the math from the ground up can be done. But it shouldn't be done.

The math in 4e isn't actually very good though. For all the "the math just works" buzzphrases, the game is not actually balanced, and is miserable to play in ways that are completely unrelated to class balance. Using 4e as an argument against balancing things falls apart when you realize that it's just a badly constructed game.

johnbragg
2020-08-08, 08:29 PM
That's not really a fair way of describing it. 3e didn't break things, it just presented a part of the game that has before (and, to be frank, since) been largely excluded. It's not like 2e, 4e, or 5e has a functional system for The Avengers either, they just don't even try.

True. It's only 3E where it became a vaguely real possibility.


The math in 4e isn't actually very good though. For all the "the math just works" buzzphrases, the game is not actually balanced, and is miserable to play in ways that are completely unrelated to class balance. Using 4e as an argument against balancing things falls apart when you realize that it's just a badly constructed game.

OK, I'm just trying to be fair (retroactively) to a game I never wanted to play. You saying that 4E isn't balanced is like hearing that a tree isn't wooden enough.

But I think 4E taught that "balance" is not the only consideration in game design. You have to pay some attention to balance, or you have 3E-type problems. You have to, er, balance it against other consideration. But it's not the only thing.

JNAProductions
2020-08-08, 08:31 PM
OK, I'm just trying to be fair (retroactively) to a game I never wanted to play. You saying that 4E isn't balanced is like hearing that a tree isn't wooden enough.

But I think 3E and 4E taught that "balance" is not the only consideration in game design. You have to, er, balance it against other consideration.

As someone with a moderate amount of 4E experience, it's not perfectly balanced. They got some of the numbers wrong-really only noticeable at high levels, and they did make fixes. Not the best fixes, but they're there.

Also, I like 4E. It's fun. I wouldn't want it to be the base for a hypothetical 6E, but I would enjoy it as a base for a tag-along D&D Tactics game.

Cluedrew
2020-08-08, 08:51 PM
So suppose - say, for 6th edition - people wanted to build the game from the ground up, build the math from the ground up to make all D&D classes "balanced", by which I mean "able to contribute, and occasionally shine", and no more "linear Fighter, quadratic Wizard".Sure, you can do that - many systems already have - but you have to be willing to make real changes and that really seems to be the issue. Marketing the system has time and time again won out over making a good system.

And really its not the math that is the problem, its the paradigms involved. Mechanically speaking there are three power sources: strikes, skills and spells. OK I messed with the name of attack bonus, save values and HP to get some alliteration going. Maybe fighter, rogue and wizard would be better labels as a representative of the three groups. As a fighter grows they get better at killing and harder to kill, but you could already kill things and could avoid getting killed so that isn't anything new. As a rogue your skill modifiers go up, which allow you to pass more and more skill checks... and depending what those skill checks are it can effect things. As a wizard though you get new rules which open up new options, including some that hard negate the standard abilities on others or give you them.

You cannot fix this problem with math. They exist on different levels and one kind of overrides the other. If you fix that then we can we can start working out the details.

NigelWalmsley
2020-08-08, 09:01 PM
You saying that 4E isn't balanced is like hearing that a tree isn't wooden enough.

It is pretty balanced. The broader/more important point is that 4e has a bunch of problems that are totally unrelated to class balance (e.g. Skill Challenges don't work, Solos are a miserable grind, resource management is unsatisfying), so saying "this is what you get when you try to balance the game" is a less plausible explanation of it's failure than "this is what you get when you design a game that is bad".


Also, I like 4E. It's fun. I wouldn't want it to be the base for a hypothetical 6E, but I would enjoy it as a base for a tag-along D&D Tactics game.

I actually think there are a lot of things 6e should borrow from 4e. 4e's notions of monster categories, tiers, and skill challenges are all things that, if better executed, would work very well for D&D. The issue is that they're all just kinda bad.

The notion of a game with a single unified resource management mechanic is also interesting, though I think it's a very bad fit for D&D specifically. Also, 4e's incredibly limited multiclassing really gimped what you could do with a system like that. It's something where Open Multiclassing could actually work.


And really its not the math that is the problem, its the paradigms involved. Mechanically speaking there are three power sources: strikes, skills and spells. OK I messed with the name of attack bonus, save values and HP to get some alliteration going. Maybe fighter, rogue and wizard would be better labels as a representative of the three groups. As a fighter grows they get better at killing and harder to kill, but you could already kill things and could avoid getting killed so that isn't anything new. As a rogue your skill modifiers go up, which allow you to pass more and more skill checks... and depending what those skill checks are it can effect things. As a wizard though you get new rules which open up new options, including some that hard negate the standard abilities on others or give you them.

But doesn't the way you're describing those things reveal that your argument is fundamentally flawed? "BAB, Saves, HP" isn't a "pick two" situation (let alone "pick one"), everyone gets all those things. So if the problem is that the Wizard is getting cool new abilities and unlocking new options, isn't the solution to just let everyone do that? There are something like a dozen reasonably-balance casting classes in 3e, and it would be trivial to write more. It would even be fairly easy to write classes that got new abilities or worked in different ways at roughly that level.

johnbragg
2020-08-08, 09:07 PM
Sure, you can do that - many systems already have - but you have to be willing to make real changes and that really seems to be the issue.

There are sacred cows that have to be either slaughtered, neutered or somehow dealt with. "Charm Person", for example, is a sacred cow as a first level spell. But almost nobody is willing to DM a table where a first level spell does what "Charm Person" says on the tin. Etc etc.


And really its not the math that is the problem, its the paradigms involved. Mechanically speaking there are three power sources: strikes, skills and spells. OK I messed with the name of attack bonus, save values and HP to get some alliteration going. Maybe fighter, rogue and wizard would be better labels as a representative of the three groups. As a fighter grows they get better at killing and harder to kill, but you could already kill things and could avoid getting killed so that isn't anything new. As a rogue your skill modifiers go up, which allow you to pass more and more skill checks... and depending what those skill checks are it can effect things. As a wizard though you get new rules which open up new options, including some that hard negate the standard abilities on others or give you them.

You cannot fix this problem with math. They exist on different levels and one kind of overrides the other. If you fix that then we can we can start working out the details.

But you have to pay attention to the math, and you can use the math to identify problem spots, and make and use design guidelines. "Caster-strike << Unbuffed Martial strike << Buffed Martial strike", and "Skill-negating-spell << Unbuffed skillmonkey << Buffed skillmonkey."

You know, I typed that out, and it applies to what I'm doing. But it only applies to low(ish) levels, where hit point damage and skill DCs are relevant considerations. In high level 3X, those are at best speed bumps. For that game, you probably need to openly ban "pure-martials", and mandate that PCs above level X acquire abilities beyond Conan-level abilities through templates or prestige classes or divine rank or whatever mechanics to advance Conan to Hercules/the Hulk to Thor.

Lagtime
2020-08-08, 09:16 PM
It's not a departure, it's going back to the roots. In the D&D's before 3E a wizard had to find any and all spells they wanted in game play. There was no rule, like in 3E and after where a wizard gets free spells every level.

[QUOTE=Kyutaru;24652991]I agree in the literal sense but not in functionality.

Well, you aslo had the DM is God effect. A DM could just say something did not work, or at least did not work as the player intended. It's a concept that 5E has brought back to the game.


You see a whole lot of functionality in the Wizard class that isn't "new spells"? If the Wizard doesn't get new spells on level-up, he gets actual nothing on level-up. The fact that the Wizard can get new spells as treasure is good. It allows for organic character growth, and can make particular campaigns more memorable. But player agency is also important, and Wizards can and should be able to select spells as they level up, just as other characters should be able to select the abilities they get.

Though everyone agress that spells are far, far, far, far more powerful then most skills, feats or abilities any other class might get, right? That does mean they should be treated differently. And, like I suggested, there could be a small list of common simple spells for a wizard to pick from.






No, it just has to worry about the "Clairvoyance and Dimension Door" exploit,

Well, you just go down the esploit list and check them off one by one until they are all gone.



Hey, I've got an idea: what if we had professional "Balance Gatekeepers" who designed the game so that it was balanced? We could call them, I don't know, "game designers" or something, and we could pay them to produce balanced rules so that we didn't have to fix things on the fly. I know it sounds like a crazy idea, but I think it could work.

I doubt it could ever work. The game designers just don't get it. Just look at exhibit A of every single edition of D&D starting with 3E. They have had four chances to fix it...and just look at what they did.



Why? There are plenty of characters in the source material who use magic to fight more effectively than normal warriors. Notably: every single superhero ever. What are we getting for declaring that none of those guys are allowed to exist?

Well, you do know D&D is not a superhero game, right? And plenty of super heroes use no "magic", like for example Captain America and Batman and Black Widow and Hawkeye.

And anyway I was saying that magic could only greatly enhance those that already had the skills and abilities. So Dr. Strange could cast a spell on Captain America to make him a better fighter, but if Dr Strange cast the same spell on himself he would only be able to get to the level of like "a normal agent mook of SHIELD. And a fighter/mage type (can't think of a good superhero to fit here) could only get to about the Nomad/Free Spirit/Jack Flagg level.



No, you aren't. "What if people went on adventures to get new abilities" is not a new concept, it's the exact way that D&D has always worked in every edition.

My suggestion was that the character needs to personally do a specific task, not just go on an adventure.




There are sacred cows that have to be either slaughtered, neutered or somehow dealt with. "Charm Person", for example, is a sacred cow as a first level spell. But almost nobody is willing to DM a table where a first level spell does what "Charm Person" says on the tin. Etc etc.

This is not true. Just ask anyone of us that still plays the older style of D&D.

NigelWalmsley
2020-08-08, 09:32 PM
Though everyone agress that spells are far, far, far, far more powerful then most skills, feats or abilities any other class might get, right?

Yes. Which is why other classes should get better abilities. The problem is not that the Wizard is too good. The Wizard is, with a few exceptions, in line with what Wizards in the source material can do. Someone like Quick Ben, Doctor Strange, Anasûrimbor Kellhus, Arachne Tellwyrn, or The Hierophant would not be at all out of place in a high level D&D party. Conversely, martial classes consistently fail to measure up to what powerful martial characters can do. You can't build Thor as a Barbarian. You can't build Kaladin as a Fighter. You can't can't build Kylar Stern as a Rogue. There is a mismatch here, and if you look at the kinds of stories D&D is trying to emulate, it is very clearly with the martials.


Well, you just go down the esploit list and check them off one by one until they are all gone.

So we're going to remove every single effect in the game that allows you to consistently attack with the advantage of surprise? I feel like maybe your proposal has some issues.


Well, you do know D&D is not a superhero game, right? And plenty of super heroes use no "magic", like for example Captain America and Batman and Black Widow and Hawkeye.

If you think Thor, Doctor Strange, and Wonder Woman aren't source material for D&D (especially now), I think you're fundamentally misunderstanding what people are expecting from the fantasy genre.

Captain America has a magic artifact shield, super-strength, and gets lightning powers in Endgame. Batman is, particularly in incarnations where he teams up with Superman, basically a near-Epic Artificer. Black Widow and Hawkeye are basically sidekicks for most of the movies they're in, and at no point are they treated as being as important as the likes of Thor, Iron Man, and Doctor Strange to the heroes'

johnbragg
2020-08-08, 09:40 PM
It's not a departure, it's going back to the roots. In the D&D's before 3E a wizard had to find any and all spells they wanted in game play. There was no rule, like in 3E and after where a wizard gets free spells every level.

OK, I misunderstood you. We understood you as suggesting a wizard who didn't learn new spells at all (whether the spells were obtained as treasure, purchased, exchanged with other wizards or earned by researching and gained at level up).



And anyway I was saying that magic could only greatly enhance those that already had the skills and abilities. So Dr. Strange could cast a spell on Captain America to make him a better fighter, but if Dr Strange cast the same spell on himself he would only be able to get to the level of like "a normal agent mook of SHIELD. And a fighter/mage type (can't think of a good superhero to fit here) could only get to about the Nomad/Free Spirit/Jack Flagg level.

I think the best counterparts to fighter-mages in superhero comics are Iron Man and Batman.


This (No one would play with Charm Person as a first level spell) is not true. Just ask anyone of us that still plays the older style of D&D.

You're right. It works okay in older editions because magic-users have a lot fewer spells, so one Charm Person a day is what a first-level gets.

Kyutaru
2020-08-08, 09:53 PM
Captain America has a magic artifact shield, super-strength, and gets lightning powers in Endgame. Batman is, particularly in incarnations where he teams up with Superman, basically a near-Epic Artificer. Black Widow and Hawkeye are basically sidekicks for most of the movies they're in, and at no point are they treated as being as important as the likes of Thor, Iron Man, and Doctor Strange to the heroes'
Perhaps the DIRECTOR didn't treat them as important in your eyes but the characters valued each other's skills very much and mourned losses equally. A thief and a logistics agent aren't going to be on the frontline hammering the bad guys as effectively as the giant mutant and the literal god but that's because the latter has combat as their role focus. D&D is not a combat game and if you treat anyone who isn't explicitly geared for smashing dragons as bad then you're missing the point. This was much more apparent in AD&D when the thief and cleric made due playing second fiddle during battle as the supports they were while fighters and mages wreaked havoc. Not everyone can be the quarterback but he's not the most OP position on the team either, not without his linebackers and running back. The game may make it seem like he's the most important position due to the rules but he almost never scores a single point. Dependence on the team and allies to carry the workload should show people that it's not a one man operation and that other roles are not bad simply because they aren't center stage.

A balanced game isn't one where every class can smash Cthulhu in the same number of rounds. Some classes can't touch him at all and have to rely on their friends to do that part of the adventure while they cheer from the sidelines or perform "more important" tasks while he's distracted.



I think the best counterparts to fighter-mages in superhero comics are Iron Man and Batman.
Yep, and also good examples of why martials/nonmagicals/Muggles are heavily gear dependent. Casters progress by acquiring arcane knowledge while warriors progress by acquiring equipment and training. The whole point of saying "XXX can't wear armor or use fancy weapons" is to highlight the fact that there is someone else who can.

NigelWalmsley
2020-08-08, 10:00 PM
Perhaps the DIRECTOR didn't treat them as important in your eyes but the characters valued each other's skills very much and mourned losses equally.

They also mourned Coulson. Are you going to suggest that "mid-level employee of an intelligence agency" is a character concept we should consider to be balanced with "god of thunder"?


D&D is not a combat game and if you treat anyone who isn't explicitly geared for smashing dragons as bad then you're missing the point.

Oh, definitely. That's why one of the three core rulebooks is entirely dedicated to non-combat encounters. Wait, no, it's the opposite of that and has been for the entire time that D&D has existed. My bad.

Kyutaru
2020-08-08, 10:25 PM
Oh, definitely. That's why one of the three core rulebooks is entirely dedicated to non-combat encounters. Wait, no, it's the opposite of that and has been for the entire time that D&D has existed. My bad.

*looks at the DMG* How can you be right on your first point and then recant it so easily?

D&D has been about the roleplaying for so long that I still remember when most spellcaster spells had no numbers in them at all, just a bunch of words describing what silly effects they had on the terrain or some NPC miles away from them. There's an entire branch of magic called Divination that until recently had near no combat value at all. The DM exists to direct the story and the combat, not to adjudicate as referee of the rolling.

I mean hell we have skill checks despite most of them being utterly useless in any sort of combat situation. There is literally no point to half of what's on a character sheet without the roleplay focus of the game. This is NOT Chainmail or a tactics miniature game. The NPCs didn't even have tactics until recently when 4th and 5th tried to tell people how they are supposed to fight.

In fact, in AD&D, which we seem to be talking about a lot today, three of the stats had no mechanical value for the majority of the classes! Only Strength, Dexterity, and Constitution actually mattered! So why have three useless stats in a "combat" game before we even had Charisma-based casters?

NigelWalmsley
2020-08-08, 10:46 PM
*looks at the DMG* How can you be right on your first point and then recant it so easily?

By not being right? Like, the DMG is factually not a book full of purely non-combat stuff. Certainly not mechanical non-combat stuff in the way that the MM is mechanical combat stuff.


I mean hell we have skill checks despite most of them being utterly useless in any sort of combat situation.

Look at the rules for skill checks. Now look at the rules for combat. Now tell me with a straight face that those are things the designers intended as equally important parts of the game.


This is NOT Chainmail or a tactics miniature game.

Except that's literally the exact thing it is. That's where D&D came from. D&D is, at it's core, a bunch of other stuff stapled onto a combat engine. That other stuff can be important, but the combat engine is still the core of what's going on. It's like how action movies having character development doesn't make them not action movies. The fact that John Wick finds emotional catharsis and adopts a new dog doesn't magically make John Wick a drama about getting over personal loss and finding meaning in the world.


So why have three useless stats in a "combat" game before we even had Charisma-based casters?

Wait, you're telling me that AD&D was a confusing and poorly designed mess that had things that don't make sense? And this from the game that brought us such tightly-designed mechanics as "variable level XP", "racial level limits", and "THAC0"!

The fact that AD&D doesn't make sense unless you make some assumption or other isn't an argument that those assumptions are foundational to it, it is an acknowledgement that the game doesn't make sense. If 3e fans demanded their game get half the leeway AD&D grognards expect as a matter of course, they'd get laughed out of every single argument about D&D ever.

Kyutaru
2020-08-08, 11:09 PM
By not being right? Like, the DMG is factually not a book full of purely non-combat stuff. Certainly not mechanical non-combat stuff in the way that the MM is mechanical combat stuff.Considering the PHB is where the combat rules are, I disagree and find the DMGs to be much more fluff-oriented. Especially the 2nd edition one which was primarily about world-building, not from a mechanical perspective but from a fluff one.


Look at the rules for skill checks. Now look at the rules for combat. Now tell me with a straight face that those are things the designers intended as equally important parts of the game.The designers intended equality. You're assuming you CAN quantify skill checks better without being exclusionary or forcing DMs to accept check results that hurt them. Much of the game is abstracted because roleplaying itself is an abstract artform. When writing rules related to it one cannot be overly strict or exacting, which FYI was tried before in past editions and subsequently abandoned, because allowing the DMs more freedom works better in practice. Combat, on the other hand, can easily have exact formulas laid down for the purpose of STREAMLINING the process and keeping it from bogging down the campaign for literal hours with the back and forth rolling. Let math solve what math can solve and let liberal arts handle what liberal arts handles best.


Except that's literally the exact thing it is. That's where D&D came from. D&D is, at it's core, a bunch of other stuff stapled onto a combat engine. That other stuff can be important, but the combat engine is still the core of what's going on. It's like how action movies having character development doesn't make them not action movies. The fact that John Wick finds emotional catharsis and adopts a new dog doesn't magically make John Wick a drama about getting over personal loss and finding meaning in the world.I know D&D's origins but what you're claiming is like saying 2nd edition is the same as 3rd edition. Origins mean nothing to a new edition where everything is up for change. Old D&D was based off wargames but had roleplay as its focus, it was not just another wargame, there was neither sense, nor need, nor even the exact and in-depth rule system that those wargames had. Players didn't have to ask the DM's permission in Chainmail, they already knew all the things they were permitted to do. There were charts of them all with exact costs and penalties. Some of it carried over to D&D but was replaced instead with the theatrics and mental imagery with players solving encounters through clever thoughts rather than hard rules. As we moved away from the wargame origins, those detailed charts began to fade away and be replaced with -- nothing. Not a damn thing, now it's purely up to how the DM wants to handle it. Not because the game is becoming less but becomes it's removing the limitations on the imagination of the game's designer, the real designer, the one you actually play with for whom rules are merely guidelines and suggestions than actual law.


Wait, you're telling me that AD&D was a confusing and poorly designed mess that had things that don't make sense? And this from the game that brought us such tightly-designed mechanics as "variable level XP", "racial level limits", and "THAC0"!
No, quite the opposite, and people who found subtraction harder than addition were the only ones who complained about THAC0. It's literally the same thing and actually slightly better from a geek perspective because it eliminates one of the steps in quickly determining odds. If you want to do that today you still have to resort to subtraction after the fact, which is just redundant when it could have built into the system like THAC0 was. But I totally get why it was changed for normal people who didn't understand how math and probability worked.


The fact that AD&D doesn't make sense unless you make some assumption or other isn't an argument that those assumptions are foundational to it, it is an acknowledgement that the game doesn't make sense. If 3e fans demanded their game get half the leeway AD&D grognards expect as a matter of course, they'd get laughed out of every single argument about D&D ever.No, the fact that AD&D makes perfect sense to me is a sign that I'm aware of its roleplaying and abstraction values that are a far cry from 3E's hard-coded nonsense and blatant RAW abuse. 3rd edition was the joke of an edition where two equally leveled characters of the same class could be radically different tiers of power purely because of some non-class features they exploited. You think different classes have different XP progression was laughable while I found 3e's spiked chains denying melee entry to even worse. D&D broke as a game when it gave in to 3e's munchkins and finally realized the mistake that was stat stacking and feat spam when they moved on to the newer editions.

Segev
2020-08-08, 11:12 PM
I agree with what you sketched out there. It has been famously argued that Gandalf and Aragorn were 5th level. Conan could adventure with those guys and it's a perfectly playable game.

The break is in 3rd edition, where Loki and Dr Strange are reasonably playable concepts at 15th level, while the fighter is still Conan, not Thor. Before 3rd edition, the mid-teens weren't part of the core game--you're supposed to be off running a castle at those levels, your demihumans have hit their level caps, etc. In 5th edition, it works passably well. And I assume that 4th edition, balance-obsessed as it was and mathematically plotted, was the same game at 5th, 15th and 25th level that it was intended to be.


We agree on the part I wanted to make clear, good. Because my position is that of those who say, “Buff fighters; don’t nerf mages.”

That’s not to say I oppose all possible nerfs to mages, but I feel focusing on that as a solution is both a doomed endeavor and diminishing the game.

People will gripe that buffing fighters denies them the game where they play Conan. I disagree. Conan is 5th to 10th level (as a ballpark). Buffing fighters so they keep up with mages can leave Conan perfectly playable at the levels he operates. If you’re playing at levels 11+, though, Conan isn’t a viable concept for the same reason that he isn’t a viable character in Dragonball Z.

In other words, the understanding of what levels represent certain concepts cleans up objections to buffing fighters to keep up with mages by pointing out that you’re not denying the lower-“magic” concepts by buffing fighters, but the players need to know at what level they want to play to have the characters they want.

Kyutaru
2020-08-08, 11:36 PM
People will gripe that buffing fighters denies them the game where they play Conan. I disagree. Conan is 5th to 10th level (as a ballpark). Buffing fighters so they keep up with mages can leave Conan perfectly playable at the levels he operates. If you’re playing at levels 11+, though, Conan isn’t a viable concept for the same reason that he isn’t a viable character in Dragonball Z.
Hear, hear!

Seriously, it's alarming that I keep seeing the same sorts of character tropes used as the staples for warriors when many of them relate to low level campaigns. I mean no one in Conan was dimension dooring into battle with three abjurations up to disable the horde of orcs with a single sleep spell. Why is there this huge gulf between Aragorn/Conan and some like Goku? There are clearly examples in between in folklore and mythology that D&D has apparently forgotten about because the only thing fighters deserve is slightly better stabbing DPS.

Ignimortis
2020-08-09, 12:07 AM
The martials pretty much need an Author twisting the plot in their favor though.

Because we've played 3X, and we've seen what rogues with +30 to skills can do compared to what casters can do with a few 1st-3rd level spell slots?

The issue is precisely in not having high-level skill applications that would be worthwhile. As in, a bad equivalent of Fly is a DC120 (IIRC) Balance check. One of those is a 3rd level spell. The other requires hyper-optimization towards to be achievable even at level 20. That is because the game didn't think there should be a reasonable point where skills should be able to replicate magic at-will. That is a good design consideration. Personally, I think it's perfectly fine for skills to get at-will "magic" effects a few levels later. At-will Flight or something closely resembling it (jumps 50 feet high, standing on air until your next turn, etc.) at level 9 shouldn't break the game, you've had Flight for 4 levels now and for 2 levels it hasn't been in the highest spell slot anyway.



I dunno, it worked out okay for 5th edition. It may not be your game, but it supplanted 4th Edition and Pathfinder as the market-dominant least-common-denominator game.


Lowest common denominator is right. 5e is precisely what people expect from D&D through pop-culture osmosis. But the problem is, 5e didn't even try to solve the martial-caster imbalance outside of combat. They're just better balanced in combat, as in, casters don't steal the spotlight as hard as they did in 3e.



Part of the issue is, you can't have a game where Conan and Dr Manhattan are anything like equally contributing party members. If you're playing a game with Conan, you have to limit the casters accordingly. If you're playing Elric Stormbringer or Kaladin or Thor, your big beatstick guys need to do magic.

I will assume that you meant "they need to be explicitly supernatural and non-mundane", because "do magic" to me sounds like "spellcasting". Spellcasting shouldn't be the only way to fantastic powers.




Sure. Which is why there should be more effects in the game. The problem isn't that the Wizard has a variety of abilities and can do something useful in most situations. I mean, seriously, read those words and tell me with a straight face that you're describing a problem. It's that the Fighter doesn't and can't. If you look at the source material, there are plenty of characters who are competitive with mid or high level Wizards at reasonable optimization. This problem is really not nearly as hard as the "nerf Wizards" crowd seems to believe. Read something by Sanderson or Zelazny and you'll quickly discover that it's entirely possible to have both incredibly powerful characters and meaningful stakes.

How can you add more effects to the game? What sort of interaction with basic mechanics is still not covered? Summoning, HP damage, debuffs, buffs, ability damage, level damage, you name it (except healing/damage removal), Wizard has access to it by default. It's very hard to invent something new in that space. I can potentially name Iron Heart Surge (or at least what it intended to do) as a semi-new effect, and maybe White Raven Tactics too. Everything else has a spell version of it, and wizards have access to one of the biggest spell lists ever.

I've read a lot of stuff by Zelazny (I love it, tbh), and in the end most of his characters did things either through melee/ranged combat amped up to 11 (Creatures of Light and Darkness, Lord of Light, Lord Demon), general melee/ranged combat with magic item use (first five to eight books of Amber), or pure combat magic force (Amber, latter half of Merlin cycle when he has the spikard). Almost every important character in the books has innate Plane Shift and a deck of Teleport without Error cards hard-locked onto certain people or places, which helps a lot with storytelling, especially for Corwin, who simply doesn't do magic at all.

But nobody in those books could summon a few fervently loyal creatures instantly, resurrect the dead, heal damage magically, or do half the stuff Wizards actually get up to. Sure, they could do some things (obtain resources, in time, with hard work and knowledge and their innate Plane Shift to find stuff which they want to find), they by default had superhuman strength/stamina/regenerative powers/longevity, and some of them (but not all) could use magic effectively - which was still mostly low-level D&D spells like Invisibility or Scorching Ray or Slow Fall instead of Meteor Swarm and so on. The essaying of Pattern/Logrus basically applied a souped-up (or even equal) version of Heal.



Why not start with that? If we're going to buff martials anyway, why not start with that and see where it gets us? People don't like having their toys taken away, but they do like having new toys. Therefore, it behooves us to try a great deal of the latter before insisting on the former, rather than cramming a bunch of nerfs down the Wizard's throat and giving the Fighter some new toys as an afterthought. Until I can play Kaladin (Stormlight Archive), Thor (Marvel), Karsa Orlong (Malazan), and Ranger (A Practical Guide to Evil) in D&D, I see no reason that we need to do anything to nerf the Wizard.

I'd say that while Fighters should grow up to be Thor, that doesn't put them on equal footing with high-level D&D Wizards. That just means that they don't need to be buffed to do their thing, and they do their thing so well that a Wizard cannot really compete with it. If that's what it is, you're gonna have to deny a Wizard some way to participate in certain challenges, since they can't actually contribute. And if they can, then why do we have Thor again, if we can have another Doctor Strange to bend reality into a donut again? Comic book writers are pretty much like DMs - they have to show hard favoritism and use plot devices to avoid those situations. Also, there aren't any more Doctor Stranges, there's only one, but in a game like D&D you can have five. In the same party, even.


In 5th edition, it works passably well.

Only because 5e was designed around HP damage as the primary resolution to everything combat-related, and a lot of stuff that made beatsticks poorly suited for combat at higher levels (monster abilities, mostly) was removed. 5e desperately tries to stay the same game in the 8-20 segment as it was in 1-7 - just beat the target to death with very few hangups outside of flying and possible resistances (that magic weapons bypass).



In other words, the understanding of what levels represent certain concepts cleans up objections to buffing fighters to keep up with mages by pointing out that you’re not denying the lower-“magic” concepts by buffing fighters, but the players need to know at what level they want to play to have the characters they want.

This. D&D has never thought hard enough about what a Fighter or a Rogue past level 7 should look like. 3e tried with Prestige Classes (which were usually bad), 4e tried with Paragon Paths, but somehow 5e didn't do anything reasonable - even level 20 capstones are bad or wouldn't look out of place at level 11-13 narratively.

My solution to that would be somewhat similar to 4e - divide the game into tiers more directly. No more 20-level Fighter tables.

Tier 1 is levels 1-4, you have your Fighter, your Rogue, your Apprentice (why is a level 1 caster able to learn any of the level 1 spells, again?), your Devout, etc.
At level 5, they graduate to several other paths - your Fighter is now a Warlord, or an Armsmaster, or an Eldritch Knight. Your Rogue is an Assassin, or Archaeologist Tomb Raider, or an Arcane Trickster. Your Apprentice is now an Evoker, or an Abjurer, etc. Devouts graduate to proper Clerics of their god and domain.
At level 11 they graduate again - your Fighter 4/Armsmaster 6 is now a Sword Saint, or Conqueror, or Magus. Your Rogue is now a Shadowdancer, or Dread Pirate, or Nightblade. Your Evoker can now actually call himself a proper Wizard, or they can branch off and become a Blood Mage or High Summoner or something. Your Cleric is now a Herald, or Sunlight Blade, or something.
At level 16 you get the final advancement, and your Fighter isn't really the same Fighter you played 10 levels ago - because you're not supposed to be playing the same game. Instead you're a Godslayer or Warmaster or Seven-Curse Blade. Rogues are straight Soulstealers or Living Shadows or Grand Tricksters, and Wizards are now Archmages or Worldsages, and Clerics are just <god> Incarnate.

So Fighter is kind of simplistic - but that lasts for four levels, for you to get your bearings. And Apprentice isn't much better, they've got like three cantrips and five spells total, so there isn't much complexity there either. But at level 5 Fighter gets maneuvers and better skill use, Rogues get some new tricks and massively better skill use (probably replicating level 1 spells by now, and level 3 spells by the end of the tier), and casters actually get slots to do their thing more often, as well as higher-level slots and some minor features to supplement them. And that continues through the tiers - everyone gets level-appropriate abilities and ways to overcome previous tier's challenges somewhat easily.

Mechalich
2020-08-09, 01:11 AM
Comic book writers are pretty much like DMs - they have to show hard favoritism and use plot devices to avoid those situations. Also, there aren't any more Doctor Stranges, there's only one, but in a game like D&D you can have five. In the same party, even.

Comic book writers also have to deploy endless work-arounds, plot-devices, and just outright cheating (known collectively as 'comic book logic') to hold their worlds together. Most superhero universes fundamentally do not function from a world-building perspective and this deeply compromises certain storylines and renders others flatly impossible unless they're played purely for comedy.

The various fantasy worlds that people often mention as having high-powered 'martial' types tend to be superhero universes and they tend to have the same sort of world-building problems.

There's nothing wrong with doing fantasy superheroes, of course, but many D&D players are deeply resistant to that idea and certainly much of the media upon which D&D is based is likewise based on fantasy worlds where things like armies and fortifications actually matter.

Ignimortis
2020-08-09, 01:23 AM
There's nothing wrong with doing fantasy superheroes, of course, but many D&D players are deeply resistant to that idea and certainly much of the media upon which D&D is based is likewise based on fantasy worlds where things like armies and fortifications actually matter.

Then that hypothetical 6e that caters to that perception should probably have maybe 10 levels, with casters outright not getting anything cooler than Raise Dead and Teleportation Circle (instead of Teleport). Fireballs are still devastating to armies, but there aren't any Meteor Swarms to level city blocks and castles and break an army in half. Fighters can still die from one or two hundred archers all focus firing on one Fighter. As it is in 5e, we have people with powers far beyond what such a setting entails, and then we have Fighters who still die from being stuck with lots of arrows, and it's always been this way (maybe 4e avoided it, I haven't played it enough to know).

Segev
2020-08-09, 05:13 AM
Just going to chime in that I think “do magical things” need not mean “cast spells.” The fighter who, in 3.5, used Supreme Cleave to literally murder his way from one end of a city to the other in 6 seconds may have been (Ex) in game terms, but qualifies as “doing magical things” for purposes of discussions where the “mundane” is defined by “The Guy At The Gym.”

I tend to push for Extraordinary features to be up there in power at appropriate levels. I also push for non-casters to have more spell-like and especially Supernatural abilities, too, as they get higher level.

An Incarnum user doesn’t feel like a spellcaster. But definitely is doing magical things.

Mechalich
2020-08-09, 06:27 AM
Then that hypothetical 6e that caters to that perception should probably have maybe 10 levels, with casters outright not getting anything cooler than Raise Dead and Teleportation Circle (instead of Teleport). Fireballs are still devastating to armies, but there aren't any Meteor Swarms to level city blocks and castles and break an army in half. Fighters can still die from one or two hundred archers all focus firing on one Fighter. As it is in 5e, we have people with powers far beyond what such a setting entails, and then we have Fighters who still die from being stuck with lots of arrows, and it's always been this way (maybe 4e avoided it, I haven't played it enough to know).

Sort of. E6/E8 and similar mods are things that exist, as are settings like Eberron and Golarion which institute a sort of soft level cap for NPCs and monsters (though they tend to violate them in adventure paths). And even going back to the earlier editions of D&D it was originally intended that gameplay would change drastically at around the level 10 mark and characters would largely cease traditional adventuring and become a part of the game world backdrop. That didn't actually happen, of course. Instead, we got the BGII model, where gameplay remains functionally the same even as levels reach near to 40+ and the powers simply grow flashier and the numbers bigger but nothing fundamental actually changes (which is the approach taken by nearly all video games ever, where a character might be able to deal 10 billion damage to an NPC, but is completely incapable of breaking through even a thin wooden barrier or climbing over anything higher than their knees. That was kind of the approach 4e took and it was not interesting to most of the player base.

Ultimately, it is certainly possible to math-hammer out a version of D&D that is balanced in combat 4e and 5e both have ways of mostly doing this and a more robust practice of mathematical modeling during the design phase could certainly refine things better. The real problem though, is outside of combat. Video games, after all, have achieved excellent balance with wide-ranging forms of combat powers and interacting subsystems for some time now both in MMOs and in co-op games like Path of Exile (though they do have the considerable advantage of being able to adjust the mechanics post-launch). However, once you leave the fairly restrictive scenario of combat you enter into a realm of exponentially greater inputs and outputs and no system can ever model everything properly.

Heck, even if characters don't have any explicit out-of-combat powers at all, when you actually let players use their combat abilities in a full-integrated interactive environment and do things like start forest fires with fireball or use summoned creatures for labor (it's amazing what even a few seconds of physical labor from something capable of lifting many tons without mechanical assistant can achieve) you start having all kinds of issues.

One thing I feel game design needs to acknowledge is that there's a soft ceiling on how much power any individual in a world can have, and how many how-powered individuals there are overall, before that world ceases to function according to anything other than comic book logic. Now, intriguingly, D&D actual has a solution to this issue: the multiverse. It generally should be that most characters (and powerful monsters too since this is just as applicable to NPCs) leave the Prime Material and run around pursuing goals in crazy alternative realities that are explicitly magical and do not need to make sense after hitting some threshold. I think this is something that, rather than just being a sort of implicit inducement as it has been to date, needs to be explicitly built into the mechanics. Like you need to leave the Prime Material to upgrade into your 'paragon class' or whatever, otherwise you're forever stuck at level 10.

johnbragg
2020-08-09, 07:24 AM
One thing I feel game design needs to acknowledge is that there's a soft ceiling on how much power any individual in a world can have, and how many how-powered individuals there are overall, before that world ceases to function according to anything other than comic book logic.

My E6 metaphysics states this explicitly: If a single intelligence accumulates too much narrativium, it collapses into a solipsistic pocket universe, along the lines of a a black hole. So powerful entities dissipate their narrativium outwards, either through regional effects for distant megathreats like dragons, in building local lair effects for BBEGs and sub-BBEGs, or through investing power in minions and social technologies (the high level fighter spends downtime training up the mooks, getting mass-combat bonuses.)

Kyutaru
2020-08-09, 07:36 AM
There's nothing wrong with doing fantasy superheroes, of course, but many D&D players are deeply resistant to that idea and certainly much of the media upon which D&D is based is likewise based on fantasy worlds where things like armies and fortifications actually matter.
At some point people have to remember that the world-building and mechanics are built for a game and not some thought experiment of what it might be like to live in a magically infused world. Certain things will always be superior when you try to make worlds as realistic as possible which is why the fantasy superhero worlds work better for roleplaying games. Fewer restrictions on creativity and room to embrace all playstyles.

But as for power caps, D&D has long held the position that your PCs are not the be-all end-all of creation. Players with subpar DMs in wholly medieval worlds may certainly feel that way trouncing around like gods themselves but the cosmology and backstory of the official campaign settings says no. There are beings more powerful than PCs, beings more powerful than gods even. Even if your PC managed to munchkin his way into becoming nigh omnipotent, there are even beings stronger than THAT. The oldest beings in creation were but infants when they came into existence, predated by beings that were already ancient when they arrived. The gods themselves were born after the universe was and had to contend with beings that were their superior in great climactic wars. Ages before Good vs Evil we had Chaos vs Law, and before even that we effectively had Existence vs Nonexistence, Order vs Destruction. The eldritch horrors that lurk beyond time and space were once a threat to the cosmos before being locked out of reality and how can you kill that which even death does not hold authority over? The origin of creation is scattered across many books and it's a failing in D&D that there is no single collective history written that describes it all plainly but the layers of power levels make it clear that the gods themselves are effectively children compared to what else lurks beyond the shadows. Even AO, overgod and highest of all, has been regarded as potentially not being the strongest entity in existence.

For truly epic campaigns that go well beyond what mere morals can do, reaching level 20 is merely the end of the tutorial. It's only the tip of the iceberg in just how vast, deep, and complex the rest of the lore has been laid out to be. There are beings with effective character strengths in the hundreds of levels with stat blocks that effectively say "I win" and even deities can't deal with them.

NigelWalmsley
2020-08-09, 07:53 AM
We agree on the part I wanted to make clear, good. Because my position is that of those who say, “Buff fighters; don’t nerf mages.”

Big agree. And as I've been saying throughout the thread, what really drives this home is looking at the source material. For the most part, the casters in the source material do things that can be done in D&D, and vice versa. Whereas every martial character of substantive power is impossible to reproduce in D&D as anything other than a caster. Even the one that are well below any "the world stops making sense" point.


I will assume that you meant "they need to be explicitly supernatural and non-mundane", because "do magic" to me sounds like "spellcasting". Spellcasting shouldn't be the only way to fantastic powers.

That seems like a distinction without a difference. Sanderson calls the thing Kaladin is doing a "magic system". "Magic" is as good a catch-all for "supernatural and non-mundane" as anything you are likely to find, so I think insisting that the guy who can fly is doing something else just because he fights with a weapon is bizarre and ultimately pointless.


How can you add more effects to the game? What sort of interaction with basic mechanics is still not covered?

Kelgore's Grave Mist was a new effect that was added to the game with the PHBII. That doesn't mean it invented an entirely new kind of thing to do, just that it did a particular thing that no existing effects did. A game like MTG has considerably less mechanical depth available to it than D&D does, and yet its designers manage to produce hundreds of new effects for it every year.


But nobody in those books could summon a few fervently loyal creatures instantly, resurrect the dead, heal damage magically, or do half the stuff Wizards actually get up to.

Sure, and Wizards don't get at-will Plane Shift, and can't replicate what Corwin and Bleys did on the steps of Amber, and I'm not claiming that they're 20th level characters. But in a 10th or 13th level party, there's absolutely a place for someone who has infinite Plane Shift, some additional minor magic, and is crazy good in combat.

There are certainly things D&D characters do that particular characters from the source material can't, and their powers are generally more impressive in some ways (very few characters are a match for the level of one-on-one firepower a D&D character has), and more impressive in other ways (despite D&D's wargaming roots, its magic is fairly unimpressive on the scale of armies and nations). You are generally correct that D&D characters get a wider range of abilities than others do, but it's worth pointing out that D&D campaigns typically take a lot longer than most book series do.


I'd say that while Fighters should grow up to be Thor, that doesn't put them on equal footing with high-level D&D Wizards. That just means that they don't need to be buffed to do their thing, and they do their thing so well that a Wizard cannot really compete with it.

How is that not equal footing? What you are describing is a situation where characters are comparably good, then insisting they are not comparably good for... some reason.


And if they can, then why do we have Thor again, if we can have another Doctor Strange to bend reality into a donut again?

I mean, if you look at the actual Avengers movies, Thor gets Plane Shift (which in that particular context is probably closer to Interplanetary Teleport, but whatever), and Doctor Strange apparently doesn't. It's not terribly difficult to imagine a set of abilities Thor could have that would be competitive with what comparably powerful Wizards are doing.

Cluedrew
2020-08-09, 08:17 AM
But doesn't the way you're describing those things reveal that your argument is fundamentally flawed?I'm going to go with no it isn't thank-you for asking because as far as I can tell you just advocated for my position. Fix the paradigms so everyone gets new abilities.


But you have to pay attention to the math, and you can use the math to identify problem spots, and make and use design guidelines. "Caster-strike << Unbuffed Martial strike << Buffed Martial strike", and "Skill-negating-spell << Unbuffed skillmonkey << Buffed skillmonkey."Oh yes the math will be necessary but to run with the metaphor adjusting the numbers only does so much when one side gets a + and one side gets a *. Theoretically you can do that, but the multiply numbers have to be really small which is the nerfing casters options which I don't like as much. Maybe push back a few things but I have no problems with the end-point (except for wish). But dropping the metaphor, I thing martial-strike and skill-monkey are just going to have to be more varied at high levels.


D&D is not a combat game and if you treat anyone who isn't explicitly geared for smashing dragons as bad then you're missing the point.Yeah that character concept that I mentioned yesterday (in a different thread) it was a bard that focused on the social side instead of being a music themed caster. It fell so flat because the system is built for winning once off favours and not a lot more than that. Everything else required the GM to make the entire thing up on the spot.

Vahnavoi
2020-08-09, 08:40 AM
White room balance is trivial: everyone rolls the same dice the same number of times, with equal chances of victory. You can't claim it doesn't work - plenty of populat gambling games exist to prove you wrong! People can even feel like they're achieving something or doing "better" or "worse" due to their own skill, despite it being a statistical illusion!

But that doesn't model a world or leave room for anything beyond aesthetic difference between classes.

So you'd better be careful of what you wish for. If the goal is white room, scenario-independent, mathematical balance, then every apparent difference between characters is just a veil you're pulling on your players' eyes to obfuscate the fact that they're all doing the same things and probably playing glorified Snakes & Ladders.

johnbragg
2020-08-09, 09:01 AM
For truly epic campaigns that go well beyond what mere morals can do, reaching level 20 is merely the end of the tutorial. It's only the tip of the iceberg in just how vast, deep, and complex the rest of the lore has been laid out to be. There are beings with effective character strengths in the hundreds of levels with stat blocks that effectively say "I win" and even deities can't deal with them.

Which means, effectively, that it's not gameable. You can't effectively run a campaign with Probability and Electromagetism or Primordial Chaos and Ultimate Law as BBEGs. It's like running an Avengers game with Continental Drift as the enemy. The two sides just don't scale to each other.

I think you're misunderstanding the point of power or level caps--it's not that the DM can't challenge the party, it's that the DM can't *enjoyably* challenge the party. The DM can always throw a Bigger Badder Evil Guy at the party. But either things bog down in wildly inflated math, or party-balance issues that are manageable at lower-to-mid levels become un-manageable at cosmic levels. Or just because plot problems crop up--what exactly was Bigger Badder Evil Guy *doing* in the first half of the campaign when the party was struggling against the original BBEG? Maybe those are all solveable problems, but they're problems that have to be solved, they're not just going to work themselves out.

Avengers: Endgame is a pretty relevant example of how a high-power campaign can break down at the table. Consider Endgame as an RPG module, and consider how many major characters basically had no influence on the resolution of the final battle. That's not a criticism of Endgame as a movie, just a commentary on how when the power level gets that big, it's hard to keep an entire gaming group relevantly engaged.

Again, I don't think you can use the same ruleset to play Conan or Hercules or Gilgamesh that you use to play Thor. Which, in the context of a hypothetical 6th edition, means I'd publish them as two separate games, and we'd need a chapter in the Upper Level Game about how to convert PCs from the lower level game to the upper level game. (Your martial character picks from a selection of templates representing the blessings of the gods or whatever).

Vahnavoi
2020-08-09, 09:40 AM
Which means, effectively, that it's not gameable.

Oh, it's gameable allright, as long as you accept that you're just throwing the same dice as before and whoever wins gets to spin whatever BS fits the theme of the day.

It's only ungameable if you're trying to model it, which is an exercise in futility.

Kyutaru
2020-08-09, 09:46 AM
I think you're misunderstanding the point of power or level caps--it's not that the DM can't challenge the party, it's that the DM can't *enjoyably* challenge the party. The DM can always throw a Bigger Badder Evil Guy at the party. But either things bog down in wildly inflated math, or party-balance issues that are manageable at lower-to-mid levels become un-manageable at cosmic levels. Or just because plot problems crop up--what exactly was Bigger Badder Evil Guy *doing* in the first half of the campaign when the party was struggling against the original BBEG? Maybe those are all solveable problems, but they're problems that have to be solved, they're not just going to work themselves out.D&D did have solutions though, as well as campaign settings based around the planar endgame. Sigil City of Doors is a perfect example of a hub for epic-level characters with the epic handbooks, spellcasting, and combat being less about numbers and more about WHAT you are capable of doing. This goes back to what I said about D&D not really being a combat game but one centered around roleplaying with numerous mechanics that simply have no effect without a DM to determine it. At those level ranges, the gameplay matches closer to that of Vampire the Masquerade or Mage the Ascension or even the popular game Planescape: Torment, which was significantly regarded as not about the combat but the choices. When omnipotent superbeings can end your existence with a mere thought you have to figure out how you're going to foil their plans in subtler ways. The gods play this cosmic Game of Thrones on a universal scale chessboard and players of sufficiently powerful level can join in as more than mere pawns. Skill checks and personal ingenuity play bigger roles on that scale than how much damage your sword inflicts. At a point it's even assumed that players can afford basically all the magic items they could ever want are effectively capped in terms of item progression, something easily done in a world where astral diamonds (rated in terms of millions of gold) are the standard currency.

Low level adventures play out like Conan and high level adventures play out like Doctor Strange.

But epic level adventures play out like Rand al'Thor and his world of schemes or Elminster's many adventures traversing all of reality. It stops being about are you powerful enough and starts being about are you smart enough.

Lagtime
2020-08-09, 09:52 AM
Yes. Which is why other classes should get better abilities.

Though this is the slippery slope to 4E: Just give each class what are in everything except name "spells".



If you think Thor, Doctor Strange, and Wonder Woman aren't source material for D&D (especially now), I think you're fundamentally misunderstanding what people are expecting from the fantasy genre.

I'd question the idea of using super heroes as biases for classes in D&D: they are not the same thing. Basic, default D&D is not and should not be about recreating super hero like characters. But, maybe you could add a Super Hero splat book to the rules....just not in the core rules.




Captain America has a magic artifact shield, super-strength, and gets lightning powers in Endgame. Batman is, particularly in incarnations where he teams up with Superman, basically a near-Epic Artificer. Black Widow and Hawkeye are basically sidekicks for most of the movies they're in, and at no point are they treated as being as important as the likes of Thor, Iron Man, and Doctor Strange to the heroes'


Well, I guess this depends on 'what' hero you are talking about from when and where. Each super hero has had many, many, many versions and incarnations.


In other words, the understanding of what levels represent certain concepts cleans up objections to buffing fighters to keep up with mages by pointing out that you’re not denying the lower-“magic” concepts by buffing fighters, but the players need to know at what level they want to play to have the characters they want.

I'd disagree here. Before 3E magic and spellcasters were balanced with other classes just fine. 3E removed all the balance points and greatly unbalanced the game in favor of magic. The answer does seem simple though: bring back the balance from older D&D.

I'm all for adding martial abilities......but the problem is that unless those abilities are exact copies of the spellcasting and the spells themselves, the abilities will always fall short of balance.

My 'nerf' for spellcasters is just making their spells harder to get and removing the crazy broken freedom they have now.

Just think how some simple things would work like:

*Spellcasters need three, four or even five times the XP as martial types.

*Spellcasters only get new spell slots every three, four or even five levels

*Only martial types can ever get more then one attack

Wonder what that balance would look like?

Ignimortis
2020-08-09, 10:06 AM
That seems like a distinction without a difference. Sanderson calls the thing Kaladin is doing a "magic system". "Magic" is as good a catch-all for "supernatural and non-mundane" as anything you are likely to find, so I think insisting that the guy who can fly is doing something else just because he fights with a weapon is bizarre and ultimately pointless.

Very well. My usual definition for fighter stuff not being "magical" is that they do things with an Ex tag instead of Su/Sp, if we go by 3.5 standards. I'd also like it to be mechanically distinct from spellcasting, not just reflavoured spells like some people suggest.



Kelgore's Grave Mist was a new effect that was added to the game with the PHBII. That doesn't mean it invented an entirely new kind of thing to do, just that it did a particular thing that no existing effects did. A game like MTG has considerably less mechanical depth available to it than D&D does, and yet its designers manage to produce hundreds of new effects for it every year.

Kelgore's Grave Mist isn't anywhere a new effect. It's HP damage (cold) and status effect application (fatigue) with several more tags like AoE and "Living creatures only". When I say "new effect", I mean something that interacts with the game in a new way. HP damage (fire) is an effect, Fireball is just one of many means of delivery. That's what I mean when I say Wizards have almost universal access to effects - the only things off their spell list completely (IIRC, 3.5 has too many spells to remember all of them) is non-undead resurrection, healing HP damage, and I think healing ability damage and level damage? HP damage, conjuring creatures, teleportation, ability enhancement, several new senses, several new movement modes - Wizards can get it all with very little restrictions.

That's why I propose a decisive nerf to Wizards - having not only a potential, but very readily realized access to most things you can do in the game cannot be balanced. Either you do things well enough to not need anyone who does those things as well, or you do them too poorly to be level-appropriate with those abilities, and thus are mostly dead weight. In both 3e and 5e, it's been squarely in the "wizards do things well enough to not need fighters in the party", despite 5e's attempts to cut down on that.

Specialization would force wizards to forgo some effects forever, and thus free the party space for someone who does those things exclusively. A Wizard with no Evocation or Conjuration cannot do direct damage, for example, and a Wizard with no Transmutation or Conjuration cannot access new movement modes, and a Wizard with no Abjuration or Conjuration can't defend themselves very well. (Conjuration is a very stupid school and needs to be completely rebalanced, dammit).



Sure, and Wizards don't get at-will Plane Shift, and can't replicate what Corwin and Bleys did on the steps of Amber, and I'm not claiming that they're 20th level characters. But in a 10th or 13th level party, there's absolutely a place for someone who has infinite Plane Shift, some additional minor magic, and is crazy good in combat.

There are certainly things D&D characters do that particular characters from the source material can't, and their powers are generally more impressive in some ways (very few characters are a match for the level of one-on-one firepower a D&D character has), and more impressive in other ways (despite D&D's wargaming roots, its magic is fairly unimpressive on the scale of armies and nations). You are generally correct that D&D characters get a wider range of abilities than others do, but it's worth pointing out that D&D campaigns typically take a lot longer than most book series do.

Are you sure they can't replicate that? Some buff spells and martial weapon proficiency, and you've got a good chance of doing pretty similar things. Hell, a level 10-13 Fighter might very well be better than Corwin or Bleys in combat, that just depends on how you stat Amber's soldiers and other enemies they've fought.



How is that not equal footing? What you are describing is a situation where characters are comparably good, then insisting they are not comparably good for... some reason.

I mean, if you look at the actual Avengers movies, Thor gets Plane Shift (which in that particular context is probably closer to Interplanetary Teleport, but whatever), and Doctor Strange apparently doesn't. It's not terribly difficult to imagine a set of abilities Thor could have that would be competitive with what comparably powerful Wizards are doing.

They're not comparably good, because if we really take a D&D Wizard and set him, at appropriate level, in an adventure where Thor would be a legitimate party member, chances are, the Wizard can pull out a few Frost Giants (I have passing knowledge of Marvel films, so I'm not sure about movie Thor) or something else that would be a comparable beatstick to Thor, and possibly provide the same Plane Shift/Teleport capability (either through his own spell slots or summons again).

NorthernPhoenix
2020-08-09, 10:33 AM
In the relatively tight game math of Pathfinder 2e, from what i've seen, casters are still gods to weaker beings but the math is such that they can't dominate level appropriate fights in the same way. A level 20 Sorcerer can destroy an entire army of regular soldiers with a wave of the hand, but still benefits greatly from having a Fighter and Paladin with him if he's facing a Pit Fiend, who he is probably not going to "save or die".


Now, powercreep may have changed that, i don't know. But that's the basic idea.

Ignimortis
2020-08-09, 10:41 AM
In the relatively tight game math of Pathfinder 2e, from what i've seen, casters are still gods to weaker beings but the math is such that they can't dominate level appropriate fights in the same way. A level 20 Sorcerer can destroy an entire army of regular soldiers with a wave of the hand, but still benefits greatly from having a Fighter and Paladin with him if he's facing a Pit Fiend, who he is probably not going to "save or die".


Now, powercreep may have changed that, i don't know. But that's the basic idea.

My friends are playing PF2e and they're saying casters are almost useless if they aren't buff/heal bots. I presume that's because they mostly fight hard fights with few high-power monsters, to which debuffs have a very hard time sticking due to PF2 math. Fighters and Champions have been the stars of combat so far (they're level 10 by now), because they slightly break the math everyone else has to follow.

Kyutaru
2020-08-09, 10:45 AM
That's what I mean when I say Wizards have almost universal access to effects - the only things off their spell list completely (IIRC, 3.5 has too many spells to remember all of them) is non-undead resurrection, healing HP damage, and I think healing ability damage and level damage? HP damage, conjuring creatures, teleportation, ability enhancement, several new senses, several new movement modes - Wizards can get it all with very little restrictions.
Wizards could get around even those restrictions. Wizards could simply summon something like an archon to do the healing for them. Even raising the dead could be replicated using Limited Wish which permitted you to use ANY 5th level spell or lower. In fact there are few things a wishing wizard can't do and the spell doesn't fail when you replicate existing magic.

But then many of these powerful effects were balanced in older editions because of the substantial costs involved. Not the 300 xp 3e loses you that is one monster kill from recovering but an entire year of lost lifespan. Haste was the same way and many spells had ludicrous XP or Material costs that balanced them by denying any non-lich caster from abusing them. Potent emergency powers are great in games when they have a long cooldown. This coupled with all the other wizard disadvantages that have been removed from the game over time has upset the balance noticeably. Where previously some effects were meant to be rarely used due to their power, now they are freely thrown about thrice daily. Heck some spells used to take weeks of preparation and couldn't just be chain cast because you memorized them every long rest.

Now I know some don't fancy balancing mechanics by making them annoying to use... but if that's the case then you also don't leave those mechanics in the game once you've stripped them of their disincentives. Instead of removing these spells that broke the balance and were never meant to be on the same power level as other spells of their level that lacked these costs the designers left them in almost exactly as they were because they had become iconic. It's why there are so many spells that stand out for their level as an outlier that should probably be several levels higher of an effect. But no, you can't adjust spell levels because they've always been this level. Magic Missile should never have been a 1st level spell yet it will forever be one because of tradition.

NorthernPhoenix
2020-08-09, 10:51 AM
My friends are playing PF2e and they're saying casters are almost useless if they aren't buff/heal bots. I presume that's because they mostly fight hard fights with few high-power monsters, to which debuffs have a very hard time sticking due to PF2 math. Fighters and Champions have been the stars of combat so far (they're level 10 by now), because they slightly break the math everyone else has to follow.

Yes, this is by design. In High Level Fights, the Main Character Guys take the center stage. But in the context of "normal people", the Wizard is a god. He can't fail at making mind puppets of the masses, blowing away squads of guards with a single spell, turning people permanently into animals, turning himself into anything, coming or going where he pleases, or anything else you imagine a fictional super-Wizard doing. The power fantasy is absolutely there, it just can't be applied to powerful foes.

Kyutaru
2020-08-09, 11:00 AM
Yes, this is by design. In High Level Fights, the Main Character Guys take the center stage. But in the context of "normal people", the Wizard is a god. He can't fail at making mind puppets of the masses, blowing away squads of guards with a single spell, turning people permanently into animals, turning himself into anything, coming or going where he pleases, or anything else you imagine a fictional super-Wizard doing. The power fantasy is absolutely there, it just can't be applied to powerful foes.
I commented on another thread about this but this is more in line with how old D&D and JRPGs balance casters. They treat them as they Swiss army knife support character instead of the main battle tank. They don't exist to singlehandedly solve every problem but as an enhancer to the party's stabmasters. Sometimes something can't be solved by beating it into a pulp and the wizard gets to shine extra specially by magicking it out of existence. They do well at AOE pest control and preventing HP loss through disabling or buffing. But all of this needs someone to buff or kill that isn't the wizard because the wizard is busy being useful in other ways.

Pex
2020-08-09, 11:29 AM
White room balance is trivial: everyone rolls the same dice the same number of times, with equal chances of victory. You can't claim it doesn't work - plenty of populat gambling games exist to prove you wrong! People can even feel like they're achieving something or doing "better" or "worse" due to their own skill, despite it being a statistical illusion!

But that doesn't model a world or leave room for anything beyond aesthetic difference between classes.

So you'd better be careful of what you wish for. If the goal is white room, scenario-independent, mathematical balance, then every apparent difference between characters is just a veil you're pulling on your players' eyes to obfuscate the fact that they're all doing the same things and probably playing glorified Snakes & Ladders.

4E ladies and gentlemen.


Which means, effectively, that it's not gameable. You can't effectively run a campaign with Probability and Electromagetism or Primordial Chaos and Ultimate Law as BBEGs. It's like running an Avengers game with Continental Drift as the enemy. The two sides just don't scale to each other.

I think you're misunderstanding the point of power or level caps--it's not that the DM can't challenge the party, it's that the DM can't *enjoyably* challenge the party. The DM can always throw a Bigger Badder Evil Guy at the party. But either things bog down in wildly inflated math, or party-balance issues that are manageable at lower-to-mid levels become un-manageable at cosmic levels. Or just because plot problems crop up--what exactly was Bigger Badder Evil Guy *doing* in the first half of the campaign when the party was struggling against the original BBEG? Maybe those are all solveable problems, but they're problems that have to be solved, they're not just going to work themselves out.

Avengers: Endgame is a pretty relevant example of how a high-power campaign can break down at the table. Consider Endgame as an RPG module, and consider how many major characters basically had no influence on the resolution of the final battle. That's not a criticism of Endgame as a movie, just a commentary on how when the power level gets that big, it's hard to keep an entire gaming group relevantly engaged.

Again, I don't think you can use the same ruleset to play Conan or Hercules or Gilgamesh that you use to play Thor. Which, in the context of a hypothetical 6th edition, means I'd publish them as two separate games, and we'd need a chapter in the Upper Level Game about how to convert PCs from the lower level game to the upper level game. (Your martial character picks from a selection of templates representing the blessings of the gods or whatever).

Physically you can if you have that chapter of conversion in the book where both exist and be specific in the distinctiveness of power level. Let the DMs who can't or refuse to adapt to the change in power level, and possibly warriors can only ever be Guy At The Gym, have their game end when the PCs reach the top mundane level and let the rest of us move on to the Upper Level. Those who want the Upper Level should not be denied it in the game just because those who don't like don't like it.

NigelWalmsley
2020-08-09, 11:45 AM
I'd also like it to be mechanically distinct from spellcasting, not just reflavoured spells like some people suggest.

Depends on what exactly you're asking for. If you write something for a 3e-derived game, it's likely that a lot of the effects are going to be function calls to spells, as that's how things are specified. If you want to give the Fighter an ability where he crafts things at a prodigious rate, it's simply better design for that ability to be a function call to Fabricate than for you to write your own custom fast crafting ability. Similarly, whatever abilities you give people are likely to be leveled in a very similar way to spells. But if you just mean that those abilities should be mechanically distinct in the way that a Dread Necromancer, a Crusader, a Binder, and a Warlock already are, I whole-heartedly agree.


Kelgore's Grave Mist isn't anywhere a new effect. It's HP damage (cold) and status effect application (fatigue) with several more tags like AoE and "Living creatures only". When I say "new effect", I mean something that interacts with the game in a new way.

That seems like an extremely (and, frankly, unhelpfully) nonstandard definition of "effect". By that standard there are probably between twenty and thirty "effects" in the whole game, depending how finely you slice it. I think most people would acknowledge "damaging AoE DoT debuff" to be a new effect distinct from "damaging AoE" or "AoE debuff" or "DoT".


That's why I propose a decisive nerf to Wizards - having not only a potential, but very readily realized access to most things you can do in the game cannot be balanced.

By your standard, access to "most things you could do in the game" is something like 12 abilities. If you get a new ability every level, by 20th level, every single character will have access to "most effects" as you've defined the term.


Are you sure they can't replicate that?

They can't replicate it for free, which is the claim people who complain about Wizards tend to make. You can certainly build a Wizard who is an effective gish. But that requires committing actual build resources, in terms of feats, PrC levels, and/or magic items that you then cannot spend on your minionmancy, or battlefield control, or single-target debuffing. You can't be a Corwin-level melee combatant one day, then a maximally-effective utility caster the next day (at the levels where I would consider Corwin a reasonable party member).


They're not comparably good, because if we really take a D&D Wizard and set him, at appropriate level, in an adventure where Thor would be a legitimate party member, chances are, the Wizard can pull out a few Frost Giants (I have passing knowledge of Marvel films, so I'm not sure about movie Thor) or something else that would be a comparable beatstick to Thor, and possibly provide the same Plane Shift/Teleport capability (either through his own spell slots or summons again).

Then you haven't set him at an appropriately level. If you look at the Marvel movies, Doctor Strange (despite being an enormously powerful Wizard), does not seem to have Thor-level summons. You seem to have this notion that it's factually impossible to write something that could compete with a Wizard, but that's obviously false. Summons have some particular amount of power, Thor could just be stronger than that. In the same way that he is stronger than Thanos's minions, or Ultron's minions, or Loki's minions.


Wizards could get around even those restrictions. Wizards could simply summon something like an archon to do the healing for them. Even raising the dead could be replicated using Limited Wish which permitted you to use ANY 5th level spell or lower. In fact there are few things a wishing wizard can't do and the spell doesn't fail when you replicate existing magic.

Sure, and if you want to complain about Planar Binding or Limited Wish being stupid, I won't stop you. But that's very clearly different from the Wizard being broken, because those spells are also broken in the hands of every single class that gets them. It's like looking at the problems with Leadership and concluding that because you can use the Rogue's Bonus Feat ability to take it, we need to nerf the Rogue as a first step to balancing the game.


Yes, this is by design. In High Level Fights, the Main Character Guys take the center stage.

Which does not include the Wizard? Assuming I'm understanding correctly, and the intention is to have the sword guys take center stage in fights, this seems like another thing that doesn't pass the "how does the fantasy genre actually work" test.

Pex
2020-08-09, 11:48 AM
*Spellcasters need three, four or even five times the XP as martial types.

Takes away the fun of playing one.



*Spellcasters only get new spell slots every three, four or even five levels

Takes away the fun of playing one.


*Only martial types can ever get more then one attack

That's fine.


Wonder what that balance would look like?

No one would want to play spellcasters. That may make the 3E haters happy, but you now you just reverse the sides of who hates D&D or rather this hypothetical game, achieving nothing. You don't balance the game by making something not fun to play.

JNAProductions
2020-08-09, 11:50 AM
No one would want to play spellcasters. That may make the 3E haters happy, but you now you just reverse the sides of who hates D&D or rather this hypothetical game, achieving nothing. You don't balance the game by making something not fun to play.

Grod's Law, paraphrased. And a damn good law, one worth following.

Pex
2020-08-09, 12:02 PM
Now I know some don't fancy balancing mechanics by making them annoying to use... but if that's the case then you also don't leave those mechanics in the game once you've stripped them of their disincentives. Instead of removing these spells that broke the balance and were never meant to be on the same power level as other spells of their level that lacked these costs the designers left them in almost exactly as they were because they had become iconic. It's why there are so many spells that stand out for their level as an outlier that should probably be several levels higher of an effect. But no, you can't adjust spell levels because they've always been this level. Magic Missile should never have been a 1st level spell yet it will forever be one because of tradition.

As one of those people I don't object to this. I've always said, if something is so powerful you feel the need to punish the player for using it then get rid of it or do something else instead. Trouble comes in the disagreement of where there's a problem. You say Magic Missile should not be first level. Others disagree it's a problem even if they go by tradition. No problem in not wanting wizards to be able to do everything powerful, but they're still allowed to do powerful things. Having and wanting iconic sacred cows is not an inherently bad thing.

Ignimortis
2020-08-09, 12:58 PM
Depends on what exactly you're asking for. If you write something for a 3e-derived game, it's likely that a lot of the effects are going to be function calls to spells, as that's how things are specified. If you want to give the Fighter an ability where he crafts things at a prodigious rate, it's simply better design for that ability to be a function call to Fabricate than for you to write your own custom fast crafting ability. Similarly, whatever abilities you give people are likely to be leveled in a very similar way to spells. But if you just mean that those abilities should be mechanically distinct in the way that a Dread Necromancer, a Crusader, a Binder, and a Warlock already are, I whole-heartedly agree.

Well, about that - note that none of those four classes have anywhere as wide of an access to things as Wizards do. They have their own niches of stuff they do, even if they can switch it up a bit (like Binder).



That seems like an extremely (and, frankly, unhelpfully) nonstandard definition of "effect". By that standard there are probably between twenty and thirty "effects" in the whole game, depending how finely you slice it. I think most people would acknowledge "damaging AoE DoT debuff" to be a new effect distinct from "damaging AoE" or "AoE debuff" or "DoT".

Why is it non-standard? It's the smallest function that one can discern in something. Causing HP damage is an effect. Applying a status effect is an effect. And yes, there would be about 20-30 of them in the game total. That's absolutely fine. You can create tons of abilities that apply those effects with variations in area of delivery, method of delivery, resource expenditure, action economy, etc. You can very easily make a party out of 4 or even 6 characters that each have access to about 7-10 of those effects and apply them in various ways, and that game would still be fun, I'd wager.



By your standard, access to "most things you could do in the game" is something like 12 abilities. If you get a new ability every level, by 20th level, every single character will have access to "most effects" as you've defined the term.

Why should you get access to a whole new thing every level? I don't want to suddenly learn to summon monsters or heal people just because I'm level 13 and I have all the "damage" and "cause debuff" effects somewhere in my repertoire. I'm fine with characters not being able to do everything.



Then you haven't set him at an appropriately level. If you look at the Marvel movies, Doctor Strange (despite being an enormously powerful Wizard), does not seem to have Thor-level summons. You seem to have this notion that it's factually impossible to write something that could compete with a Wizard, but that's obviously false. Summons have some particular amount of power, Thor could just be stronger than that. In the same way that he is stronger than Thanos's minions, or Ultron's minions, or Loki's minions.

Sure, and if you want to complain about Planar Binding or Limited Wish being stupid, I won't stop you. But that's very clearly different from the Wizard being broken, because those spells are also broken in the hands of every single class that gets them. It's like looking at the problems with Leadership and concluding that because you can use the Rogue's Bonus Feat ability to take it, we need to nerf the Rogue as a first step to balancing the game.

Because Doctor Strange, for all of his cosmic power, isn't a D&D Wizard. When I say "D&D Wizard" I mean not only the class chassis/abilities, but also the Wizard spell list. If the Wizard spell list had a total of five spells like Invisibility, Fireball, Mage Armor, Spider Climb and Web, Wizards wouldn't be a problem, they'd be IN problem. But the Wizard problem is mostly in their spells - because their spells do everything. And if you want to separate Wizards as a class from their spells, then I don't understand that, because spells are basically the only class feature they get outside of some free metamagic, which also doesn't work without spells to apply it to.

NigelWalmsley
2020-08-09, 01:35 PM
That's fine.

Frankly, I'm somewhat convinced the game simply shouldn't be giving out multiple attacks, as a general rule. Resolving iterative and secondary attacks is generally more trouble than it's worth.


Well, about that - note that none of those four classes have anywhere as wide of an access to things as Wizards do. They have their own niches of stuff they do, even if they can switch it up a bit (like Binder).

But that's not fundamental to how they work. The reason why the Binder has a small list of abilities which are kinda medium is because that's all the devs wrote for Binders to have. Nothing about preparing ability suites rather than individual abilities means they're inherently any more limited than the Wizard. I could go out and write up a set of vestiges that made them as powerful as the average Wizard right now, and it would require changing precisely zero things about the Binder class as written.

You seem to have this myopic focus on the game as it exists, which you've translated into sweeping assumptions about how certain types of mechanics could possibly work. But it doesn't follow. There's nothing about the Wizard that is conceptually any broader than most other classes, and nothing about having a wide range of abilities that is insurmountably better than having a narrow range of abilities.

It's true that the Wizard is at the top of the heap, but if you look at the system as a whole, it's clear that most of the things people complain about Wizards doing are clearly not inherently powerful. The Incarnate can swap its abilities every day to whatever it wants (and even customize them during the day), but it's substantially worse than the Warblade, who's selection of abilities is even smaller than the Sorcerer's. "How do I make a narrow set of abilities balanced with a broad one" is just empirically not an unsolvable problem.


Why is it non-standard?

Because everyone I've ever met considers spells to be new abilities. Prior to this exact argument, I have never met anyone who would claim that Kelgore's Grave Mist is not a new effect because Cone of Cold exists. And, frankly, it undermines your argument about the versatility of Wizards. If there are only twenty effects in the whole game, the problem with the Wizard can't be that it learns a whole bunch of spells, because they have access to the same set of effects as a Sorcerer, or a fixed list caster who's done a little bit of list expansion.


You can very easily make a party out of 4 or even 6 characters that each have access to about 7-10 of those effects and apply them in various ways, and that game would still be fun, I'd wager.

Sure. But why do you need to do that? It's not like having more effects necessarily allows you to solve more problems, or like multiple characters with the same effects necessarily feel exactly the same. A Warblade does damage in combat. A Warmage does damage in combat. No one would consider the two classes to be identical, or have any trouble identifying situations where one might be more useful than the other. Similarly, a 3rd level Wizard has access to a far wider range of effects than a 10th level Warlock, but the latter is substantially more effective as a character. It is even fairly easy to imagine situations where the exact same ability has radically different value based on the mechanics of the class (e.g. a no-save stun is much better as an Invocation than a Maneuver).


Why should you get access to a whole new thing every level? I don't want to suddenly learn to summon monsters or heal people just because I'm level 13 and I have all the "damage" and "cause debuff" effects somewhere in my repertoire. I'm fine with characters not being able to do everything.

What's the alternative supposed to be? If you have all the damage and debuff abilities, at a new level you either get something that is not a damage or a debuff ability, or you get nothing. Only one of those choices makes people happy, and it's not "nothing".


But the Wizard problem is mostly in their spells - because their spells do everything.

A Wizard's spells don't do everything. They have real limitations, both in the specific (e.g. complaints about Teleport typically reveal a disturbing lack of understanding of what the spell actually says) and in the general (Wizards have a limited number of spell slots, constraints on how many spells they can learn, and have to prepare spells at the beginning of the day).

It is simply not very difficult to imagine situations where someone who was not a Wizard could be competitive with a Wizard, and indeed such situations exist in the game as it is written. A Beguiler is simply better than a Wizard at navigating social situations. It is entirely possible to write the game so that characters shine because they have the best ability of anyone in the party for solving a particular problem, rather than because they have the only ability that solves that problem. In my view, such a setup is in fact preferable, because it makes the particular characteristics of your abilities important. If the party is using my Ranger's Tree Stride for fast travel because it's the only fast travel ability we have, it doesn't matter how or even if Tree Stride is different from Teleport. But if I have Tree Stride, and the Rogue has Shadow Walk, and the Cleric has Air Walk, and the Wizard has Teleport, it matters what each of those abilities specifically does.

ExLibrisMortis
2020-08-09, 01:49 PM
So why should someone who wants to play a Fighter be necessarily worse than someone who wants to play a Wizard?

Why is their game fantasy less valid than the magic one?
Neither concept is more valid. However, high-level fighters and wizards don't go together in this game and in this setting. If you are playing this game and this setting, you should be aware of the imbalance and pick your concepts to suit the party. Past low levels, mundane characters will not engage quests of the same type highly magical characters will routinely deal with. That's fine and that's interesting.


I agree with what you sketched out there. It has been famously argued that Gandalf and Aragorn were 5th level. Conan could adventure with those guys and it's a perfectly playable game.
I usually have Aragorn at level 5 (start of LotR) to level 6 (Paths of the Dead) to 7 (king of Gondor) and Gandalf at level 9 (start of LotR) to 10 (Gandalf the White)--note that this is Gandalf as half-celestial bard or something, not as a wizard. Gandalf and Aragorn are definitely not in the same league, but Aragorn can get to Gandalf's level some of the time, whereas the hobbits (level 1 to 3) really can't.


(Side note: Even in Avengers: Endgame, the Hulk is essentially written out of the story, and Thor has a breakdown because solving the Thanos problem beatstick-style was pointless).
It is not easy living in a magical world when all your powers are beatstickery. D&D 3.5 represents this very well (completely by accident, I think we can agree, but still).


Pretty much. It's true that some things are better than other things. But we have a mechanism to represent that: level. If "mundane sword guy" is worse than "archmage", you can simply set up your level system so that the former is a 2nd level character and the latter a 15th level one. The whole notion that we need imbalance to represent a rich and detailed world is just false.
You don't need to have imbalance, but it does help. You can choose not to represent farmers and city guards (cut out low tiers), or you can choose not to represent Incantatrices and Dweomerkeepers (cut out high tiers), or you can choose not to represent city guards and apprentices (cut out low levels), or you can choose not to represent Kas and Vecna (cut out high levels), but if you want to represent high and low levels of high and low tiers under the same coherent system, there will be imbalance. Yes, you can deal with that by limiting your PCs to certain classes. Then we get what I've been saying: balance to the table by picking characters to suit the scope and magnitude of the quest you're on.


My point is not that a game should necessarily be imbalanced (though it is helpful, for the aforementioned reasons), nor that a setting should necessarily favour spellcasters (though I don't see what the point of 'zero-sum' magic is, i.e. magic that doesn't provide utility over mundane approaches). The point I'm trying to make is that D&D is not 'balanced' (3.5 especially, but to a lesser extent all the various editions) in the sense that different character concepts are all mechanically equally effective when given equal amounts of build resources, and that creates a game and describes a setting that is perfectly playable and well-suited to representing a wide range of fantasy settings. You could perhaps change the game to achieve balance, but that would erode the setting as it exists in 3.5, and it would reduce the 'versatility' of the game, in the sense that different levels and tiers of characters no longer represent levels and qualities of power, and you no longer have the strong in-universe justification for different abilities belonging to different tiers. Why should you butcher a game like 3.5 to make it do something that it never did?

tl;dr If you want a 'balanced' game, don't start with D&D. Leave D&D to do what it does well, and start with another base to achieve 'balance'.

(Although, once again: 'balance' is, in and of itself, not fun, especially in a non-competetive role-playing activity.)

NigelWalmsley
2020-08-09, 01:55 PM
You don't need to have imbalance, but it does help. You can choose not to represent farmers and city guards (cut out low tiers), or you can choose not to represent Incantatrices and Dweomerkeepers (cut out high tiers), or you can choose not to represent city guards and apprentices (cut out low levels), or you can choose not to represent Kas and Vecna (cut out high levels), but if you want to represent high and low levels of high and low tiers under the same coherent system, there will be imbalance.

Just because your power scale goes from guard to god rather than apprentice to archmage doesn't mean you need multiple power scales. D&D has twenty levels. That is plenty of space to represent the whole range of power available in the source material.

Vahnavoi
2020-08-09, 03:14 PM
... the idea that you should cram all possible source inspirations into twenty levels is headachingly stupid, and not one that any edition of D&D has followed. If anything, if you want your farmer to god progression, a version of D&D would benefit from longer, smoother and more spread out power curve.

Ignimortis
2020-08-09, 03:15 PM
A Wizard's spells don't do everything. They have real limitations, both in the specific (e.g. complaints about Teleport typically reveal a disturbing lack of understanding of what the spell actually says) and in the general (Wizards have a limited number of spell slots, constraints on how many spells they can learn, and have to prepare spells at the beginning of the day).

It is simply not very difficult to imagine situations where someone who was not a Wizard could be competitive with a Wizard, and indeed such situations exist in the game as it is written. A Beguiler is simply better than a Wizard at navigating social situations. It is entirely possible to write the game so that characters shine because they have the best ability of anyone in the party for solving a particular problem, rather than because they have the only ability that solves that problem. In my view, such a setup is in fact preferable, because it makes the particular characteristics of your abilities important. If the party is using my Ranger's Tree Stride for fast travel because it's the only fast travel ability we have, it doesn't matter how or even if Tree Stride is different from Teleport. But if I have Tree Stride, and the Rogue has Shadow Walk, and the Cleric has Air Walk, and the Wizard has Teleport, it matters what each of those abilities specifically does.

I've been writing a reply to your post for an hour and realized that I'm just getting lost in my own words, so I'll try to sum up my position as succinctly as possible to avoid any misunderstandings.

Wizard's problem has a root in four factors occurring simultaneously:
1) Spells generally produce the best solution for any problem that doesn't require direct HP damage. That is a universal problem of D&D, both 3e and 5e. Teleport has limitations, but it's still far superior to "just walking there" or even "turning into a bird and flying there". Fly is superior to Climb or Jump. Summon Monster is generally superior to hiring mercenaries. Plane Shift is better than "well uh let's find a portal I guess?".
2) Wizard's spell list is one of the biggest. They do share it with Sorcerers, who are generally much less of a problem, because:
3) Wizard has much better access to the list than its' other users. A sorcerer generally knows anywhere from 2 to 34 (3e) or 2 to 15 (5e) spells. A wizard knows at least from 2 to 40 spells, without considering learning anything extra from scrolls, and (3e) gets to learn any spells they can cast instead of fixed amounts by spell level.
4) Wizards can switch their active abilities (i.e. their prepared spells) with much less effort than most other classes do. Combining that with 2 and 3 multiplies this factor significantly - a Wizard is only as good as their spells known.

Your proposed solution is, how I understand it, to let everyone draw from a list of powers with similar strength and versatility at similar levels, so that when (this seems to be in line with your arguments) Wizard has Summon Monster, Fighter can Summon Army, Rogue can Animate Shadow and Cleric has Conjure Celestials - applied to every or almost every problem in the game. So everyone can contribute all the time in powerful ways, where the difference is mainly "what resource would be best to expend right now" and "how well does this particular ability, which does solve the issue in general, apply to this one situation". I.e. everyone can solve all the problems, but some solutions are better than others. So instead of fixing anything about the four factors above, they get applied to every class in the game to some degree.

I don't think that's a good idea. What is the point of a team-and-role based game, if you're not really vulnerable to anything? If you have no weak spots ("do a thing passably well" isn't a weak spot), then what is the distinction between classes? How is the player supposed to feel that they're bringing something unique and highly valuable to the table, if the situation could be solved well enough without them?


... the idea that you should cram all possible source inspirations into twenty levels is headachingly stupid, and not one that any edition of D&D has followed. If anything, if you want your farmer to god progression, a version of D&D would benefit from longer, smoother and more spread out power curve.

I don't get it. 5e is, IMO, already about 12 levels too long for the amount of progression provided. You can certainly cram a zero to god progression into 20 levels. That might actually make individual levels feel significant again.

NigelWalmsley
2020-08-09, 03:48 PM
1) Spells generally produce the best solution for any problem that doesn't require direct HP damage.

This is true, but I absolutely cannot understand how this is a problem with spells. Non-spells simply don't solve these problems at all. It's not that there's some pretty good strategic mobility option for Fighters that Teleport crowds out, it's that Fighters (and Warblades) get absolutely nothing. In this particular area, I cannot comprehend any workable solution that starts anywhere other than unprecedentedly large buffs to martials.


2) Wizard's spell list is one of the biggest. They do share it with Sorcerers, who are generally much less of a problem, because:

So what? Size, as they say, matters not. How much of a level advantage would you need to pick a Dread Necromancer or a Beguiler over a Wizard? Two, maybe three at the high end. Having a thousand spells isn't ten times as good as having a hundred spells. Especially when you prepare spells and spend resources to learn them.


4) Wizards can switch their active abilities (i.e. their prepared spells) with much less effort than most other classes do. Combining that with 2 and 3 multiplies this factor significantly - a Wizard is only as good as their spells known.

So can the Incarnate. So can the Binder. In fact, those classes can switch their abilities more easily than the Wizard can. So if this kind of flexibility is a problem, why aren't those classes busted? They're both substantially worse than the Sorcerer, and the Incarnate is in the bottom half of classes overall.


Your proposed solution is, how I understand it, to let everyone draw from a list of powers with similar strength and versatility at similar levels,

Not necessarily. My solution is to go back to the challenges. You have to stop looking at it in terms of competing with Teleport. You have to start looking at it in terms of challenges. What problems should characters be able to solve? What problems should parties be able to solve? You won't get anywhere by looking at the Wizard and blindly modifying it. You can intuit the direction things should move, to a degree, but to make real progress you have to understand what kinds of challenges people are going to be facing, and what kinds of resources they should spend to overcome them.


What is the point of a team-and-role based game, if you're not really vulnerable to anything? If you have no weak spots ("do a thing passably well" isn't a weak spot), then what is the distinction between classes?

This is how the game works in combat right now. A Wizard, a Warblade, a Rogue, and a Cleric are all able to make meaningful but distinct contributions to overcoming challenges like "a Fire Giant" or "a squard of Bearded Devils" or "two Gorgons". Those contributions will be larger or smaller in each of those encounters, but they will all always have something to do. That paradigm works. Why can't the rest of the game work like that?

johnbragg
2020-08-09, 04:11 PM
This is how the game works in combat right now. A Wizard, a Warblade, a Rogue, and a Cleric are all able to make meaningful but distinct contributions to overcoming challenges like "a Fire Giant" or "a squard of Bearded Devils" or "two Gorgons". Those contributions will be larger or smaller in each of those encounters, but they will all always have something to do. That paradigm works. Why can't the rest of the game work like that?

....because RPG combat is fairly easily reducible to math. Math that the core competencies of D&D classes are built around. Monsters have been developed and modified over 45 years and 5 editions to be meaningful challenges for a party of 4-5 D&D PCs of level X.

Nothing else in the game both A) that math-able and B) that susceptible to all PCs making meaningful contributions. 4E Skill Challenges were a mess. But were they a mess compared to, say, domain-level play in AD&D? Or were they a mess compared to the d20 universal mechanic and the combat systems of 3E and 4E?

For most players, the game is fundamentally about killing monsters and taking their loot. Diversions like learning about the monsters and manipulating NPCs to help you get better gear or information for killing monsters (most social encounters) and getting to the monsters (traveling, stealthing, trapmonkeying) are immersion-building appetizers, not as important as the main course.

Mechalich
2020-08-09, 05:00 PM
....because RPG combat is fairly easily reducible to math. Math that the core competencies of D&D classes are built around. Monsters have been developed and modified over 45 years and 5 editions to be meaningful challenges for a party of 4-5 D&D PCs of level X.

Nothing else in the game both A) that math-able and B) that susceptible to all PCs making meaningful contributions. 4E Skill Challenges were a mess. But were they a mess compared to, say, domain-level play in AD&D? Or were they a mess compared to the d20 universal mechanic and the combat systems of 3E and 4E?

For most players, the game is fundamentally about killing monsters and taking their loot. Diversions like learning about the monsters and manipulating NPCs to help you get better gear or information for killing monsters (most social encounters) and getting to the monsters (traveling, stealthing, trapmonkeying) are immersion-building appetizers, not as important as the main course.

RPG combat also is fairly white-room-ish, especially if you actually locate you combats in a room with walls the characters cannot trivially breakthrough, which includes pretty much any dungeon ever made. Many of the more obvious and balance breaking spellcaster tricks, like lobbing spells upon your enemies from hundreds of feet in the air, vanish if you're stuck in a room with a ten foot ceiling.

And engaging white room RPG combat is what video games do, even D&D video games. The central problem with this is that in a straight comparison of white room vs. white room, the video game experience is flat out superior to the tabletop one. Video games can effectively integrate more complex and varied options mathematically because everything is being calculated by a computer, not people doing arithmetic in their heads, allowing for more complex and varied ranges and also simply orders of magnitude more effects - a typical OP boss fight in an MMO lasts 10-15 minutes, involves 8 ore more PCs, potentially dozens or more NPCs, and might include well over 10,000 individual 'roll' equivalent calculations. That is simply impossible to do at a table. Also, because visual games are a visual medium, they can provide an interesting visual gloss that hides the overall similarity of various effects by using different symbols, alternative sounds, or varied animation. Video games even have better options for physical battlefield structure because digital art tools can build complex three-dimensional arenas (with platforms and reflectors and intermittent hazards among others) that even the most talented of Styrofoam-manipulators can't actually put on a tabletop.

Gygax and co. created D&D as a modified wargame, and for a long time D&D was a combat system with RPG elements loosely added to it. And in the 1970s and even up through the 1990s that made a lot of sense. Video games didn't really get even close to emulating the effective tabletop experience within a full immersive multimedia framework until the late 1990s, but its 2020 now, and they've lapped tabletop well and good. Pure combat is probably the least effective use of the capabilities of tabletop in the current entertainment market.

So it's balancing everything else that becomes much more important.

johnbragg
2020-08-09, 05:18 PM
So it's balancing everything else that becomes much more important.

I didn't say it wasn't important. Just that it wasn't easy.

Those non-mathy or less-mathy, non-combat or semi-combat parts are the "killer app" for pencil-and-paper games over MMORPGs.

Sneaking a party past the guards, outwitting the orc trackers, even using clever tactics and breaking the morale of the goblins, is what human-DM games can do that MMORPGS can't.

Computers are pretty hopeless at that sort of thing. Below-average and beginner DMs are only "pretty bad" at it.

NigelWalmsley
2020-08-09, 06:25 PM
because RPG combat is fairly easily reducible to math.

An RPG is math. At least, the product you're paying for is. Imagination and roleplaying are certainly things that matter, and you could make a reasonable argument that they are more important to people's enjoyment than the math, but the product you are actually getting when you buy D&D or Shadowrun or whatever is a bunch of math. Plus sometimes some world-building, but that's never been D&D's strong suit.


4E Skill Challenges were a mess.

Skill Challenges are actually fairly easy to fix. You just have them last a fixed number of "rounds", rather than until a certain number of failures are reached. Moreover, I don't see how a thing that is literally just an exercise in iterative probability could possibly not be math enough to be effectively balanced mathematically.


For most players, the game is fundamentally about killing monsters and taking their loot. Diversions like learning about the monsters and manipulating NPCs to help you get better gear or information for killing monsters (most social encounters) and getting to the monsters (traveling, stealthing, trapmonkeying) are immersion-building appetizers, not as important as the main course.

Sure, I buy that. But that's not really an argument that we need to do any particular thing with the non-combat parts of the game so much as an argument that it doesn't matter what we do with the non-combat parts of the game.

johnbragg
2020-08-09, 06:49 PM
An RPG is math. At least, the product you're paying for is. Imagination and roleplaying are certainly things that matter, and you could make a reasonable argument that they are more important to people's enjoyment than the math, but the product you are actually getting when you buy D&D or Shadowrun or whatever is a bunch of math.

Yes. The difference between an LARP and kids running around saying "bang bang I got you" "no you missed" is the math. The combat math has been developed, refined, redesigned, tested, etc over 40 years.

The noncombat math for simple DC checks was pretty much developed for 3E. It was an early release product, with problems that various patches (e6) tried to patch, 5E either fixed or kludged over, depending on your taste.


Skill Challenges are actually fairly easy to fix. You just have them last a fixed number of "rounds", rather than until a certain number of failures are reached. Moreover, I don't see how a thing that is literally just an exercise in iterative probability could possibly not be math enough to be effectively balanced mathematically.

4E was all about mathematical balance. And 4E tried a bunch of different Skill Challenge systems, and I don't know that any of them won widespread support.

I don't know how 4E Skill Challenges worked, aside from the idea that "everybody rolls". One big question is--exactly how does the math correspond to the fiction? The party is stealthing down the corridor, what exactly does it look and sound like when Sir Clanky passes the stealth check?

(It helps a lot of you start with a magic-soaked universe, and treat stealth as not being *noticed* instead of not being seen. The guard maybe SAW Sir Clanky, but immediately forgot because Clanky was under the rogue's Masquerade of Insignificance)


Sure, I buy that. But that's not really an argument that we need to do any particular thing with the non-combat parts of the game so much as an argument that it doesn't matter what we do with the non-combat parts of the game.

That takes it a little bit too far. Combat is the core of the game, but the noncombat has to be good enough to support the parts of the game between combats.

The way you phrase it, Toyota doesn't have to worry about whether the AC works, or whether there's enough trunk space in the car, as long as the engine is okay. That's not how it works.

EDIT: Going back to my main course / appetizer analogy, you probably wouldn't go back to a restaurant that had crappy appetizers or no appetizers, even if the main course was pretty good.

Pex
2020-08-09, 09:21 PM
Frankly, I'm somewhat convinced the game simply shouldn't be giving out multiple attacks, as a general rule. Resolving iterative and secondary attacks is generally more trouble than it's worth.



Preference, not definitive. There is aesthetic fun value in attacking more than once by the physical action of rolling and the emotional concept of if you miss the first attack you get another chance and coolness of if you hit you get to hit again. There is also the sense of increasing power as you level where you start with one attack but then get more at higher levels. Getting something new or more has more impact than increasing numbers, though increasing numbers is of value. Resolving the multiple attacks is about the game math and mechanics. 3E giving you penalties to hit and can't have any if you move more than 5 feet make it less fun/more tedious than 5E's way of never having a penalty and you can move however much you want.

Vahnavoi
2020-08-09, 09:32 PM
I don't get it. 5e is, IMO, already about 12 levels too long for the amount of progression provided. You can certainly cram a zero to god progression into 20 levels. That might actually make individual levels feel significant again.

Well lets get to the bottom of why you "don't get it". Answer the following questions:

1) in games you've played, how often do your characters level up in real time? Ie., how many game hours between levels?

2) in games you've played, how often do your characters level up in game time? Ie., how many ingame days, weeks or years per level?

3) in games you've played, what is the most common operative unit of time? Ie., is it the ingame round (6 seconds), turn (10 minutes), day etc.? How much real time passes for unit of operative game time?

4) how do you conceptualize your characters? To give three examples:

a) do you start with a high concept, like "jolly alcoholic blind swordsman", and then try to find the mechanics that fit?

b) do you procedurally generate your characters, giving the system a random seed (ability score rolls) and then let it spit out the details?

c) mechanics first, where you put together a statblock that's competitive and interesting for you to play as a player, and then play as basically yourself or let the concept come to you later?

d) do you let your GM script your characters for you and then play what you're given?

5) rank your interest in following areas of the game on a scale from 1 ("I heavily dislike this" ) through 3 ("I can take it or leave it") to 5 ("I greatly like this" ) : exploration of the game setting (finding new people and places), tactical level challenges (round-by-round combat), strategic and logistical level challenges (planning travel routes, managing supplies by day, week or month, domain management etc.), interaction with NPCs (dialogue and drama), interaction with environment (building things within the game etc.), creation and enjoyment of narrative (following a "story" or "plot" ).

Quertus
2020-08-09, 09:42 PM
Huh. Right. Playground seems to limit the number of posts you can quote at once. Senility willing, I'll have to go back and get the rest in another post.


What I'd do is depressingly simple: I'd make characters (casters, but everyone else too) specialise.

Bam. You make a 'Destruction' mage, you get the big badaboom aoe spells - but you don't get anything else. You pick a 'Demonologist' mage, you get all the fancy summons - but you don't get anything else.

If you play a 'Berserker' you get a great big 2-hander and possibly the highest damage in the game - but you get nothing else. Pick a 'Knight' you get sword-and-board, and the ability to tank forever - but you don't get anything else.

The problem is versatility. The solution is specialisation.

I find it really hard to sell, "the Fighter can't play the game, therefore nobody else should be able to play the game, either".

When the mind mage, crit-fishing assassin, and raging barbarian are all sidelined because, oh look, incorporeal undead, that's not a fun game.

Granted, ShadowRun seems to run off "you cannot participate here" logic, so it's doable… I just consider "everyone gets to participate" to be a better paradigm, especially for D&D.

So, perhaps my initial question should have been, is it possible to arrange class abilities such that a) characters of the same level all get to participate in (most) level-appropriate challenges (which includes "and no one class solos a large number of these", because otherwise the other classes wouldn't really be participating, now would they) in roughly equal amounts; b) while maintaining distinct classes?


Oh, and obviously 2-dimensional characters would be boring. So maybe the 'Berserker' has his 2-hander, and some sort of nice gimmick in combat (in my games, Rage can break Charm and Hold effects, and so on), and then on top he gets a nice pallette of out-of-combat abilities. Maybe out-of-combat abilities are free-for-all, so any character can be charming, or diplomatic, or a juggler, or a musician.

I do like the idea of separating in combat and out of combat abilities. In combat, he's a raging Barbarian who crushes foes with his mighty golf cart of weaponry; out of combat, he casts utility spells. In combat, he wins people over to his side with his charming smile; out of combat, he's a Sage who knows something about everything. In combat, he reads minds to give tactical advantages to the group; out of combat, he's a trap-disarming Scout with unfailing stamina.


Wut? Let me google up the meme of the car with the engine on fire.
"Well that's your problem right there."

If the player really just wants to play a blaster-caster, then that's a corner case I can handle. Use a half-caster gish chassis, like a weapon-based warlock or a Durkon cleric, let them cast "Bigass Anime Sword" on their weapon and go smashing doodz. The math works out the same, except for some action economy effects.

That… doesn't match anyone I've ever talked to about's concept of a Pyromancer / other combat damage spellslinger.

And "5 people buff the Fighter 1st turn" should obviously be superior to "the Pyromancer buffs himself for 5 turns" in terms of how many swings one gets to make with those buffs. So balancing a self-buffing character is non-trivial (outside "day spells", that is).


But you want to strongly advise a player against building a character that, mechanically, can only do damage.

Tell that to the Fighter players. :smallbiggrin:

Meh. I've met plenty of players who wanted their sheet to only contain "deals damage" buttons. As I've brought up in other threads, this is why it's important to have usable options at the "everyman", "equipment", "story", "campaign", "world", etc levels.

Hmmm… that probably didn't make sense. Let me try again. … actually, it's a big topic, and I don't see how to make it relevant to the topic beyond saying that Quertus, my signature academia mage for whom this account is named, could have been replaced with a bag of flour for his net contribution for ~10 levels. And, importantly, that bag of flour exists at a different layer than "class features".

Point being, *if* that's a valid archetype for the game / system / world, then it should be a possible archetype / class / whatever.

But, back to your 1st paragraph… if the Fighter's contribution is "hit stuff", and the Pyromancer's contribution is "burn stuff", it is not unreasonable for them to redirect to be equals. It is unreasonable to expect the Pyromancer to be worse at dealing damage *unless* you give him something else.

However, when I created this thread, I was going on the premise that such characters were… undesirable. "Linear warriors" and all that. But, sure, I'm willing to include such characters, so long as they come equipped with warning labels of "you don't get too play the game if you take this class - choose at your own risk", and *everyone else* actually gets to play the game.


Take into account *how* they're contributing though. If Wally the Wizard casts Flaming Sword on Fred the Fighter's sword, and Fred does 15 damage and kills the bugbear, Wally's player feels like some of that damage is his. Which is good table play, in my opinion.

It can get dysfunctional. I really want to design the RPG where the optimal choices are for the muggles to spend their turns buffing the Wizards (shouting words of encouragement or "look out!", devising tactics, etc), spend their XP buffing the party, etc. Oh, and give the Wizard the better chassis, and at-will spells.


I think that, unless the game is seriously crimped to only-combat scenarios, it's almost inevitable that spellcasters will contribute more than non-spellcasters. Fred and Wally killed the orc, but they have to run to escape from the ogre. That's a situation that having some magic is a huge help--cast Create Pit or an illusion or mass Expeditious Retreat.

If the Fighter has "smash ground", "pull trick" and "carry party" buttons, who needs Wally?

It isn't hard to give the Fighter level-appropriate buttons to push.


"How do you balance the fact that casters are more useful out of combat than martials?" By having martials really shine in combat, personally.

Shine? Hmmm… I suppose I'm not opposed to that. If the adventure is just one big combat slog, though, then the combat classes are clearly unbalanced. Hmmm… "don't get to play the game" and "OP" from the same class, depending on the adventure? Bug, or feature?

Still, not what I had initially intended to focus on.


I'm not sure that's a fun way to balance. It would sound samey if everyone can do everything just in a different way. I could be wrong if the mechanics are significantly different. It's easier to see the point in high magic. The fighter doesn't need to be able to teleport just because the wizard can, no punching a hole in the multiverse. What he needs is to get something as awesome for him as the wizard likes teleporting when the wizard gets it, and the wizard cannot do that awesome thing too. What that awesome thing is is the conundrum, but I'm sure just bigger combat damage numbers is not it.

Hmmm… this is potentially the issue with my idea - "contribution" is ready in combat, but it's probably more difficult to have "contribution" for "get from 'A' to 'B' (quickly)" (and every other scenario) baked into (most) every class.




The issue is precisely in not having high-level skill applications that would be worthwhile. As in, a bad equivalent of Fly is a DC120 (IIRC) Balance check. One of those is a 3rd level spell. The other requires hyper-optimization towards to be achievable even at level 20. That is because the game didn't think there should be a reasonable point where skills should be able to replicate magic at-will. That is a good design consideration. Personally, I think it's perfectly fine for skills to get at-will "magic" effects a few levels later. At-will Flight or something closely resembling it (jumps 50 feet high, standing on air until your next turn, etc.) at level 9 shouldn't break the game, you've had Flight for 4 levels now and for 2 levels it hasn't been in the highest spell slot anyway.

You know, I kinda like this. Wizards get, say, 1 of their highest level spells per day, several from the next level, and can use all the lower level spells at will. And follow this with the rest of the classes: anything two "tiers" below your level should be able to be trivialized at will.

Ignimortis
2020-08-09, 11:10 PM
This is true, but I absolutely cannot understand how this is a problem with spells. Non-spells simply don't solve these problems at all. It's not that there's some pretty good strategic mobility option for Fighters that Teleport crowds out, it's that Fighters (and Warblades) get absolutely nothing. In this particular area, I cannot comprehend any workable solution that starts anywhere other than unprecedentedly large buffs to martials.

Yes, that is true. My issue is that not every class should even have a Teleport analogue. It should be easy enough to get a Teleport-user in the party, but not every single character should be able to access Teleport or something similar functionally from any class. Conversely, other abilities should be at least barred from some other classes. Perhaps a theoretical Warblade should be able to cut a hole in reality at higher levels, and have it function like Teleport. But in exchange, by picking Warblade, they forgo access to some other abilities - like summoning creatures or healing or invisibility/stealth-focused powers. And that should be true for any class - you have a reasonable amount of stuff you can do (some very well, some passably), and a reasonable amount of stuff you can't do at all. Then your teammates can pick up the slack by using their own talents.



So what? Size, as they say, matters not. How much of a level advantage would you need to pick a Dread Necromancer or a Beguiler over a Wizard? Two, maybe three at the high end. Having a thousand spells isn't ten times as good as having a hundred spells. Especially when you prepare spells and spend resources to learn them.

Having a thousand spells is a significant advantage, if you can pick any of them to learn. You can outright select the best things that you know would be useful. A Beguiler or a Dread Necromancer still has weak spots, even in their spell list. A Wizard can select enough spells from a spell list that contains enough powerful tools to confront most situations in the game at their best. Also, despite the "spending resources" claim, Wizards would still spend less gold to double their amount of spells known than any other arcane caster without Rainbow Servant cheese. It's just that Cleric and Druid have every single spell on their list that makes the Wizard's way of learning imperfect.



So can the Incarnate. So can the Binder. In fact, those classes can switch their abilities more easily than the Wizard can. So if this kind of flexibility is a problem, why aren't those classes busted? They're both substantially worse than the Sorcerer, and the Incarnate is in the bottom half of classes overall.

As I've noted before - because it's not just about being able to switch things up easily. It's also about power and variance of things that are being switched, and spells tend to be more powerful than vestiges or essentia investments. If Binder had an lot of vestiges that would provide effects on par with similar-level Wizard casting, Binders would be much more broken. As we already know, access to a single vestige that allows for summoning some creatures with their own abilities kicks Binder up a notch, because their arsenal expands majorly with powerful abilities.



Not necessarily. My solution is to go back to the challenges. You have to stop looking at it in terms of competing with Teleport. You have to start looking at it in terms of challenges. What problems should characters be able to solve? What problems should parties be able to solve? You won't get anywhere by looking at the Wizard and blindly modifying it. You can intuit the direction things should move, to a degree, but to make real progress you have to understand what kinds of challenges people are going to be facing, and what kinds of resources they should spend to overcome them.

This is how the game works in combat right now. A Wizard, a Warblade, a Rogue, and a Cleric are all able to make meaningful but distinct contributions to overcoming challenges like "a Fire Giant" or "a squard of Bearded Devils" or "two Gorgons". Those contributions will be larger or smaller in each of those encounters, but they will all always have something to do. That paradigm works. Why can't the rest of the game work like that?

Because combat is a very complicated series of checks compared to out-of-combat challenges. Most things that arise out of combat are basically binary - "can we do that? if yes, then do that", because they tend to get resolved with one (maybe two or three) skill rolls or some judicious spell application. One turn of combat involves more rolls than a whole social session will, even if you rely on skills and spells heavily there. Also, that's because combat has the most rules by far devoted to it, both in 3e and 5e - outside of spells, I suppose, or even over that.

And I'm not sure that the paradigm actually works, because three of the four classes you listed aren't specifically geared towards combat, and one (Warblade) of them is, but it's far from certain that the Warblade's contribution to combat will (at least almost) always be the greatest, despite the character being explicitly built as a combatant. And if you increase Warblade's contribution to combat as to make it definitely greatest, then two outcomes are possible - the Warblade or analogous class is necessary to succeed in combat, or combat's too easy with a Warblade around because the monsters are balanced to be beatable without a Warblade.


Well lets get to the bottom of why you "don't get it". Answer the following questions:

1) in games you've played, how often do your characters level up in real time? Ie., how many game hours between levels?

2) in games you've played, how often do your characters level up in game time? Ie., how many ingame days, weeks or years per level?

3) in games you've played, what is the most common operative unit of time? Ie., is it the ingame round (6 seconds), turn (10 minutes), day etc.? How much real time passes for unit of operative game time?

4) how do you conceptualize your characters? To give three examples:

a) do you start with a high concept, like "jolly alcoholic blind swordsman", and then try to find the mechanics that fit?

b) do you procedurally generate your characters, giving the system a random seed (ability score rolls) and then let it spit out the details?

c) mechanics first, where you put together a statblock that's competitive and interesting for you to play as a player, and then play as basically yourself or let the concept come to you later?

d) do you let your GM script your characters for you and then play what you're given?

5) rank your interest in following areas of the game on a scale from 1 ("I heavily dislike this" ) through 3 ("I can take it or leave it") to 5 ("I greatly like this" ) : exploration of the game setting (finding new people and places), tactical level challenges (round-by-round combat), strategic and logistical level challenges (planning travel routes, managing supplies by day, week or month, domain management etc.), interaction with NPCs (dialogue and drama), interaction with environment (building things within the game etc.), creation and enjoyment of narrative (following a "story" or "plot" ).

1) Depends on the DM, but mostly it's anywhere from once per week or two (especially at lower levels) to once per month. So on average, I'd say it's 3 weeks?
2) Also depends on the DM and the campaign. Sometimes it's been months or even years, with downtime and such, sometimes it's 1 to 7 in a few weeks.
3) I'm not sure. Rounds get tracked more often, I suppose? Days and such are only sometimes important, in downtime or timed plot sessions.
4) A mix of A and C. I start with a concept and then try to make that character mechanically interesting for me, as well as being able to contribute.
5) Exploration of the setting - 3
Tactical challenges - 5
Strategic challenges - 2, 1 for domain management in particular
Interaction with NPCs - 4
Interaction with the environment - 3.5, if that means finding your way around on a tactical level (like looking for clues and such), not sure how building anything isn't a strategic challenge
Narrative - 5

Vahnavoi
2020-08-10, 12:39 AM
1) Depends on the DM, but mostly it's anywhere from once per week or two (especially at lower levels) to once per month. So on average, I'd say it's 3 weeks?

There's a reason why I specified game hours as unit for the first question. Be honest, you aren't playing 504 hours at every level - or if you are, it explains the difference in opinion, because your games are absolutely glacial in pace and you are spending too much time on playing them. :smalltongue:

So, please clarify: three weeks means what? Three weekly session of about 4 hours, for a total of 12 hours?

Ignimortis
2020-08-10, 01:08 AM
There's a reason why I specified game hours as unit for the first question. Be honest, you aren't playing 504 hours at every level - or if you are, it explains the difference in opinion, because your games are absolutely glacial in pace and you are spending too much time on playing them. :smalltongue:

So, please clarify: three weeks means what? Three weekly session of about 4 hours, for a total of 12 hours?

Three weekly sessions of about 5-6 hours, I'd say. So about 15-20 hours per level on average.

Satinavian
2020-08-10, 01:54 AM
I find it really hard to sell, "the Fighter can't play the game, therefore nobody else should be able to play the game, either".

When the mind mage, crit-fishing assassin, and raging barbarian are all sidelined because, oh look, incorporeal undead, that's not a fun game.

Granted, ShadowRun seems to run off "you cannot participate here" logic, so it's doableÂ… I just consider "everyone gets to participate" to be a better paradigm, especially for D&D.

So, perhaps my initial question should have been, is it possible to arrange class abilities such that a) characters of the same level all get to participate in (most) level-appropriate challenges (which includes "and no one class solos a large number of these", because otherwise the other classes wouldn't really be participating, now would they) in roughly equal amounts; b) while maintaining distinct classes?
It is easy to build hybrids in Shadowrun. No problem to put social skills on your street samurai or make your physical adept a streetdoc, even making your mage a decker is only 0.1 essence the most. And everyone can use to learn a weapon or be sneaky. I have never played in a SR group where everyone only can do one thing, just the opposite, a normal shadowrunner can do 2-3 things competently which leads to a wide array of potential group tactics.

But it costs. Karma, equippment, essence. If you go full versatility, you get to be jack of all trades, master of none. You can be good at several things, but not at all of them and even to be mediocre somewhere does cost.


And that is how a good balanced RPG should handle things. No character should be able to contribute everywhere. Otherwise you have to make every character being able to do everything which makes character differences fluff at best. Everytime your party gets a new PC, it should be better at doing some things but worse at doing other things than when another character was added.


So yes, the universalist wizard has to go. It doesn't necessarily mean that wizards only can do one thing. You can device a system, where a caster specialized in blasting of lv 10 could do blasting like lv 10, summoning like lv 8, knowledge skills like lv 6 most regular schools like and many regular nonmagic skills lv 4, magic he is bad at and some regular skills he is bad at like lv2. Of course you would have to make sure, that blasting is not super inferior to summoning. Or divination. Or anything he could take instead.



I do like the idea of separating in combat and out of combat abilities. In combat, he's a raging Barbarian who crushes foes with his mighty golf cart of weaponry; out of combat, he casts utility spells. In combat, he wins people over to his side with his charming smile; out of combat, he's a Sage who knows something about everything. In combat, he reads minds to give tactical advantages to the group; out of combat, he's a trap-disarming Scout with unfailing stamina.The current D&D is still basically a tactical skirmish game. ut-of-combat abilities have horrible rules. If you want to change that, tear the current system completely down and build it anew.

vasilidor
2020-08-10, 03:44 AM
ever consider the possibility that classes may be the problem? I have not read whole thread at this point, i just think that having character classes may be apart of the problem. what if we instead had it so that every character had skill levels, combat levels and magic levels as seperate things on their character sheet?

Kyutaru
2020-08-10, 05:13 AM
The current D&D is still basically a tactical skirmish game. ut-of-combat abilities have horrible rules. If you want to change that, tear the current system completely down and build it anew.It may just be the current D&D that is the problem then. With so much munchkin play in 3e and so much balance obsession in 5e, it has colored the modern player perspective to truly think D&D is a tactical skirmish game.

I think of "spin the wheel and see what you get" character generation and "balance isn't even a consideration" as emblematic of old school D&D. I feel like that's what D&D was all about once.

We once had meat grinders to run assorted characters through and focused on the fiction and crazy adventure stories it generated. D&D was the first Meme Generator and it did it just by being open to roleplay, interpretation, exploration, and creativity. It didn't even have ability checks in the sense we do now, not with exact mechanics for what they would do. A jump check was just the DM calling for a strength test if he felt like it and it varied across tables because everyone played it differently, they customized D&D for them and their table. It's become more uniform in experience at the expense of the imagination because there's a specific way you're expected to play when the rules are clear on a subject and RAW arguments result in players getting upset if you don't adhere to them. When there was no RAW, no basis in the rules restricting your decisions, you were free to do anything and go anywhere with them. It made for a better experience and less of these balance concerns because each class had a unique role that could not be replicated by the others. Modern D&D has tons of class overlap in abilities as well as feats and customization options that let you add on perks to cover natural weaknesses that were intended for balance. It creates the illusion of balance when there are still countless character builds that will never work while some are distinctly better than others. It worked better when the game told you straight up that balance is never a consideration and your DM decided how easy or how brutal the game would be.

Mechalich
2020-08-10, 05:18 AM
ever consider the possibility that classes may be the problem? I have not read whole thread at this point, i just think that having character classes may be apart of the problem. what if we instead had it so that every character had skill levels, combat levels and magic levels as seperate things on their character sheet?

Classes vs. classless is mostly a matter of moving the balance problems around. Ultimately balance issues are mostly related to specific abilities, or ability combinations, that turn out to be extremely overpowered or underpowered. Classes are simply a framework that inherently provides a character concept with a set of abilities grouped together.

In some ways classless games can actually be even more unbalanced than class-based ones, because they are vulnerable to the 'one-true build' scenario where some ability combo turns out to be just flat out better than any other as a consequence of some design issue like grouping too many traits on one specific stat or something or providing better items based around one ability compared to all others. In oWoD VtM, for example, there were three principle 'combat disciplines,' Celerity, Fortitude, and Potence, but Celerity was flatly better than the others and if you wanted to be a combat monster you focused on that one and ignored the other two (and for this reason the artsy Toreador were actually better fighters than several supposedly 'combat oriented' clans).

Kyutaru
2020-08-10, 06:02 AM
In some ways classless games can actually be even more unbalanced than class-based ones, because they are vulnerable to the 'one-true build' scenario where some ability combo turns out to be just flat out better than any other as a consequence of some design issue like grouping too many traits on one specific stat or something or providing better items based around one ability compared to all others.
Class-based games fall into the same trap as D&D even shows. There are hordes of Warlocks who take Paladin for the synergy. It reaches a point where there is no longer a Warlock class, there is the Walladin. What rises is archetypes instead of classes, as though the classes themselves were just incomplete building blocks similar to classless systems, a reconfigured set of abilities bundled into a choice package. Slightly complex character building with groups of abilities that refer to themselves as classes is still effectively the character generation of a classless system with a distinct lie about its nature. I could rename all the D&D classes into ability trees like something out of Elder Scrolls Skyrim/Oblivion and it wouldn't change their function, only their flavor. Choose a few abilities from the Occult tree and a few perks from the Holy tree and you have yourself your Walladin. The more cross-class or classless options exist in character generation and growth the less of a class-based game it becomes.

johnbragg
2020-08-10, 07:48 AM
Wut? Let me google up the meme of the car with the engine on fire.
"Well that's your problem right there."

If the player really just wants to play a blaster-caster, then that's a corner case I can handle. Use a half-caster gish chassis, like a weapon-based warlock or a Durkon cleric, let them cast "Bigass Anime Sword" on their weapon and go smashing doodz. The math works out the same, except for some action economy effects.



That… doesn't match anyone I've ever talked to about's concept of a Pyromancer / other combat damage spellslinger.

Well, what I described was how a Warlock or baby-CoDzilla gets build. If the player is committed to a full-caster blaster-caster and not an eldritch-blast / eldritch-glaive warlock then they're going to be doing less than the other party members.

At 1st level, where my math is easiest to describe:
Blaster-caster does d6 damage plus a rider effect (Dual save mechanic).
Sword Guy does d8 or d10 or d12 damage, plus strength bonus.
Buffy The Buffbot's buffs are designed to boost sword guy--Bless boosts attack bonus not save DC, Elemental Weapon boosts weapon damage, Least Haste basically trades Buffy's action for an extra action by Sword Guy or Blaster-Caster.

And you know, if Perry the Pyromaniac's player is focused on doing damage, and is okay with being out-damaged by Sword Guy and REALLY out-damaged by Buffy-Boosted Sword Guy, then I guess that's fine.

Then when you get to fireball level, Perry is casting Fireball for 6d6 save for half, which clears away some mooks and hits everything in the fireball. Meanwhile Buffy is casting True Haste on the entire party for the rest of the fight. And Sword Guy is getting two attacks a round, three with Haste.


But you want to strongly advise a player against building a character that, mechanically, can only do damage.


Tell that to the Fighter players. :smallbiggrin:

Meh. I've met plenty of players who wanted their sheet to only contain "deals damage" buttons. As I've brought up in other threads, this is why it's important to have usable options at the "everyman", "equipment", "story", "campaign", "world", etc levels.



This is true. But it's a lot easier to use a paragraph or a page in the Players' Handbook to nudge casters in the direction of doing interesting things besides "reduce target's HP." Heck, just a suggestion in the class text that a starting character with 4 spells take one combat cantrip, one non-combat cantrip, one first-level combat spell and one non-combat first-level spell. (And have low-level spells like Create Pit and Lesser Wall of Fire and Least Haste that have pretty obvious uses).



And "5 people buff the Fighter 1st turn" should obviously be superior to "the Pyromancer buffs himself for 5 turns" in terms of how many swings one gets to make with those buffs. So balancing a self-buffing character is non-trivial (outside "day spells", that is).

True. But I tend to believe that 3rd edition forum overdid the reliance on JaronK's Tier system and fetishized "Tier 3", and WOTC did the same think over-balancing 4th edition. If the Core 3rd edition classes had topped out at tier 2 and bottomed out at tier 4, we'd never have spent so much time arguing about balance.

Sword Guy should just be better than Pyromancer at "doing lots of HP damage". Pyromancer is definitely better at "setting things on fire." But it's in the nature of a fantasy adventure RPG that "doing lots of HP damage" is useful in many more situations than "setting things on fire."

The full-caster insisting on only being a Pyromancer is like Sword Guy's player insisting that he or she use a dagger at all times. That's a roleplaying choice that sacrifices effectiveness in the adventure.

(I solve most of this by having thematic casters get some access to the "greatest hits" spell list. Half of their spells known have to be thematic, the other half can be the optimum choices)


But, back to your 1st paragraph… if the Fighter's contribution is "hit stuff", and the Pyromancer's contribution is "burn stuff", it is not unreasonable for them to redirect to be equals. It is unreasonable to expect the Pyromancer to be worse at dealing damage *unless* you give him something else.

Well, if he's a full caster in my work-in-progress system, he can use half his Spells Known on "something else." So a starting spell list something like Fire Bolt(0), Lesser Wall of Fire(1), Cure Wounds(1), Least Haste(0), and Signature Spell benefits TBD for Fire Bolt.



It can get dysfunctional. I really want to design the RPG where the optimal choices are for the muggles to spend their turns buffing the Wizards (shouting words of encouragement or "look out!", devising tactics, etc), spend their XP buffing the party, etc. Oh, and give the Wizard the better chassis, and at-will spells.

That could work in a two-player-plus DM game, where one player has a Caster and the other player has something like http://udan-adan.blogspot.com/2016/09/bx-class-extras.html, and plays a mob of goons.



You know, I kinda like this. Wizards get, say, 1 of their highest level spells per day, several from the next level, and can use all the lower level spells at will. And follow this with the rest of the classes: anything two "tiers" below your level should be able to be trivialized at will.

I'm fiddling with an Exhaustion mechanic, where you can only cast a given spell once per fight. (Or, in the fiction, until you take a minute to breathe deeply, center your chi, reset your mantras, etc etc). With that in place, a LOT of spells can become at-will.

Vahnavoi
2020-08-10, 08:01 AM
Three weekly sessions of about 5-6 hours, I'd say. So about 15-20 hours per level on average.

Okay. So lets dig into this:

The way you describe your playing style, the progression curve for your characters would resemble a sharp staircase: after three sessions, your characters spike in power, then flatline for a while, then spike again.

If you try to squeeze in every source of inspiration into twenty levels, with Samwise Gamgi in one end and Galactus at the other (f. ex.) , the steps of that staircase will approximate a logarithmic scale (there just isn't room otherwise). In practice, this would mean that every three sessions, your character suddenly acquires a set of new abilities that largely or completely obsolete their former ones. (This was already a problem in 3e with some full casters.) Characters two or more levels apart shouldn't fit on the same tactical battle mat, because their abilities are of completely different scale. High concept play would be an exercise in frustration, because most concepts can only exist in a tiny range of levels before either being left behind or becoming unrecognizable. (Also already a problem in 3e.)

You could replace this jumpy progression with a linear or lesser exponential curve going from 1 to 100, leveling up each session. The guy at the end of the line would still be recognizably a god compared to the one at the start, but in the interim characters as far as 10 or 20 levels apart might still fit on the same battlefield. Keep in mind that this is what most video games that let you kill gods (like Shin Megami Tensei) actually do; even if the Big Bad Guy is narratively omnipotent, they are never mechanically orders of magnitude stronger than the next guy in line. Filling a hundred levels with tactically meaningful options is hard, but more doable than you'd think. Consider the wacky way (f. ex.) Cleric spells work in d20: every three levels BLAM, you suddenly have 10 to 20 new options to consider. You could easily break that up to a string of 5 to 10 levels where you choose between two mutually exclusive spells.

Kyutaru
2020-08-10, 08:30 AM
Characters two or more levels apart shouldn't fit on the same tactical battle mat, because their abilities are of completely different scale.
I can agree with this...


You could replace this jumpy progression with a linear or lesser exponential curve going from 1 to 100, leveling up each session.
...but not with this.

Adding more levels serves only to provide more numbers going up with little actual impact like the plateaus give. If the issue is that as you mentioned your powers become obsolete then the solution is to ensure the players spend more time at each level. This does mean no level ups in the mean time, no power increases providing arbitrarily small increases to HP or dmg, but it serves to make each level up that much more meaningful. Only having 20 levels for the breadth of power D&D has (or the old school 1-9 format) ensures that each level actually means something significant in terms of power gain. I see no point in having insignificant levels and one of the improvements 5E made was to get rid of the insignificant level ups 3rd edition had where the only things that were gained were some numbers.

It would be better to let players struggle and master each level before moving on to the next. Video games like DOOM or Half-Life or Dishonored have levels of a different kind, stages that must be cleared before progressing, and these can sometimes be enormous and time-consuming to clear. Pacman on the other hand has very short levels that you can blitz through in minutes, going through many of them before reaching the end of the session. I would argue that the former lends to a better roleplaying experience as immersion, world-building, and character growth all take time and should be enjoyed at a leisurely pace. When players advance through meaningless stages too quickly the rush from the accomplishment quickly fades due to its insignificance.

Getting a level should be meaningful and that comes with a substantial power gain that renders earlier threats less threatening. When your enemy is lvl 3 and your party just hit lvl 4, you should feel like these guys have gotten easier. That is very hard to do with gradual increases. Players hardly even notice the power gap between their level 49 characters and a level 52 enemy unless the math (and thereby choices) is very tightly controlled and restricted. MMOs can get away with it because they have your loot and talent selections and power availability on a short leash. But D&D does not and item progression is mostly up to DM discretion or random luck or gameable wealth guidelines so the difference between power levels can be quite small on such a large 1 to 100 scale.

That said, I like how Dungeons & Dragons Online handles levels. There are effectively 100 levels but every 5 mini-levels makes up 1 big level, giving it that 1-20 D&D feel. The level ups in between, I'll call them minor levels, serve to provide gradual HP/mana increases and unlock trait points to be spent on slightly customizing your character thematically. The major level ups meanwhile handle essentially the same as normal.

Ignimortis
2020-08-10, 09:15 AM
Okay. So lets dig into this:

The way you describe your playing style, the progression curve for your characters would resemble a sharp staircase: after three sessions, your characters spike in power, then flatline for a while, then spike again.

If you try to squeeze in every source of inspiration into twenty levels, with Samwise Gamgi in one end and Galactus at the other (f. ex.) , the steps of that staircase will approximate a logarithmic scale (there just isn't room otherwise). In practice, this would mean that every three sessions, your character suddenly acquires a set of new abilities that largely or completely obsolete their former ones. (This was already a problem in 3e with some full casters.) Characters two or more levels apart shouldn't fit on the same tactical battle mat, because their abilities are of completely different scale. High concept play would be an exercise in frustration, because most concepts can only exist in a tiny range of levels before either being left behind or becoming unrecognizable. (Also already a problem in 3e.)

You could replace this jumpy progression with a linear or lesser exponential curve going from 1 to 100, leveling up each session. The guy at the end of the line would still be recognizably a god compared to the one at the start, but in the interim characters as far as 10 or 20 levels apart might still fit on the same battlefield. Keep in mind that this is what most video games that let you kill gods (like Shin Megami Tensei) actually do; even if the Big Bad Guy is narratively omnipotent, they are never mechanically orders of magnitude stronger than the next guy in line. Filling a hundred levels with tactically meaningful options is hard, but more doable than you'd think. Consider the wacky way (f. ex.) Cleric spells work in d20: every three levels BLAM, you suddenly have 10 to 20 new options to consider. You could easily break that up to a string of 5 to 10 levels where you choose between two mutually exclusive spells.

Galactus is certainly not a level 20 character or CR20 threat. That's what epic levels are for, same as SMT-type things with killing gods and stuff. IIRC, 3e's higher reaches of Epic (like levels 40+) were technically about godslaying, though the mechanics were also pretty wonky and JRPG-ish in that you still did that through raw damage and healing and all the level 5 combat mechanics.

And if you propose a curve of 100 levels, you need to fill every single one with abilities that are at least kind of interesting and level appropriate. Video games get around this by making a lot of "empty" levels where you just gain some stats, but giving them out like candy. You get 99 levels in a typical JRPG, and even if abilities are tied to levels there (many don't even do that), you get maybe 15-20 across all of them. As it stands in D&D 5e, they couldn't even do that for 20 levels, which is why I say it's actually about 8-9 levels long. Let's take a look at the class considered to be one of the best 5e designs, the Paladin.

Levels 1 to 7 are perfectly fine, you get a lot of new significant stuff every level - level 2 is especially loaded with goodies, level 3 gives you two good features, level 4 is meh but at least it's powerful, level 5 doubles your damage and gives you 2nd level spells, level 6 doubles your good saves and triples your poor saves, and you can even share that. Level 7 is a surprisingly powerful Sacred Oath feature.

And then it falls off a cliff. Yeah, you get an ASI. Then 3rd level spells. Then an immunity to fear. Then another damage boost. Another ASI, another spell level, Dispel Magic (touch range, 9 levels later than primary casters), a rather subpar Sacred Oath feature (always-on first level spell? AoO on attack instead of movement? I thought that was level 15, not level 5), another ASI, another spell level, a numerical improvement to your level 6 feature that makes it easy to use, another ASI, and a capstone that is pretty cool - but not for level 20, dammit.

Almost all you get between level 7 and 20 are numerical improvements to things you already do. The exception is spells, which keep advancing in usefulness. Everything else is subpar and wouldn't look out of place as a level 7-9 ability.

And that's one of the best designs. Poor Fighter 20 is literally the same Fighter he was 15 levels ago, just with better numbers. Not even significantly better numbers, since quantity is a quality of its' own. No, just slightly better numbers. You could feasibly compress any 5e non-fullcaster class into 8-10 levels, and have the current Paladin 20 abilities on a Paladin 10, who would still have to get 10 more levels to actually be able to take on a CR20 ancient dragon.

Vahnavoi
2020-08-10, 11:19 AM
Galactus is certainly not a level 20 character or CR20 threat. That's what epic levels are for, same as SMT-type things with killing gods and stuff. IIRC, 3e's higher reaches of Epic (like levels 40+) were technically about godslaying, though the mechanics were also pretty wonky and JRPG-ish in that you still did that through raw damage and healing and all the level 5 combat mechanics.

Yes, epic levels, AKA levels beyond 20. I believe I did say that no sane rules design, including prior versions of D&D, try to cram all its fictional inspirations into 20 levels.

Calling D&D's epic rules "JRPGish" is stupid. It's a matter of historical fact that JRPGs copied all that insanity from D&D; people were playing D&D at stupidly high levels, with stupidly inflated numbers, back when Gygax was still running the show and desperately trying to tell them that this wasn't what his game was for. :smalltongue:

---


Adding more levels serves only to provide more numbers going up with little actual impact like the plateaus give. If the issue is that as you mentioned your powers become obsolete then the solution is to ensure the players spend more time at each level. This does mean no level ups in the mean time, no power increases providing arbitrarily small increases to HP or dmg, but it serves to make each level up that much more meaningful.

There's a reasoning for plateaus, but this is not it. A better reasoning for plateaus is that in a complex game, each new move that becomes available increases the games movespace in a combinational manner. Since the increase can be exponential or at least non-linear, this supports spending more and more time at each level because it takes more and more playtime to exhaust the pool of possible tactics. This in turn would suggest an exponential XP curve, similar to how old D&D did it.


Only having 20 levels for the breadth of power D&D has (or the old school 1-9 format) ensures that each level actually means something significant in terms of power gain. I see no point in having insignificant levels and one of the improvements 5E made was to get rid of the insignificant level ups 3rd edition had where the only things that were gained were some numbers.

Pretty much no version of D&D has been limited to 20 levels and even Basic eventually went all the way to level 36. Historically, it was more common for level caps to be all over the place, depending on exact class, race, etc..

The point behind level caps or hitting diminishing returns was to signal that the character's journey was largely over - Gygax's & co's preferences were more for sword & sorcery than superhero stories, and they outright said this at points. So there's an argument for capping playable levels at 20 or below, but that argument is mutually exclusive with the idea of trying to include everything and the kitchen sink in that range.

---

To both: you seem to have missed what I was going at with the 3e Cleric example: D&D has already had enough abilities to fill a hundred levels, it just likes to throw them at you in huge lumps after few levels of quiet. Neither of you have convinced me that this is a better solution than partitioning them into smaller, more frequently acquired packages. Remember the baseline given by IgnisMortis, each level is still meant to be played for a full five hour session. Spreading abilities across more levels like this is not synonymous to "dead levels" where "only numbers go up" .

Kyutaru
2020-08-10, 11:56 AM
D&D has already had enough abilities to fill a hundred levels, it just likes to throw them at you in huge lumps after few levels of quiet. Neither of you have convinced me that this is a better solution than partitioning them into smaller, more frequently acquired packages.
The best, and only, answer I have for that is what I mentioned before about diminishing challenges. When you gain a level up and fight a lower level monster the level increase is noticeable. JRPGs do this through exponential gains based on a formula. You might have 5 attack at lvl 1, 30 attack at lvl 10, 250 attack at lvl 20, and 1100 attack at lvl 30, all the way up to 9999 attack at the high levels. They calculate it out such that numbers are going up and monsters in the area you're grinding have gotten easier but monsters in the next area have not and retain a similar challenge level. To keep increases from being imperceptively small (like going from 2000 attack to 2003 attack) and thus irrelevant to the challenge, RPG developers frequently have to give you a certain percentage increase in power over the previous level. The more levels you have and the higher you go up in them the bigger the impact this percentage increase has until what started as single digit combat numbers ends up with four or five digits.

Keeping D&D at 20 keeps the bounded range of values small while also giving noticeable power differences. You can keep the ranges small if you spread out the bonuses across 100 levels but then you gain far too little at each level up, the process becomes more frequent with chart referencing which slows down tabletop games (a problem that video games don't have), and it starts to feel like a grind to players because they're no longer reaching significant meaningful plateaus that they can be proud of achieving like "I'm lvl 9 now! Hello 5th level spells and new feat!". All they see is the 100-runged ladder that they slowly creep up with mild excitement for going up another rung and the only number that ultimately matters is 100.

Pex
2020-08-10, 05:31 PM
There is a combat thing that's fair for every class to do - have a decent melee and range attack. It's unfun not to be able to do anything in a combat no matter how balanced it is in the overall game construction concept. However, it doesn't have to be exactly both melee and range attacks for everyone. It's fine if a class can't do melee well but is great at getting out of melee so he can focus on range attacks, say being able to avoid opportunity attacks others must suffer. Likewise a class that can't do range attacks should be able to get into melee quickly, such as at least he can jump high enough to attack a flying creature which allows him to jump onto high things when not in combat too.

NigelWalmsley
2020-08-10, 05:44 PM
The vast majority of games already don't get to 20th level. The Epic rules are a joke and always have been. In 3e, characters already go from being personally threatened by housecats to being some of the most powerful in the whole fantasy genre in 20 levels. There is simply no credible reason you need more than 20 levels for D&D.


Yes, that is true. My issue is that not every class should even have a Teleport analogue. It should be easy enough to get a Teleport-user in the party, but not every single character should be able to access Teleport or something similar functionally from any class.

Why not? If some characters don't have strategic movement abilities, that means that whenever there's a strategic movement challenge, those players don't get to do anything. I still don't see how we make the game better by intentionally creating situations where players can't contribute. Those are the worst parts of the game, and that dynamic makes the abilities players do have less meaningful. Right now, the largest obstacle to meaningful non-combat challenges isn't that the Wizard is better at them than the Rogue, it's that those challenges existing excludes the Fighter, and that sucks for him.

Moreover, you have to consider the math of these things. Suppose you've got ten kinds of non-combat challenges, and you want to make sure that it's easy to get someone who can deal with each of them. That means, as an absolute minimum, every class needs options for three of those. That's already more than the overwhelming majority of classes can handle. But let's say you do that. That leaves you with a roughly 25% chance that the party won't have any particular ability. That's really not acceptable. It's like having fully a quarter of combat encounters be ones the PCs don't expect to win. To get that number down under 5%, everyone needs to have 6 different abilities. To get it under 1%, everyone needs to have seven. And those numbers actually look a lot like the Wizard.


Having a thousand spells is a significant advantage, if you can pick any of them to learn.

Is having a thousand feats a significant advantage? It doesn't matter how many options you choose from, or even how many options you have. What matters is if the options you have can solve the problems you need them to. And in this respect, versatility is far less important than power.


A Beguiler or a Dread Necromancer still has weak spots, even in their spell list.

They have abilities they don't have. But so does the Wizard! Every class has abilities they don't have. But that's not the relevant consideration. What matters is how effective they are at solving problems. Again, how much of a level advantage would you need to pick a Beguiler or a Dread Necromancer over a Wizard? It's not very large. That should reveal something about how much that flexibility truly matters.


Because combat is a very complicated series of checks compared to out-of-combat challenges. Most things that arise out of combat are basically binary - "can we do that? if yes, then do that", because they tend to get resolved with one (maybe two or three) skill rolls or some judicious spell application.

That's why the game needs more robust non-combat rules. But even in the current paradigm, it's not correct to say that these things are purely binary. Consider a 3rd level party faced with a locked door. The Wizard could cast Knock, the Rogue could use Open Lock, and the Warblade could smash it with Mountain Hammer. Can you really say that there's a single one of those abilities that is universally optimal for all situations involving a locked door?


No character should be able to contribute everywhere.

Except that's totally how fights work. Even in Shadowrun, someone with no particular skills can pick up a gun and shot people in a way that is at least relevant.


It may just be the current D&D that is the problem then. With so much munchkin play in 3e and so much balance obsession in 5e, it has colored the modern player perspective to truly think D&D is a tactical skirmish game.

This is your daily reminder that that is literally what D&D is. D&D is the result of a decades-long process of adding things to a skirmish combat game.

Ignimortis
2020-08-10, 08:43 PM
To both: you seem to have missed what I was going at with the 3e Cleric example: D&D has already had enough abilities to fill a hundred levels, it just likes to throw them at you in huge lumps after few levels of quiet. Neither of you have convinced me that this is a better solution than partitioning them into smaller, more frequently acquired packages. Remember the baseline given by IgnisMortis, each level is still meant to be played for a full five hour session. Spreading abilities across more levels like this is not synonymous to "dead levels" where "only numbers go up" .

My other point that I have expressed throughout this thread is that no single class needs as many abilities as a cleric has spells. Moreover, a third of all spells in the game could be categorized as "upgrades" that could just exist as part of one ability/spell and get automatically improved as levels go on. You don't keep Fire I around when you have Fire III - unless, and here we hit the thread topic on the head, you're using Vancian systems where you have to keep Fire I to make use of those low-level slots that would otherwise be almost completely useless. A simple mana-based system would obviate a lot of need for lower-level abilities at higher levels.



Why not? If some characters don't have strategic movement abilities, that means that whenever there's a strategic movement challenge, those players don't get to do anything. I still don't see how we make the game better by intentionally creating situations where players can't contribute. Those are the worst parts of the game, and that dynamic makes the abilities players do have less meaningful. Right now, the largest obstacle to meaningful non-combat challenges isn't that the Wizard is better at them than the Rogue, it's that those challenges existing excludes the Fighter, and that sucks for him.

Moreover, you have to consider the math of these things. Suppose you've got ten kinds of non-combat challenges, and you want to make sure that it's easy to get someone who can deal with each of them. That means, as an absolute minimum, every class needs options for three of those. That's already more than the overwhelming majority of classes can handle. But let's say you do that. That leaves you with a roughly 25% chance that the party won't have any particular ability. That's really not acceptable. It's like having fully a quarter of combat encounters be ones the PCs don't expect to win. To get that number down under 5%, everyone needs to have 6 different abilities. To get it under 1%, everyone needs to have seven. And those numbers actually look a lot like the Wizard.

You're looking at it in absolute terms, not the typical team distribution. If some ability is very common among big brawny bruiser types, and another is very common among INT-based arcanist types, and yet another is shared between skill-user types, then it's far more probable that a typical party lineup will be able to have solutions to all problems even if each party member can contribute to 4 or 5 out of 10 only.



Is having a thousand feats a significant advantage? It doesn't matter how many options you choose from, or even how many options you have. What matters is if the options you have can solve the problems you need them to. And in this respect, versatility is far less important than power.

And yet power is what spells have and feats, relatively, don't. And they have versatility for certain classes as well. Like I said, the problem is manifold.



They have abilities they don't have. But so does the Wizard! Every class has abilities they don't have. But that's not the relevant consideration. What matters is how effective they are at solving problems. Again, how much of a level advantage would you need to pick a Beguiler or a Dread Necromancer over a Wizard? It's not very large. That should reveal something about how much that flexibility truly matters.


That depends on what I want to do. If I actually want to be able to powerfully contribute to everything and anything that happens at the table, I'd stop picking wizard only at the point where the difference in levels would mean I don't have level-appropriate abilities, which is something like 4 or 5 levels behind.



That's why the game needs more robust non-combat rules. But even in the current paradigm, it's not correct to say that these things are purely binary. Consider a 3rd level party faced with a locked door. The Wizard could cast Knock, the Rogue could use Open Lock, and the Warblade could smash it with Mountain Hammer. Can you really say that there's a single one of those abilities that is universally optimal for all situations involving a locked door?


There is a clear ladder of effectiveness of those abilities. You only refrain from using Knock if you think that you'd need that spellslot/prepared spell for something more important later. Otherwise, it's superior to both Mountain Hammer and Open Lock, in exchange for being a limited resource. And then it's more of an equal choice between Open Lock (takes more time, stealthy) and Mountain Hammer (one standard action, loud).



Except that's totally how fights work. Even in Shadowrun, someone with no particular skills can pick up a gun and shoot people in a way that is at least relevant.

If putting a -1 to defense onto someone with barely a chance of hitting (because with no particular skills, the best you're gonna hit is a non-full defense ganger) is relevant, then yes. But it's a very miniscule contribution, akin to a Wizard plinking away with a Light Crossbow at level 14.

NigelWalmsley
2020-08-10, 09:24 PM
You're looking at it in absolute terms, not the typical team distribution. If some ability is very common among big brawny bruiser types, and another is very common among INT-based arcanist types, and yet another is shared between skill-user types, then it's far more probable that a typical party lineup will be able to have solutions to all problems even if each party member can contribute to 4 or 5 out of 10 only.

Sure, you could set things up so that there are "Fighter-type problems" and "Wizard-type problems" and "Rogue-type problems" and "Cleric-type problems". But then you can't write a Beguiler, who fights like a Wizard, but solves Rogue problems. And then you guarantee a total overlap in utility between the Ranger and the Barbarian. Having that kind of enforced role requirement isn't good for the game. It leads to "who's going to have to play the Cleric", which in turn lead to Clerics getting all the crazy crap they do in 3e.


And yet power is what spells have and feats, relatively, don't. And they have versatility for certain classes as well. Like I said, the problem is manifold.

Exactly. The ability to pick any feat you want each day is worth less than one average spell per spell level. Versatility is actually a very tiny part of the difference between Wizards and Fighters. If you have someone who is drawing from the same powers in a less versatile way (like a Dread Necromancer), they can compete fairly effectively with the Wizard. If you have someone who gets to repick their abilities from a worse pool (like a Totemist), they're much worse than the Wizard.

To put it in numeric terms, take a look at this thread (https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?600635-Why-each-class-is-in-its-tier-2019-update!). It has the Wizard at 1.1, the Sorcerer (who is like a Wizard, but less versatile) at a 1.8, and the Incarnate (who is like a Wizard, but less powerful) at a 3.57. The gap between Wizard and Incarnate is three times as large as the gap between Wizard and Sorcerer. Versatility is simply not a very large component of why the Wizard is on the top of the heap. You don't need to nerf versatility into the ground. You need to buff the power of underperforming classes.


That depends on what I want to do. If I actually want to be able to powerfully contribute to everything and anything that happens at the table, I'd stop picking wizard only at the point where the difference in levels would mean I don't have level-appropriate abilities, which is something like 4 or 5 levels behind.

You stop having level-appropriate abilities at 3 levels behind. That's the point where the fixed-list caster is always a level ahead of you. Even at a two-level handicap, you've reversed the way spontaneous and prepared casting match up. You're just not getting enough out of your better list to cover that gap, especially because the fixed list casters can expand their lists too.


There is a clear ladder of effectiveness of those abilities. You only refrain from using Knock if you think that you'd need that spellslot/prepared spell for something more important later. Otherwise, it's superior to both Mountain Hammer and Open Lock, in exchange for being a limited resource. And then it's more of an equal choice between Open Lock (takes more time, stealthy) and Mountain Hammer (one standard action, loud).

It seems like you're basically dismissing the notion that managing spell slots is a relevant concern out of hand. But there are many situations where the spell slot constraint might be relevant. In a typical dungeon delve, you very likely won't even bother preparing Knock to begin with, as an extra Web, Cloud of Bewilderment, or Glitterdust is far more valuable. Even if you do have Knock, it only opens a single door. Which makes it useless for such challenges as "a hallway with doors on both ends" or "a door that will be re-locked before you exit", both of which are things that you can find in the average apartment building or college dorm.

Ignimortis
2020-08-10, 10:36 PM
Sure, you could set things up so that there are "Fighter-type problems" and "Wizard-type problems" and "Rogue-type problems" and "Cleric-type problems". But then you can't write a Beguiler, who fights like a Wizard, but solves Rogue problems. And then you guarantee a total overlap in utility between the Ranger and the Barbarian. Having that kind of enforced role requirement isn't good for the game. It leads to "who's going to have to play the Cleric", which in turn lead to Clerics getting all the crazy crap they do in 3e.


You can't keep proper class identity if everyone can do anything with slightly different stipulations. So yes, there will have to be some enforced role requirement, but it might not be as strict as you think. Just let people pick some sort of feat/talent/specialization that isn't hard-locked into the class. This way, the players can adjust for mostly anything - except for having a party full of one class. Every single class can get some sort of access to other one's tricks - it just should require forfeiting something of their own.

So a Beguiler is 50% wizard, 50% rogue - and thus cannot have everything a wizard has and everything a rogue has. Instead, they get to pick some stuff. Barbarians can have their unique talents that aren't necessarily shared with Rangers - while they're theoretically kind of similar in their theme of "wilderness survivor man", they play to very different stereotypes, Barbarian being very Fighter-y and Ranger being more Rogue-like. You could even adopt Pathfinder's archetype system and shove most of those classes into Fighter or Rogue as feature-heavy archetypes that use the same basic progression, but most of their class features are entirely different.



Exactly. The ability to pick any feat you want each day is worth less than one average spell per spell level. Versatility is actually a very tiny part of the difference between Wizards and Fighters. If you have someone who is drawing from the same powers in a less versatile way (like a Dread Necromancer), they can compete fairly effectively with the Wizard. If you have someone who gets to repick their abilities from a worse pool (like a Totemist), they're much worse than the Wizard.

To put it in numeric terms, take a look at this thread (https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?600635-Why-each-class-is-in-its-tier-2019-update!). It has the Wizard at 1.1, the Sorcerer (who is like a Wizard, but less versatile) at a 1.8, and the Incarnate (who is like a Wizard, but less powerful) at a 3.57. The gap between Wizard and Incarnate is three times as large as the gap between Wizard and Sorcerer. Versatility is simply not a very large component of why the Wizard is on the top of the heap. You don't need to nerf versatility into the ground. You need to buff the power of underperforming classes.

Yes, but the question is, to what extent? My opinion that is Tier 1 and Tier 2 aren't really all that good for the game. Frankly, if skill use was expanded upon and improved, most Tier 3 classes would be very comfortable to play in a balanced party (they already are pretty good, but their off-spec performance is wildly different between, say, Bard and Crusader). Tier 3 can do their job well, can do a few side things passably well, but they can't do everything.

And the solution for Wizard is either nerfing their versatility or their power. And nerfing Wizard's power means nerfing spells, because that's all a Wizard can do. Certainly, if Wizard's spells were about as powerful as Incarnate's Essentia investments, they'd probably not be a problem. Even if Wizard's spells were about as powerful as martial maneuvers, they'd probably not be a problem. But the question is - how do you nerf more abstract effects? Fireball is easy to control. Bull's Strength or Magic Weapon are easy to control. Web and Grease and Stinking Cloud are somewhat harder, but doable, I suppose. But what about, say, Water Breathing? Air Walk? Teleport? Plane Shift? Even Fly or Spider Climb? Those are either good enough to always be worth having in the spellbook (not necessarily prepared), just in case, or too bad to even bother with. Your solution is to give everyone access to the same-grade effects, which I dislike for aforementioned issues with class identity and perfect versatility.




You stop having level-appropriate abilities at 3 levels behind. That's the point where the fixed-list caster is always a level ahead of you. Even at a two-level handicap, you've reversed the way spontaneous and prepared casting match up. You're just not getting enough out of your better list to cover that gap, especially because the fixed list casters can expand their lists too.

Sure, if your benchmark for "level-appropriate abilities" is "current full caster top level spells/spell slots". Except a lot of spellcasting stuff doesn't age as quickly. Fly is still relevant at level 9, unless you want to blow your top slot on Overland Flight. Dimension Door is still relevant at level 10 or 11. Even Fireball keeps pace until level 10, if you have problems you want to apply Fireballs to. So unless that changes, I don't think that simply being a spell level behind a Beguiler is going to keep the Wizard from being very useful anyway. Two spell levels, yes, I can see that becoming a problem in some cases. Three spell levels, definitely, you're gonna lose a lot of power. Note that I'm not talking being a Wizard 5 in a party of level 10s - I'm talking about Wizard 10 who has a stunted spell progression, so you're not super weak chassis-wise.



It seems like you're basically dismissing the notion that managing spell slots is a relevant concern out of hand. But there are many situations where the spell slot constraint might be relevant. In a typical dungeon delve, you very likely won't even bother preparing Knock to begin with, as an extra Web, Cloud of Bewilderment, or Glitterdust is far more valuable. Even if you do have Knock, it only opens a single door. Which makes it useless for such challenges as "a hallway with doors on both ends" or "a door that will be re-locked before you exit", both of which are things that you can find in the average apartment building or college dorm.

Knock disallows self-locking doors to relock automatically, as per text. Yes, managing spell slots is a relevant concern, but there comes a point where Knock is a commodity, either through a wand or through 2nd level spells not being that hot by now. Should locks stop being relevant obstacles by level 6 or 7, because Knock opens every single lock in existence, even if it's somehow DC100?

A bit of a side note - designing D&D around dungeon delving should be a thing of the past. Dungeon delving is a smaller part of the game these days, not the thing players do 90% of the time (and D&D at this point tries to advertise itself as a generic fantasy adventuring game anyway, despite 5e being rather poor about anything that isn't dungeon delving). Sure, people try to define a lot of things as dungeon delving, but they actually aren't, if you can, for example, stop doing it and get out in five minutes. Unless your dungeon is designed for a full day (or more) of exploration and combat and all that, it's not a dungeon to delve. It's just an enclosed space, like a noble's house where you might have a fight or two, and search for clues, but leaving it takes like a minute of brisk walking.

NigelWalmsley
2020-08-11, 05:01 PM
You can't keep proper class identity if everyone can do anything with slightly different stipulations.

Again, Wizards can't "do anything". They can do a lot of things, but it is a finite number. Moreover, other people having similar abilities doesn't reduce class identity. It is very easy to tell the difference between a Dread Necromancer's zombie minions, a Druid's animal companion, and a Beguiler's charmed minions. You could also fairly easily imagine how a Summoner's summoned minions, a Warlord's troops, and a Shaman's spirit guides are different from each of them as well.


So a Beguiler is 50% wizard, 50% rogue - and thus cannot have everything a wizard has and everything a rogue has.

And this is different from the relationship between the Wizard and the Beguiler now how? The Wizard isn't simply a strictly better Beguiler, nor the Beguiler a strictly worse Wizard. You could make a reasonable case the Beguiler is worse, but it's by a fairly small margin, and often unnoticeable in actual play.


Barbarians can have their unique talents that aren't necessarily shared with Rangers - while they're theoretically kind of similar in their theme of "wilderness survivor man", they play to very different stereotypes, Barbarian being very Fighter-y and Ranger being more Rogue-like. You could even adopt Pathfinder's archetype system and shove most of those classes into Fighter or Rogue as feature-heavy archetypes that use the same basic progression, but most of their class features are entirely different.

Sure, customization within a class is a noble goal. And you'll note that the Wizard has that. With the various specialist ACFs and bonuses out there, probably a great deal more of it than most other classes. A Necromancer who picks all the Necromancer ACFs has a bunch of abilities an Evoker who picks all the Evoker ACFs does not.


My opinion that is Tier 1 and Tier 2 aren't really all that good for the game.

My opinion is that that's not a very meaningful opinion. "Tier 1 and Tier 2" just mean "the best 1/3 of the classes that exist". Anything else you read into that is a discussion of the properties of those classes, and I think it's very difficult to make the case that all those properties are bad. Some of them certainly are. The Sorcerer doesn't have class features. The Cleric and Druid have far too much flexibility in their spell access. But some of them are good. They're the only classes with access to the vast majority of utility effects. Maybe you can argue that the Wizard has too many of them, but if you think Teleport or Fabricate should be in the game at all, that is implicitly an endorsement of the T1 and T2 classes as a valuable part of the game.


And the solution for Wizard is either nerfing their versatility or their power.

If you think the Sorcerer is also a problem, how can there possibly be a solution in nerfing the Wizard's versatility? The Sorcerer has almost the minimum possible level of versatility you could have with the Wizard spell list.

And if you're going to nerf their power, isn't that exactly isomorphic to increasing everyone else's?


But what about, say, Water Breathing? Air Walk? Teleport? Plane Shift? Even Fly or Spider Climb? Those are either good enough to always be worth having in the spellbook (not necessarily prepared), just in case, or too bad to even bother with.

Except they aren't. It's not worth putting Water Breathing in your spellbook as a Wizard, because the Cleric gets it for free. Similarly with Plane Shift, except the Cleric gets it at a lower level. All you need to do to curb the impact of the Wizard's utility options is open up the utility playbooks of the other classes. If Rogues could Teleport with the same ease that they can open locks, no Wizard (who had a Rogue in their party) would ever bother learning the spell.


Sure, if your benchmark for "level-appropriate abilities" is "current full caster top level spells/spell slots".

I mean, if we're talking about two spellcasters, what else could it possibly be?


Fly is still relevant at level 9, unless you want to blow your top slot on Overland Flight.

You absolutely want to do that, because Fly doesn't have the duration to reliably last through an adventuring day.


Even Fireball keeps pace until level 10, if you have problems you want to apply Fireballs to.

Actually it doesn't. Monster HP grows super-linearly. So a CR 5 bruiser (Troll) has 63 HP where a CR 10 one (Fire Giant, which we will pretend for simplicity is not immune to fire) has 142 HP. So your Fireball has fallen proportionately behind. If we look at the kind of monsters you might encounter in groups, the CR 2 Bugbear has 16 HP to the CR 7 Hill Giant's 102 HP.


Knock disallows self-locking doors to relock automatically, as per text.

It doesn't stop someone from coming along and locking the door. Also, if we're going to talk about the limitations in the text, we should also point out that there are some kinds of things it simply doesn't open, like barred gates. One might imagine that such things would be more common in a world where Knock existed.


Should locks stop being relevant obstacles by level 6 or 7, because Knock opens every single lock in existence, even if it's somehow DC100?

Should locks never stop being relevant obstacles? That seems like the more pressing question, because once you accept that, the rest is haggling.

Pex
2020-08-11, 09:53 PM
My other point that I have expressed throughout this thread is that no single class needs as many abilities as a cleric has spells. Moreover, a third of all spells in the game could be categorized as "upgrades" that could just exist as part of one ability/spell and get automatically improved as levels go on. You don't keep Fire I around when you have Fire III - unless, and here we hit the thread topic on the head, you're using Vancian systems where you have to keep Fire I to make use of those low-level slots that would otherwise be almost completely useless. A simple mana-based system would obviate a lot of need for lower-level abilities at higher levels.



Yes and no. You can keep the spell slot system and still only need one spell using the already existing 5E paradigm of increasing power based on spell slot used. You don't need Fire Bolt and Burning Hands and Scorching Ray and Fireball and Meteor Swarm. You can just have one spell Fire Attack that does all those things depending on the spell slot used. Keep the names for aesthetic purposes in the description of Fire Attack since it is more fun to say I cast Fireball than I cast Fire Attack using a 3rd level spell slot.

Using a mana point system is a preference based on overall power level you want to allow. In the spell slot system you can cast 4 first level Burning Hands and 3 Fireballs a day but only that way. In a mana system you can cast maybe 6 Fireballs and no Burning Hands one day and 1 Fireball and 7 Burning Hands the next day. In a strict mana system you have to allocate your mana each day before you adventure and it's fixed for that day. In a loose mana system you can spend however much mana you want (accepted there's a limit on how much at once, such as 3E Psionics you can never spend more than your level) at the moment you want to use it.

Either way works. It depends on how flexible you will allow the act of casting to be already given there is a limit on how much magic you know. I personally don't like the strict mana system, but I'm fine with spell slots or loose mana.

NigelWalmsley
2020-08-12, 06:55 AM
Also, it's worth pointing out that there actually aren't all that many spells that are "X, but higher level". Sure, there's the occasional Greater Orb of Fire, Dominate Person, or Summon Monster VI but that isn't the norm. Even within the limited scope of something like Fire Magic, the spells you get are fairly different. Burning Hands, Scorching Ray, Fireball, and Wall of Fire are the first four Fire spells a Wizard gets access to, and they all do different things. 5e's notion of upcasting is an elegant solution for some things, you can't really compress spell lists all that much that way.

Cluedrew
2020-08-12, 07:31 AM
Again, Wizards can't "do anything". They can do a lot of things, but it is a finite number. Moreover, other people having similar abilities doesn't reduce class identity. It is very easy to tell the difference between a Dread Necromancer's zombie minions, a Druid's animal companion, and a Beguiler's charmed minions. You could also fairly easily imagine how a Summoner's summoned minions, a Warlord's troops, and a Shaman's spirit guides are different from each of them as well.What is something wizards can't do that can still be done in D&D? Obviously allowing for grouping of these thematically different but mechanically similar abilities. So casting "Resist X" and being tough enough to take X in the face being equivalent at this level of detail. Yes there are a lot of sometimes important details in there but let us start with this.

johnbragg
2020-08-12, 08:47 AM
Also, it's worth pointing out that there actually aren't all that many spells that are "X, but higher level". Sure, there's the occasional Greater Orb of Fire, Dominate Person, or Summon Monster VI but that isn't the norm. Even within the limited scope of something like Fire Magic, the spells you get are fairly different. Burning Hands, Scorching Ray, Fireball, and Wall of Fire are the first four Fire spells a Wizard gets access to, and they all do different things. 5e's notion of upcasting is an elegant solution for some things, you can't really compress spell lists all that much that way.

If you're starting from the D&D spell list as the backbone, that's true.

If you're starting from the ground up, and then testing legacy spells against a designed system, that wouldn't be true. Decide what damage a cantrip, 1st level, 2nd level, 3rd level attack spell should do, for single-targets, for AoEs. (I'm not going higher than that for daily spells in my system. It's either just bigger numbers on a treadmill, or effects that obsolete martials.)

Then you can decide--do we keep, say, Burning Hands? Do we want a 1st level minion-clearing AoE spell? Is the damage in the right range, and if not, can we dial the numbers up or down to get it there? Is it the sort of "spike damage, once per day" spell that worked in early editions where Magic-User's spells per day were severely limited, but not if low-level casters have more spell slots/points/etc? How did we scale the cantrip and 1st level single-target-damage spells, and can we scale "1st level AoE" the same way?

One of the things I've come to like about designing around E6 is you can develop spells around a manageable number of spell levels.

johnbragg
2020-08-12, 09:00 AM
What is something wizards can't do that can still be done in D&D?

Healing magic (at least without major 3X shenanigans).


Obviously allowing for grouping of these thematically different but mechanically similar abilities. So casting "Resist X" and being tough enough to take X in the face being equivalent at this level of detail. Yes there are a lot of sometimes important details in there but let us start with this.

I think the thing to do is set up a paradigm where "buff-spell alone << expert ability << buffed ability". Which would nerf (or nuke) a lot of low-level skill-obsoleting spells--looking at you, jump and spider climb.

Man_Over_Game
2020-08-12, 10:30 AM
So suppose - say, for 6th edition - people wanted to build the game from the ground up, build the math from the ground up to make all D&D classes "balanced", by which I mean "able to contribute, and occasionally shine", and no more "linear Fighter, quadratic Wizard".

So, let's take… "6th level". The wizard has Fireball, SoL spells like Hold Person, buffs, BFC.

Fighting an army of orcs, Fireball is probably optimal. How many orcs should take how long to dispatch the Wizard? How many orcs should the Wizard have killed before that happens? How can the Fighter contribute "equally"? By killing orcs roughly as quickly? By surviving to finish off the orc army one at a time? By leading their own army?

Fighting a few Ogres, BFC is likely the best option, perhaps followed up with some summons. How can the Fighter contribute "equally"? By greatly outpacing the summons' DPS (perhaps with their own "scales by round" mechanic, like "automatic study: add a d6 of damage to every attack for every consecutive round the Fighter has made an attack on this creature type" or something)? By being their own BFC (3e chain tripper says hi)? By leading their own army?

Fighting a Troll, SoL may be the best bet for the Wizard. If it works, the Wizard gets to shine; if not, they didn't contribute. How do we make the Fighter "balanced" here?

Talking to people, the Wizard has effects like Charm and ESP. Which… have negative reproductions, and, in earlier editions, can drive the Wizard bonkers. How do we make the Fighter "balanced" here?

Dealing with traps, the Wizard could use summons (and scrying for maximum safety). How do we make the Fighter "balanced" here?

And, of course, all this was only considering Schrödinger's Wizard with unlimited spells. Should we keep the Wizard that way? How do we balance those encounters of the Wizard only packed Detect Magic, Alarm, Invisibility, and Sending? How do we make the Fighter "balanced" here?

Also, what if, rather than the microscope of "a single challenge", we look at a larger scenario, like "rescue the Dragon from the evil princess", or "close an underwater extradimensional portal protected by invisible, incorporeal guardians", or "save the NPC writer with massive gambling debts from loan sharks"? What should each class bring to the table in each of these scenarios, and how do we make that "balanced"?

Few issues:


Balancing things based off different levels of dependency on resources doesn't generally work, as each table is going to have different numbers of enemies per encounter per day (unless you can find a way to make those numbers rigid).
You don't need to start with the ground up. Compare your vision for both at the top. See where one needs more juice. Give it that juice, or scale the other side down.
Combat isn't the only metric, unless it's the only way to solve your problems. Treat Combat and Non-Combat as two separate modes of play, and make it so you only ever have to compare Apples-to-Apples and Oranges-to-Oranges.
Don't put yourself in a situation where you're comparing the Fighter's weapon-enhancing feature to the Bard's social manipulation feature, because they don't even vaguely compete or solve the same problems. Never be in a position where someone has to spend a feature on either a combat power OR a Roleplaying power, by either granting everyone equal numbers of both (utility feats and combat feats), or making each feature have an aspect of both (the Manipulator feat gives both a utility and a combat power). In other words, a Fighter should have just as many Roleplaying Powers as the Bard, and the Bard should have just as many Combat Powers as the Fighter, or what you're looking for isn't 'balance'. This is because there is no real way of enforcing the base value of either Combat or Roleplaying on any table, or even in an encounter. It'd be like trying to get everyone to use the Metric system while everyone wants to use different weights.

You don't need a whole bunch of math and work. You just gotta check yourself before you wreck yourself. It's the design plan, the foundation that matters, not the math. As long as you're aware of the goals in mind, you'll hit them.

4th Edition actually had the foundation for a perfectly balanced game. It screwed up in a lot of ways (even in regards to balance, mostly due to dumb number problems), but it had the foundation that could have been perfect (by giving everyone roughly the same amount of utility, encounter vs. daily resources, etc).
Was it bland? Sure! But just because 4e was 1-dimensional doesn't mean that a better solution has to be too.

NigelWalmsley
2020-08-12, 06:39 PM
What is something wizards can't do that can still be done in D&D?

It seems to me that the onus should be on you to prove that Wizards can do everything that can be done. The Wizard's spell list does not have every spell on it, and there are plenty of things that aren't spells out there. In terms of an answer to your question, I would say that what the Wizard can't do, generally, is compete with a specialist in their specialty without spending build resources, provided that specialist is of a class comparable to Wizard in power in the first place. So a Wizard might be able to out-melee a Fighter or out-skill-monkey a Rogue just by picking the right spells, but they can't out-melee a Druid or out-skill-monkey a Beguiler unless they sacrifice real power for it.


If you're starting from the ground up, and then testing legacy spells against a designed system, that wouldn't be true. Decide what damage a cantrip, 1st level, 2nd level, 3rd level attack spell should do, for single-targets, for AoEs.

I don't really get how this is responsive. Sure, you could normalize everything to one damage progression (you should not actually do that, but you can). But that doesn't change the fact that Burning Hands is a melee-range AoE, Scorching Ray is a close-range single target attack, Fireball is a long-range AoE, and Wall of Fire is a medium-range BFC effect that's not even instantaneous. How are you going to set things up so those are all modes of the same underlying "Fire" spell in a way that isn't more trouble than just having four different spells?


(I'm not going higher than that for daily spells in my system. It's either just bigger numbers on a treadmill, or effects that obsolete martials.)

I'm curious how you think Dimension Door is either numbers on a treadmill, or able to obsolete Thor.


I think the thing to do is set up a paradigm where "buff-spell alone << expert ability << buffed ability". Which would nerf (or nuke) a lot of low-level skill-obsoleting spells--looking at you, jump and spider climb.

I think maybe you intended this to reply to something else? I don't see how it's really responsive to what you quoted.


Balancing things based off different levels of dependency on resources doesn't generally work, as each table is going to have different numbers of enemies per encounter per day (unless you can find a way to make those numbers rigid).

I think it works well within the context of a specific encounter. If you set things up so that the standard encounter has 5 enemies and lasts 3 rounds (or whatever numbers), variable resources within that encounter give DMs a powerful tool to fine-tune balance during their game. If the Warlock (who gets at-will Invocations) is underperforming, have a longer fight. If the Wizard (who gets a bunch of AoE effects) is underperforming, have fights with larger numbers of enemies. And so on and so forth. Even if your game is mechanically perfectly balanced, it won't be balanced in practice, so you need to give people tools to adjust in practice. In this case, it also simply makes for more interesting gameplay.


Combat isn't the only metric, unless it's the only way to solve your problems. Treat Combat and Non-Combat as two separate modes of play, and make it so you only ever have to compare Apples-to-Apples and Oranges-to-Oranges.

There's a limit to which this is possible. Many abilities aren't clearly divisible into "combat" and "non-combat". A classic example would be Silent Image. You can use it in combat to trick enemies, but you can also use it to avoid combat entirely, or in social situations. I agree with your general point that you cannot and should not be balancing characters as having a total number of points to stick into a combination of "combat stuff" and "non-combat stuff", but neither can you treat them as entirely separate.

Cluedrew
2020-08-12, 07:03 PM
Healing magic (at least without major 3X shenanigans).Right of course, still usually a spell thing in D&D but not a wizard thing. I non-spell casting thing would be even better but at the same time I know what system we are talking about.


It seems to me that the onus should be on you to prove that Wizards can do everything that can be done.Actually I was curious how easily someone else could disprove the statement more than disproving anything. That is why it was phrased as a question and as a statement.

Man_Over_Game
2020-08-12, 07:10 PM
I think it works well within the context of a specific encounter. If you set things up so that the standard encounter has 5 enemies and lasts 3 rounds (or whatever numbers), variable resources within that encounter give DMs a powerful tool to fine-tune balance during their game. If the Warlock (who gets at-will Invocations) is underperforming, have a longer fight. If the Wizard (who gets a bunch of AoE effects) is underperforming, have fights with larger numbers of enemies. And so on and so forth. Even if your game is mechanically perfectly balanced, it won't be balanced in practice, so you need to give people tools to adjust in practice. In this case, it also simply makes for more interesting gameplay.



There's a limit to which this is possible. Many abilities aren't clearly divisible into "combat" and "non-combat". A classic example would be Silent Image. You can use it in combat to trick enemies, but you can also use it to avoid combat entirely, or in social situations. I agree with your general point that you cannot and should not be balancing characters as having a total number of points to stick into a combination of "combat stuff" and "non-combat stuff", but neither can you treat them as entirely separate.

On the first point, I do agree that you can have those mismatches, it's just important to call them out and identify them and when they can be an issue.

I think a better way of implementing it than, say 5e's version of "You get At-Will powers, while you get Long Rest powers", is allow people the option of choice. Maybe have a feature for Wizards to recharge some of their Long Rest powers on a Short Rest, to bridge that gap. 5e does have some of that (with Wizards in particular), but it's not very consistent (Rogues generally get no resources whatsoever).


On the second point, I disagree. Combat can easily be broken down into a fairly simple list of rules, conditions and criteria. It's all of the noncombat stuff that gets really complicated. All you'd really have to do is steamline a lot of the effects someone could expect to occur in combat.

For example, what happens when someone encounters an illusion in combat? This is something that 5e has no suggestions for, despite having about 10 different powers that do so.

You wouldn't need to do everything, you'd just need to implement broad conditions/triggers that occur during very basic circumstances. For example "When a creature that is 'unstable' spends an Action to Attack or Cast A Spell, they must make a Concentration Check if they are Concentrating on a spell, and they provoke an Opportunity Attack from all adjacent creatures that aren't suffering from the same effect". That's not specific to Sleet Storm or Grease, or any other instance of an effect that'd make a creature unstable.

You can "combatify" non-combat effects into making them combat effects. The problem is the disparity. If a Wizard gets Silent Image, and the Barbarian gets Grapple, how does the Barbarian use Grapple in a non-combat situation? Maybe you can make one example, but can you make enough for everyone?

Can you make enough nonviolent Fighter features for them to compete with a Bard or a Wizard in the same element?

Pex
2020-08-12, 09:02 PM
I don't really get how this is responsive. Sure, you could normalize everything to one damage progression (you should not actually do that, but you can). But that doesn't change the fact that Burning Hands is a melee-range AoE, Scorching Ray is a close-range single target attack, Fireball is a long-range AoE, and Wall of Fire is a medium-range BFC effect that's not even instantaneous. How are you going to set things up so those are all modes of the same underlying "Fire" spell in a way that isn't more trouble than just having four different spells?




It's a means to limit magic knowledge without sacrificing diversity. The various effects are physically printed under the heading of Fire Attack. The spell caster gets the Fire Attack ability and with it comes all these different things he can do with it based on the spell slot used or mana spent depending on the system. There will be Electricity Attack, Acid Attack, Healing, Mind Control, Alteration, Travel, etc., various types of magical forms. A spellcaster gets a limited number of them so he can't do them all, but within the ones he does get he has variety of things he can do. How many magic forms he gets and when to be determined in the hypothetical.

Ignimortis
2020-08-13, 07:07 AM
Again, Wizards can't "do anything". They can do a lot of things, but it is a finite number. Moreover, other people having similar abilities doesn't reduce class identity. It is very easy to tell the difference between a Dread Necromancer's zombie minions, a Druid's animal companion, and a Beguiler's charmed minions. You could also fairly easily imagine how a Summoner's summoned minions, a Warlord's troops, and a Shaman's spirit guides are different from each of them as well.

Other people having similar abilities does reduce class identity. In my experience, people pick varied things not only to have different SFX and maybe 20% variation in effectiveness, but to bring something unique and necessary to the group. Niches promote team play, but your suggestions would probably work out with niches becoming less like square and round holes, and more like "round holes large enough to fit a square into, if you're fine to push it a bit".



And this is different from the relationship between the Wizard and the Beguiler now how? The Wizard isn't simply a strictly better Beguiler, nor the Beguiler a strictly worse Wizard. You could make a reasonable case the Beguiler is worse, but it's by a fairly small margin, and often unnoticeable in actual play.


Correction - the Wizard is better than a Beguiler when they try to do non-Beguiler things. Beguiler already has a bit too much going on, but it's balanced by a simple fact - unless they charm/dominate someone, they have no innate way of dealing level-appropriate damage after levels 1-3. It's refreshing and unusual in D&D for this to be the case, and that's why it's listed as one of my favourite classes in my sig. Wizard might not be able to perform beguiler feats with the same effectiveness, but it's rare that they would need to and also can't resort to some other trick.



Sure, customization within a class is a noble goal. And you'll note that the Wizard has that. With the various specialist ACFs and bonuses out there, probably a great deal more of it than most other classes. A Necromancer who picks all the Necromancer ACFs has a bunch of abilities an Evoker who picks all the Evoker ACFs does not.


And I have nothing against that.



My opinion is that that's not a very meaningful opinion. "Tier 1 and Tier 2" just mean "the best 1/3 of the classes that exist". Anything else you read into that is a discussion of the properties of those classes, and I think it's very difficult to make the case that all those properties are bad. Some of them certainly are. The Sorcerer doesn't have class features. The Cleric and Druid have far too much flexibility in their spell access. But some of them are good. They're the only classes with access to the vast majority of utility effects. Maybe you can argue that the Wizard has too many of them, but if you think Teleport or Fabricate should be in the game at all, that is implicitly an endorsement of the T1 and T2 classes as a valuable part of the game.


Teleport should be in the game. That doesn't mean everyone should have access to it or something like it. Fabricate - frankly, I don't think it should even be in the game. Maybe as a class feature for some specialized crafter-mage archetype. Not as a spell, certainly. My issue with T1 and T2 classes isn't that they get to do those things at all, though - it's that most of them get to do that one day, then they can switch out the next day and do something completely different. Abilities need to be more locked in place.

Clerics and Druids are certainly not exempt from that - my vision of Clerics has them with very narrow spell lists that are almost entirely dependent on their gods' domains, and Druids are just Nature Clerics that trade in some casting for shapeshifting with PF1e-like archetypes.



If you think the Sorcerer is also a problem, how can there possibly be a solution in nerfing the Wizard's versatility? The Sorcerer has almost the minimum possible level of versatility you could have with the Wizard spell list.

And if you're going to nerf their power, isn't that exactly isomorphic to increasing everyone else's?

Sorcerer has a vastly lower problem potential, precisely because their ability access is very limited and their abilities are pretty locked in place. You can, certainly, attempt to build a Sorcerer to solve as many problems as possible. 3.5's certain items and stuff also let you expand your sorcerer's spell list (never liked that being a thing, sorcerers were very well defined by their limits, and buffing them should happen along different routes).



Except they aren't. It's not worth putting Water Breathing in your spellbook as a Wizard, because the Cleric gets it for free. Similarly with Plane Shift, except the Cleric gets it at a lower level. All you need to do to curb the impact of the Wizard's utility options is open up the utility playbooks of the other classes. If Rogues could Teleport with the same ease that they can open locks, no Wizard (who had a Rogue in their party) would ever bother learning the spell.

Ah, but Clerics would also lose most of their incredible spell access. I don't propose to only nerf Wizards, goodness, no. Almost all full casters need changes, and most of those are downward. And that's why not everyone should learn to Teleport - we'd get to 4e tier balance at that point, except even worse. Classes need to feel different, and to feel different, they need to have their own strengths and their own weaknesses, as well as different (not necessarily skewed, more like "not everyone gains new abilities at the exact same rate") paces of progression and different resources. I'm not sure you can do that while everyone does almost everything if they want to.



I mean, if we're talking about two spellcasters, what else could it possibly be?

You absolutely want to do that, because Fly doesn't have the duration to reliably last through an adventuring day.

Actually it doesn't. Monster HP grows super-linearly. So a CR 5 bruiser (Troll) has 63 HP where a CR 10 one (Fire Giant, which we will pretend for simplicity is not immune to fire) has 142 HP. So your Fireball has fallen proportionately behind. If we look at the kind of monsters you might encounter in groups, the CR 2 Bugbear has 16 HP to the CR 7 Hill Giant's 102 HP.

The issue with Fireball is that it only scales by +1d6 per caster level, while enemies gain both hit dice (which are also larger than d6, and not one per CR, usually) and CON. It still keeps pace again single targets - in your first example, Fireball does 1/4th of an enemy's HP on a failed save in both cases. It's an underlying problem with blasting, but there are still valid targets for Fireballs - Hill Giant isn't really a demonstration of CR7. There's also, say, Chaos Beast (about 44 HP) or Chimera (about 76 HP), against a few of which Fireballs are somewhat more valid.

Basically, as 3.5 is right now, you could very well be a Wizard with 2/3 (or even 1/2 if you're good with Wizards) casting and still contribute significantly (at least for the first 10-12 levels) to a party where a Beguiler or a Warmage or a Dread Necromancer exist, simply by covering for their weaknesses, even if it's not technically level-appropriate.



Should locks never stop being relevant obstacles? That seems like the more pressing question, because once you accept that, the rest is haggling.

Yes, it is haggling. And "not that soon" is about as good an answer as I got. You could bump Knock up a spell level. You could also make it not as good in general, as they did in 5e. Lots of ways to make it less relevant, but that would be a nerf to Wizards' (and other Wizard/Sorcerer spell list users') power.



I don't really get how this is responsive. Sure, you could normalize everything to one damage progression (you should not actually do that, but you can). But that doesn't change the fact that Burning Hands is a melee-range AoE, Scorching Ray is a close-range single target attack, Fireball is a long-range AoE, and Wall of Fire is a medium-range BFC effect that's not even instantaneous. How are you going to set things up so those are all modes of the same underlying "Fire" spell in a way that isn't more trouble than just having four different spells?


I mean, I can imagine a spellcraft-on-the-fly system like choosing the effect/spell seed, shape of the effect (cone/cloud/burst/single target), and spell level to determine the resultant spell. Not sure if it'd be less trouble than just having four different spells, and certainly not as robust since you wouldn't have a lot of distinct effects in such a system. Doesn't mean that it'd be bad, though.

Quertus
2020-08-13, 02:06 PM
One thing I may need to consider is the difference between contributing in combat and contributing out of combat.

I suppose I had intended "the 'math' for 'out of combat' challenges" to be, "what portion of these level-appropriate scenarios can you contribute to?", as well as "how much did you contribute?".

Of course, this runs into the same problem of, "how much does BFC contribute?"; that is, measuring the relative value of different vectors beyond "the direct approach" and "numbers".





Don't put yourself in a situation where you're comparing the Fighter's weapon-enhancing feature to the Bard's social manipulation feature, because they don't even vaguely compete or solve the same problems. Never be in a position where someone has to spend a feature on either a combat power OR a Roleplaying power, by either granting everyone equal numbers of both (utility feats and combat feats), or making each feature have an aspect of both (the Manipulator feat gives both a utility and a combat power). In other words, a Fighter should have just as many Roleplaying Powers as the Bard, and the Bard should have just as many Combat Powers as the Fighter, or what you're looking for isn't 'balance'. This is because there is no real way of enforcing the base value of either Combat or Roleplaying on any table, or even in an encounter. It'd be like trying to get everyone to use the Metric system while everyone wants to use different weights.


Suppose a noble wants to embarrass the PCs in court. The Bard could use their silver tongue to do damage control. The Fighter could get insulted, and challenge the noble to a duel. The Barbarian could use his grapple bonus and "strange customs" class feature to give the noble a big hug whenever he opens his mouth. The precog could see this coming, and tell the Assassin, who, you know, solves the problem. The Cleric of Tzeentch could make the noble throw up in his mouth, making his words carry less weight. The Wizard could… probably do something.

So, several things.

There's not necessarily a hard line between combat and noncombat abilities. There certainly isn't a hard line between combat and noncombat challenges.

I had little difficulty coming up with an answer for almost any conceptual "class". However, as rather bad news for the purposes of this thread, those answers were almost exclusively ways to solo the challenge. Giving characters these tools doesn't let them *participate* in all challenges.

Getting from point A to point B

In the anime "Seven Deadly Sins", the Wizard Merlin could just teleport the party from place to place. But she usually doesn't.

Usually, Meliodus provides transportation via his mobile tavern. It's slower, but it has its advantages: they can bring stuff, they can sleep indoors in comfy beds, Merlin doesn't waste mana, they can travel to warded areas, rumors come to them, they earn money while making Gather Information checks. But, most relevant of all, everyone can contribute to the tavern. Ban can cook. Elizabeth (and Gowler and once even Merlin) can wait tables. Diane can act as a billboard / advertise to try to get customers to come. Merlin can shrink Diane so that she fits inside & doesn't have to walk. I'm not sure how King or Escanor contribute.

Point of that rambling SPOILER is, there are ways to solve noncombat problems that provide the opportunity for other PCs to contribute. Seven Deadly Sins manages to highlight this fairly well, IMO, providing both "everyone contributes" and "one character can solo" the challenge of "getting from point A to point B".

So, I suppose my question is, to what extent does that matter in an RPG? If it does matter, in what ways should the system facilitate that? Or is noncombat "contribute vs solo" something that should/does exist solely at the "role-playing" layer, not the mechanics layer?


There is a combat thing that's fair for every class to do - have a decent melee and range attack. It's unfun not to be able to do anything in a combat no matter how balanced it is in the overall game construction concept. However, it doesn't have to be exactly both melee and range attacks for everyone. It's fine if a class can't do melee well but is great at getting out of melee so he can focus on range attacks, say being able to avoid opportunity attacks others must suffer. Likewise a class that can't do range attacks should be able to get into melee quickly, such as at least he can jump high enough to attack a flying creature which allows him to jump onto high things when not in combat too.

Hmmm… I hear this as "removing weaknesses", akin to "my Pyromancer can burn things immune to fire" and "my Telepath can control undead". Which… when you don't have to worry about a character's schtick being inapplicable, I suppose that does make balancing things easier.


My friends are playing PF2e and they're saying casters are almost useless if they aren't buff/heal bots. I presume that's because they mostly fight hard fights with few high-power monsters, to which debuffs have a very hard time sticking due to PF2 math. Fighters and Champions have been the stars of combat so far (they're level 10 by now), because they slightly break the math everyone else has to follow.

Does PF2 advertise itself as "make muggles great again", lie that "the math just works - all hail balance", or is this a silent feature of the game?


And that is how a good balanced RPG should handle things. No character should be able to contribute everywhere. Otherwise you have to make every character being able to do everything which makes character differences fluff at best. Everytime your party gets a new PC, it should be better at doing some things but worse at doing other things than when another character was added.

So yes, the universalist wizard has to go. It doesn't necessarily mean that wizards only can do one thing. You can device a system, where a caster specialized in blasting of lv 10 could do blasting like lv 10, summoning like lv 8, knowledge skills like lv 6 most regular schools like and many regular nonmagic skills lv 4, magic he is bad at and some regular skills he is bad at like lv2. Of course you would have to make sure, that blasting is not super inferior to summoning. Or divination. Or anything he could take instead.


Well, I really like the idea of a level X character being several "steps" behind in things outside their specialty. So, maybe not every level 6 character should have an answer to "the noble is trying to embarrass the party", but most every class should get an answer at some point in accordance with its aptitude (retardation?) with that particular type of challenge.

The particular windmill I was tilting at with this thread was the idea of "all contribution, all the time". Which is likely an unreasonable goal. Because it just feels Power Rangers level dumb to have every PC contribute to the annoying noble, starting a fire, or the epic challenge of the locked door. 4e already showed us how bad that can be. And while most people focus on how bad the math of skill challenges is, or how, in trying to let everyone contribute, they actually incentive only allowing your best to participate, there's also the Simulationist issue of, "just how does this mechanic make any sense whatsoever?". And while skill challenges might sell nice from a Gamist PoV, really, it shows that 4e designers mistook "rolling dice" for "playing the game". Making decisions is playing the game.

Looking at one of the worst example of a solo: Teleportation. That's not something anyone else can contribute meaningfully to, right?

Except… when the players were handed a battle map, they can discuss the pros and cons of various destinations. I've seen everyone contribute, tactically, to a Teleport.

So why couldn't the PCs do the same thing?

I'll have to think about this. And now I'm building a rules-light, "mother may I" version of D&D based on WoD Mage Dark Ages…

Man_Over_Game
2020-08-13, 02:36 PM
One thing I may need to consider is the difference between contributing in combat and contributing out of combat.

I suppose I had intended "the 'math' for 'out of combat' challenges" to be, "what portion of these level-appropriate scenarios can you contribute to?", as well as "how much did you contribute?".

Of course, this runs into the same problem of, "how much does BFC contribute?"; that is, measuring the relative value of different vectors beyond "the direct approach" and "numbers".




Suppose a noble wants to embarrass the PCs in court. The Bard could use their silver tongue to do damage control. The Fighter could get insulted, and challenge the noble to a duel. The Barbarian could use his grapple bonus and "strange customs" class feature to give the noble a big hug whenever he opens his mouth. The precog could see this coming, and tell the Assassin, who, you know, solves the problem. The Cleric of Tzeentch could make the noble throw up in his mouth, making his words carry less weight. The Wizard could… probably do something.

So, several things.

There's not necessarily a hard line between combat and noncombat abilities. There certainly isn't a hard line between combat and noncombat challenges.

I had little trickle coming up with an answer for almost any conceptual "class". However, as rather bad news for the purposes of this thread, those answers were almost exclusively ways to solo the challenge. Giving characters these tools doesn't let them *participate* in all challenges.

Getting from point A to point B

In the anime "Seven Deadly Sins", the Wizard Merlin could just teleport the party from place to place. But she usually doesn't.

Usually, Meliodus provides transportation via his mobile tavern. It's slower, but it has its advantages: they can bring stuff, they can sleep indoors in comfy beds, Merlin doesn't waste mana, they can travel to warded areas, rumors come to them, they earn money while making Gather Information checks. But, most relevant of all, everyone can contribute to the tavern. Ban can cook. Elizabeth (and Gowler and once even Merlin) can wait tables. Diane can act as a billboard / advertise to try to get customers to come. Merlin can shrink Diane so that she fits inside & doesn't have to walk. I'm not sure how King or Escanor contribute.

Point of that rambling SPOILER is, there are ways to solve noncombat problems that provide the opportunity for other PCs to contribute. Seven Deadly Sins manages to highlight this fairly well, IMO, providing both "everyone contributes" and "one character can solo" the challenge of "getting from point A to point B".

So, I suppose my question is, to what extent does that matter in an RPG? If it does matter, in what ways should the system facilitate that? Or is noncombat "contribute vs solo" something that should/does exist solely at the "role-playing" layer, not the mechanics layer?

It's usually very one-sided in most RPGs, as the ratio of Violence-to-Nonviolence features aren't usually equal, and Nonviolence features can often have their own value in regards to combat, whether it means pacifying a threat, preventing a fight from ever being necessary, or even providing its own means of contribution.

Consider how often an Illusion is usable out of combat. Then consider how it might assist or prevent combat. Then consider the same for Grappling. How can those be used in an even number of scenarios?

Then do the same for something like Detect Thoughts vs. Super Strength.

Part of it is because of the fact that most "physical" features requires a reason to be used, while things like "move this with your mind" or "force this person to say what you want" are a lot less circumstantial in when they can be used, even if they are effectively equal in the "how".

If there's only going to be one fight every 3 sessions, you're going to feel really stupid picking the class that's 90% violence and 10% nonviolence. Unless you can ensure the character that is the inverse of the Violence character has only a 10% violence capacity, there's not going to be a level playing field.

Consider that the Wizards of DnD have always had some capacity for killing things, and also have equal capacity for manipulating the world (using strictly Wizard features), and that the same has not been true for something like the Fighter. Generally, if the Fighter is successful in this area, it's for reasons despite the class, not because of them. Effectively, Violent characters are often handicapped in noncombat situations, and the opposite hasn't had much history of being true.

Even if both halves had an equal amount of "uselessness", that still doesn't mean that it'd be fun for when those players were useless.

Kyutaru
2020-08-13, 02:58 PM
It's usually very one-sided in most RPGs, as the ratio of Violence-to-Nonviolence features aren't usually equal, and Nonviolence features can often have their own value in regards to combat, whether it means pacifying a threat, preventing a fight from ever being necessary, or even providing its own means of contribution.
Instead of that being the RPG's fault I find it usually is the result of the perceptions of the participants. Combat and the rule mechanics are well defined and the crunch is frequently discussed. But noncombat fluff remains subjective to each table and doesn't get outlined as well as the violent stuff. That's not to say that nonviolence isn't equal, I've had games where it was more important than the violence, but that people take the rules light approach to infer that. It's very much not the case as past editions tried a heavy-handed approach to controlling the roleplay and narrative. This backfired and was poorly received while limiting content creators. If players want to sit around and roleplay as the Vampire court, very little combat will be happening. But if players want to throw themselves head first into the Den of Vipers then expect to make a lot of attack rolls. It all comes down to the theme the table is comfortable with and in a crunch-heavy game in a world of video games there will be quite a few combatants drawn by the prospects of rolling to murder.


Consider how often an Illusion is usable out of combat. Then consider how it might assist or prevent combat. Then consider the same for Grappling. How can those be even?I don't think everything can or should be equal. But while illusions cannot stop someone from climbing the tower, a grappler very much can. Different roles don't mean one if less useful as that depends on how often the grapple opportunities come up versus the illusion ones -- which is very DM dependent.


Then do the same for something like Detect Thoughts vs. Super Strength.
Good Cop, Bad Cop. Sure, you can plant a bug in their car and try to listen in hoping to hear what you need for a conviction. Or you can just put me in a room alone with them for five minutes.


If there's only going to be one fight every 3 sessions, you're going to feel really stupid picking the class that's 90% violence and 10% nonviolence. Unless you can ensure the character that is the inverse of the Violence character has only a 10% violence capacity, there's not going to be a level playing field.Yep, which is why DMs have to work with their players to determine what will be fun for everyone. It's like giving players a dungeon full of traps when no one in the party is a rogue. They're not going to have fun.


Consider that the Wizards of DnD have always had some capacity for killing things, and also have capacity for manipulating the world (using strictly Wizard features), and that the same has not been true for something like the Fighter. Generally, if the Fighter is successful in this area, it's for reasons despite the class, not because of them. Effectively, Violent characters are often handicapped in noncombat situations, and the opposite hasn't had much history of being true.
The Fighter's way of "manipulating the world" was generally through Leadership and minions. For some reason all the caster disadvantages like casting times, interruption, low health, a weakness to gags and manacles, and a single spell cast per round have been eliminated while martials have lost some of the only features that made them worth a damn in 2nd edition.

Pex
2020-08-13, 03:32 PM
Hmmm… I hear this as "removing weaknesses", akin to "my Pyromancer can burn things immune to fire" and "my Telepath can control undead". Which… when you don't have to worry about a character's schtick being inapplicable, I suppose that does make balancing things easier.




"From a certain point of view" - Obi Wan Kenobi
:smallbiggrin:

Having a weakness isn't a bad thing, but it should be fun to deal with. When you can't participate in combat at all because your shtick doesn't work it's not fun sitting there doing nothing while others get to play. I've been there. Therefore the class needs a second shtick that's decent enough in contribution or the character can do something that lets his shtick work. There is a third option, but that's encounter design. The character does something else that's important while the combat he can't participate in is happening. It has to be something the player engages with each round on his initiative taking actions, not a passive it takes X rounds to do it so the party fights for X rounds taking a real world hour while the player is still just sitting there doing nothing and not physically playing the game even though his character is technically doing something.

Man_Over_Game
2020-08-13, 03:33 PM
I don't think everything can or should be equal. But while illusions cannot stop someone from climbing the tower, a grappler very much can. Different roles don't mean one if less useful as that depends on how often the grapple opportunities come up versus the illusion ones -- which is very DM dependent.
[...]
Good Cop, Bad Cop. Sure, you can plant a bug in their car and try to listen in hoping to hear what you need for a conviction. Or you can just put me in a room alone with them for five minutes.
[...]
The Fighter's way of "manipulating the world" was generally through Leadership and minions. For some reason all the caster disadvantages like casting times, interruption, low health, a weakness to gags and manacles, and a single spell cast per round have been eliminated while martials have lost some of the only features that made them worth a damn in 2nd edition.

On the first two points, I think that showcases the big difference between "Nonviolence features for Violent Characters" vs. "Nonviolent features for Nonviolent Characters", which is that the Nonviolent characters generally don't need an excuse to use their powers. The powers themselves are often tools that can incorporate OTHER tools. I do not need an excuse to use Detect Thoughts, I can make one up. I do not need my DM's permission or scenario to attempt some illusionist tomfoolery.

Consider your example of Detect Thoughts. I could intimidate using my large size, or I could intimidate using Detect Thoughts. I can also make him a friend with Detect Thoughts, but the reverse is not quite true. It's a lot less limited to use things like "magic" and "words" than it is your physical body, especially since magic and words are generally allowed to do the same things your body can (like hurt people).

There can be physical aspects that can incorporate additional tools on top of them, for example Carrying Capacity is something the player proactively uses and allows more player options, but...they generally aren't fun.

On your third note, you're right. I am a bit too young for ADND, and never got a chance to experience it, but the idea that Fighters were knights that inspired folks are exactly the kind of thing that I feel are necessary. We lost that, and I think it (or things like it) are worth getting back. We could do the same now, as long as folks were aware of how important they were to include (E.G. Barbarians are empaths, Rangers talk to animals, etc).

Kyutaru
2020-08-13, 03:48 PM
On the first two points, I think that showcases the big difference between "Nonviolence features for Violent Characters" vs. "Nonviolent features for Nonviolent Characters", which is that the Nonviolent characters generally don't need an excuse to use their powers. The powers themselves are often tools that can incorporate OTHER tools. I do not need an excuse to use Detect Thoughts, I can make one up. I do not need my DM's permission or scenario to attempt some illusionist tomfoolery.
Yeah, this is the unfortunate result of character archetypes being way too one-dimensional in order to promote character variety. In order to avoid people being upset that you're restricting their roleplay or forcing them to be a certain type of fighter, they just give you the generic fighter that is everyone from Spartacus to Musashi. It's tough to identify nonviolent methods for a character class whose very identity centers around weapons and armor. Illusionists naturally have it easier since there are many nonviolent examples and possibilities that stem from that cookie cutter mold.

One solution to this is separating the skill system from character classes entirely. Allowing character progression in noncombat venues independent of one's combat profession would permit the level of depth and complexity that having generic archetypes seeks to encourage. But that means gutting classes that are primarily skill related and have identities in favor of making the Murder Hobo class slightly less straightforward in his approach. I mean when your primary attribute is Strength every problem is solved with muscles.

Man_Over_Game
2020-08-13, 04:05 PM
Yeah, this is the unfortunate result of character archetypes being way too one-dimensional in order to promote character variety. In order to avoid people being upset that you're restricting their roleplay or forcing them to be a certain type of fighter, they just give you the generic fighter that is everyone from Spartacus to Musashi. It's tough to identify nonviolent methods for a character class whose very identity centers around weapons and armor. Illusionists naturally have it easier since there are many nonviolent examples and possibilities that stem from that cookie cutter mold.

One solution to this is separating the skill system from character classes entirely. Allowing character progression in noncombat venues independent of one's combat profession would permit the level of depth and complexity that having generic archetypes seeks to encourage. But that means gutting classes that are primarily skill related and have identities in favor of making the Murder Hobo class slightly less straightforward in his approach. I mean when your primary attribute is Strength every problem is solved with muscles.

I think making broader nonviolent powers for physical niches can be done, I think it just requires a more open mind.

For example, broadening the term "Strength" to include things like Telekinesis, or allowing you to dominate someone's will. Something like a Perception stat would allow you to see an attack coming, see through invisibility, or even see into the future.

I guess it comes down to the classic "Guy At The Gym" problem. If we try to define someone based on our real-life physics, it's going to have problems when there is another option that doesn't have those limitations. Having a "Guy At The Gym" isn't inherently the problem, though, as you can make a game with a bunch of realistic folk in a realistic game.

The problem is, "Real-Life" has inherent limitations, while "Everything that's not Real Life" does not, so it's really silly to try to keep those two options on the same standard. As soon as you start breaking the rules on physics, that has to be the standard.

In a way, MAGIC has to be the standard, or it has to come with so many penalties and problems that players should have a natural aversion to choosing it as an option.

Kyutaru
2020-08-13, 04:17 PM
The problem is, "Real-Life" has inherent limitations, while "Everything that's not Real Life" does not, so it's really silly to try to keep those two options on the same standard. As soon as you start breaking the rules on physics, that has to be the standard.
Totally but no one's really found a way to present it that makes sense to the players. Like the strength = telekinesis example would have people scratching their heads wondering how muscles lead to force powers. It may make sense within the game rules and thematically too, as even Avatar has physical-based magic. But the trick is always convincing the readers that what's written makes a lick of sense.

You could redefine the terms to be something like what Obsidian Studios did with Pillars of Eternity where the "Might" stat controls all damage improvement, both physical and magical. But doing so wouldn't be an option for D&D due to the iconic nature of its attributes and classes that players have come to expect remains fairly consistent. I mean the feedback from 3rd edition suggested they wanted a tactics game and 4th edition gave them that to the dismay of many. Now we're back to 2nd edition with 5th edition and the vague rules-lite approach of just letting the DM handle everything. Even if you want to make improvements to existing systems it meets resistance (like with pathfinder 2e).

NigelWalmsley
2020-08-13, 05:00 PM
For example, what happens when someone encounters an illusion in combat? This is something that 5e has no suggestions for, despite having about 10 different powers that do so.

Having separate effects for in combat and out of combat causes a lot of problems. If Silent Image does something different to a guy you are fighting than a guy who is simply in the environment, you inevitably create incentives for stupid metagaming. Maybe the combat rules are more favorable, and the players start having the Fighter declare his action as drawing a sword (putting the party "in combat") every time the Wizard casts Silent Image. Maybe the non-combat rules are better, and the players invent increasingly contrived excuses for why the Wizard is totally not in combat right now.


It's a means to limit magic knowledge without sacrificing diversity. The various effects are physically printed under the heading of Fire Attack.

Sure, but such as system seems more akin to the Binder's Vestiges or the Cleric's Domains than it does Upcasting. At the point where you're talking about abilities whose only overlap is "does Fire damage", it seems bizarre to insist that these are one ability you power up, rather than merely a suite of abilities.


In my experience, people pick varied things not only to have different SFX and maybe 20% variation in effectiveness, but to bring something unique and necessary to the group.

In my experience, 90% of class choice comes down to "I like this class". That's why there's so much damn hue and cry over the Fighter sucking. People like the Fighter and want it to be good. If people just wanted to bring necessary abilities to the table, they would simply ignore the classes that sucked. People's class choices need to give them the opportunity to contribute in most situations, and to tailor their capabilities to the group. These are things the Wizard does.


Correction - the Wizard is better than a Beguiler when they try to do non-Beguiler things.

Sure, but that's exactly the paradigm you want the game to have, isn't it? You've got Beguiler stuff that the Beguiler is better off doing, and Wizard stuff the Wizard is better off doing. What does it matter that the Wizard's solution to the Beguiler stuff is a 6/10 instead of a 1/10? The Beguiler still does a better job of it. The only time that comes into play is if there isn't a Beguiler around, and at that point it's the difference between the adventure continuing and not. Where's the problem?


Beguiler already has a bit too much going on, but it's balanced by a simple fact - unless they charm/dominate someone, they have no innate way of dealing level-appropriate damage after levels 1-3.

So what? The Beguiler still has the toolkit to overcome pretty much any challenge, because challenges aren't just "do X damage". Having or not having a particular tool doesn't matter. What matters is being able to overcome challenges.


Fabricate - frankly, I don't think it should even be in the game. Maybe as a class feature for some specialized crafter-mage archetype. Not as a spell, certainly.

It depends what you mean by "spell". Fabricate certainly needs different mechanical constraints than Fireball does, but "magic up some non-magic goods" is absolutely the kind of effect that can and should exist in your system.


Ah, but Clerics would also lose most of their incredible spell access.

That's not the point. The point is that you don't need to take away the Wizard's toys to give other classes a niche. You can instead give them toys that are more efficient in their particular niche. If you want to rely on the Rogue for stealth, you don't need to nerf the Wizard, you need to make the Rogue as effective at stealth as the Beguiler.


And that's why not everyone should learn to Teleport

Of course not everyone should learn Teleport. Some people should learn Shadow Walk or Tree Stride or any of the other fast travel abilities that exist in D&D and the rest of the genre. What shouldn't happen is telling the rest of the players that this is the Wizard's turn (or the Fighter's turn or the Rogue's turn) to get to solve the problem, so they all get to sit down and shut up. That experience is the worst part of the game, and I categorically reject the notion that there is any problem that is solved by making it more common. Any problem that is interesting enough to spend table time on needs to be interesting enough for there to be tradeoffs between viable solutions.


There's also, say, Chaos Beast (about 44 HP) or Chimera (about 76 HP), against a few of which Fireballs are somewhat more valid.

Those creatures both have more than double the HP of our Bugbear, which means Fireball is falling behind against them too, just to a smaller degree.


Basically, as 3.5 is right now, you could very well be a Wizard with 2/3 (or even 1/2 if you're good with Wizards) casting and still contribute significantly (at least for the first 10-12 levels) to a party where a Beguiler or a Warmage or a Dread Necromancer exist, simply by covering for their weaknesses, even if it's not technically level-appropriate.

"Contribute significantly" seems like a phrase that is doing a lot of work there. What exactly does that mean? I could imagine a standard by which a 9th level Warblade "contributed significantly" in an 11th level party. That doesn't mean I'd pick a 9th level Warblade over an 11th level character given the choice.


I mean, I can imagine a spellcraft-on-the-fly system like choosing the effect/spell seed, shape of the effect (cone/cloud/burst/single target), and spell level to determine the resultant spell. Not sure if it'd be less trouble than just having four different spells, and certainly not as robust since you wouldn't have a lot of distinct effects in such a system. Doesn't mean that it'd be bad, though.

Such a system also makes it impossible to have Lightning Bolt, Fireball, and Cone of Cold without also having Line of Cold, Lightning Ball, and Cone of Fire. Like many things, there is a place for it within the rules, but it doesn't seem especially appealing as a core part of the system.


But the trick is always convincing the readers that what's written makes a lick of sense.

Again, I feel like the fact that virtually every major fantasy series pulled off this "trick" indicates that it's not really that hard. I think people are actually quite willing to accept that sufficiently hardcore badasses do magic. No one is out there demanding that Thor explain how he gets to have lightning powers despite being hammer guy. I think if you just wrote martial classes that got magic at high levels, people would simply accept that. Indeed, with respect to at least the Paladin and the Ranger, they already do.

Man_Over_Game
2020-08-13, 05:32 PM
Having separate effects for in combat and out of combat causes a lot of problems. If Silent Image does something different to a guy you are fighting than a guy who is simply in the environment, you inevitably create incentives for stupid metagaming. Maybe the combat rules are more favorable, and the players start having the Fighter declare his action as drawing a sword (putting the party "in combat") every time the Wizard casts Silent Image. Maybe the non-combat rules are better, and the players invent increasingly contrived excuses for why the Wizard is totally not in combat right now.

That's definitely a slippery slope issue, though.

We have the exact opposite problem in 5th edition DnD right now, where there's half a dozen ways of using illusions in combat, and no guidance on what that actually means, whether enemies take a swing at illusions and believe they miss, take a swing at illusions and see it as an illusion once their sword goes through, or they just see illusions for what they are immediately in combat.

So if what we have is 0, and you're stating there's a plausible 100, I'd like to dispute that means there's a plausible 50.

Pex
2020-08-13, 05:49 PM
I think making broader nonviolent powers for physical niches can be done, I think it just requires a more open mind.

For example, broadening the term "Strength" to include things like Telekinesis, or allowing you to dominate someone's will. Something like a Perception stat would allow you to see an attack coming, see through invisibility, or even see into the future.

I guess it comes down to the classic "Guy At The Gym" problem. If we try to define someone based on our real-life physics, it's going to have problems when there is another option that doesn't have those limitations. Having a "Guy At The Gym" isn't inherently the problem, though, as you can make a game with a bunch of realistic folk in a realistic game.

The problem is, "Real-Life" has inherent limitations, while "Everything that's not Real Life" does not, so it's really silly to try to keep those two options on the same standard. As soon as you start breaking the rules on physics, that has to be the standard.

In a way, MAGIC has to be the standard, or it has to come with so many penalties and problems that players should have a natural aversion to choosing it as an option.

No. That's the wrong way to go. Do not punish players for using the magic you said they could. If you don't want magic in your game, fine, just say so and be done with it. If you are having it, don't have it then discourage players from using it. Let them use it.

Man_Over_Game
2020-08-13, 05:52 PM
No. That's the wrong way to go. Do not punish players for using the magic you said they could. If you don't want magic in your game, fine, just say so and be done with it. If you are having it, don't have it then discourage players from using it. Let them use it.

Wizards in DnD have always had less HP than a Fighter, no? Wouldn't that be the same as a cost for a gain?

Would you play a cripple if it meant you had telekinesis?

It's about having the right balance. Get that right, and your players would actually have more fun than being a "true neutral" snorefest.

Pex
2020-08-13, 05:59 PM
Sure, but such as system seems more akin to the Binder's Vestiges or the Cleric's Domains than it does Upcasting. At the point where you're talking about abilities whose only overlap is "does Fire damage", it seems bizarre to insist that these are one ability you power up, rather than merely a suite of abilities.




At this point then it's flavor text semantics. It would then be easier to manage magic access to think in terms of suites of abilities with the game mechanics involved. It's easier to say, write, and think about the Pyromancer gets Fire Attack as his main focus which allows all these things instead of Spellcaster choosing individual spells trying to fit a theme. It then becomes easier to limit access to Magic Forms because there are less overall than number of individual effects.

Ignimortis
2020-08-13, 10:34 PM
Does PF2 advertise itself as "make muggles great again", lie that "the math just works - all hail balance", or is this a silent feature of the game?


Just a thing, I think. I'm still not sure myself whether their complaints are overblown and they're too used to casters utterly dominating the 3e/PF1e (and to a lesser extent, 5e) metagame with save-or-dies and such, or if it's really something like this. From some descriptions, I can glean that caster party members feel like the encounters would be cleared just fine without them, and if they just rolled a Fighter or a Champion, they'd be of more help than they are now. That's a major and persistent complaint for 3e/PF1e/5e, except it usually worked the other way around with Fighters being better off replaced by mages.



In my experience, 90% of class choice comes down to "I like this class". That's why there's so much damn hue and cry over the Fighter sucking. People like the Fighter and want it to be good. If people just wanted to bring necessary abilities to the table, they would simply ignore the classes that sucked. People's class choices need to give them the opportunity to contribute in most situations, and to tailor their capabilities to the group. These are things the Wizard does.

Sure, but that's exactly the paradigm you want the game to have, isn't it? You've got Beguiler stuff that the Beguiler is better off doing, and Wizard stuff the Wizard is better off doing. What does it matter that the Wizard's solution to the Beguiler stuff is a 6/10 instead of a 1/10? The Beguiler still does a better job of it. The only time that comes into play is if there isn't a Beguiler around, and at that point it's the difference between the adventure continuing and not. Where's the problem?

So what? The Beguiler still has the toolkit to overcome pretty much any challenge, because challenges aren't just "do X damage". Having or not having a particular tool doesn't matter. What matters is being able to overcome challenges.

Because it doesn't matter 90% of the time if your solution is 10/10 or 6/10 - what matters is whether you can do it at all. Like I said earlier, it's binary, and there are not enough situations where distinctions between abilities serving the same general function are important - unless you levy the ones that exist currently with more restrictions.

Your position is that a party of Wizard, Cleric, Fighter and Rogue would have a choice between certain abilities that are all on the same general level as each other, for any situation. I instead presume that a party might actually just be two Wizards and two Clerics, or two Rogues and two Fighters, or anything else - it all depends on which ability is generally the best (Teleport is still superior to Shadow Walk, or vice versa for general means of travel that don't involve lots of additional stipulations). People would just pick classes that allow them to solve as many of generic problems as they can. I've seen enough all-fullcaster parties to know this happens, perhaps not very often, but still.

In other words, having one 10/10 and five 6/10s is generally better than having three 6/10s and five 2/10s. Having seven 6/10s might even beat both of those, too. It all depends on whether that 6/10 is enough to contribute enough in most situations.



It depends what you mean by "spell". Fabricate certainly needs different mechanical constraints than Fireball does, but "magic up some non-magic goods" is absolutely the kind of effect that can and should exist in your system.

Well, make it a ritual, at least. Fabricate is certainly not a thing that should be on spell lists and cast with a single level 5 slot in a few minutes.



That's not the point. The point is that you don't need to take away the Wizard's toys to give other classes a niche. You can instead give them toys that are more efficient in their particular niche. If you want to rely on the Rogue for stealth, you don't need to nerf the Wizard, you need to make the Rogue as effective at stealth as the Beguiler.

If you want to rely on the Rogue for stealth, they have to be better at stealth than Invisibility starting at level 3. That means either getting even more absurd bonuses to stealth than Invisibility grants you, or having some good bonuses and, for example, sharing them with the whole party. Wait, that's Pass without Trace in 5e. Unless you want the Rogue to auto-solve the stealth minigame, I don't see how much of an improvement you can make here without nerfing spells, because level 2 slots are already providing effects that do, for the level, almost automatically solvie stealth. Of course, you could go the 3.5 route and say "but Invisibility doesn't make you move silently, so that check is still bad" - but that bumps into design bloat by the way of "having so many skills that spells can't cover them all at once, and giving players lots of skill points so that they can". Complexity can solve the problem, but it's like firing a nuke at bandits - the solution might be worse than the initial problem.



Of course not everyone should learn Teleport. Some people should learn Shadow Walk or Tree Stride or any of the other fast travel abilities that exist in D&D and the rest of the genre. What shouldn't happen is telling the rest of the players that this is the Wizard's turn (or the Fighter's turn or the Rogue's turn) to get to solve the problem, so they all get to sit down and shut up. That experience is the worst part of the game, and I categorically reject the notion that there is any problem that is solved by making it more common. Any problem that is interesting enough to spend table time on needs to be interesting enough for there to be tradeoffs between viable solutions.

See above. Those problems are usually too binary to involve tradeoffs. Making a plan and having tradeoffs comes from the world most of the time. The way you make everyone able to contribute isn't by having binary switches, it's by making team play work.

So instead of just positing a problem (we need to be there quickly), you need to present additional challenges that another member of a team is equipped to handle. Something like "we need to be there yesterday, Wizard can handle this with Teleport, then we need to persuade the king that the devils are coming in full force, Fighter can do that, while the Rogue finds info on cultists in the town and Cleric sets up defensive wards around the city to minimize civilian casualties". This way, everyone still got to contribute to the plan, and they didn't need to have Teleport/Shadow Teleport/Divine Teleport/Smash Teleport on their sheets. Having everyone contribute to the same one task that is solved with one action isn't fun, it feels like everyone can do something without you even needing to be there. Kind of like current Fighter.

Of course, we also need to make sure that it's not something that's best solved with "the Wizard can teleport us there, and then charm the king into believing us, and scry on the cultists, and then set up wards". Because that would be the current situation, perhaps with Cleric finding the cultists through divine aid, and them setting up wards together, while Rogue and Fighter are basically there to hit stuff.



Those creatures both have more than double the HP of our Bugbear, which means Fireball is falling behind against them too, just to a smaller degree.

Bugbears are by default not equipped to deal with Fireballs, since Fireball is a level 5 thing. Compare a Bugbear to Magic Missile or Scorching Ray - they also won't die from one of those. Monster HP doesn't scale linearly with CR - HD gain is way faster that CR gain.



"Contribute significantly" seems like a phrase that is doing a lot of work there. What exactly does that mean? I could imagine a standard by which a 9th level Warblade "contributed significantly" in an 11th level party. That doesn't mean I'd pick a 9th level Warblade over an 11th level character given the choice.

Having solutions to problems that couldn't really be handled without them. Or making it way easier to handle problems the party did encounter.



Such a system also makes it impossible to have Lightning Bolt, Fireball, and Cone of Cold without also having Line of Cold, Lightning Ball, and Cone of Fire. Like many things, there is a place for it within the rules, but it doesn't seem especially appealing as a core part of the system.


Frankly, I see no problem with Line of Cold (Ridge of icy spikes), Lightning Ball (shock explosion) or Cone of Fire (hey, that's Burning Hands, but bigger!). It might not lend itself well to certain spellcasting ideas (especially those involving unique effects like Fabricate or Magic Circle), but most generic spells fit into this well enough.

Pex
2020-08-14, 12:00 AM
Just a thing, I think. I'm still not sure myself whether their complaints are overblown and they're too used to casters utterly dominating the 3e/PF1e (and to a lesser extent, 5e) metagame with save-or-dies and such, or if it's really something like this. From some descriptions, I can glean that caster party members feel like the encounters would be cleared just fine without them, and if they just rolled a Fighter or a Champion, they'd be of more help than they are now. That's a major and persistent complaint for 3e/PF1e/5e, except it usually worked the other way around with Fighters being better off replaced by mages.



It's the spells themselves. Depending on the spell even if the target fails the save you don't get what you wanted the spell to do. You only get a minor inconvenience. The target has to critically fail to get the effect you wanted. Roll a 1 or (10 or more) below the target number. Therefore the spell is highly unreliable. Buff spells don't have this problem, which is why they're more valued.

It is a limitation that nerfs spellcasters. It's not even a "punishment" that I soap box against. I'm not a fan of it either. Complain all you want spellcasters are too powerful. They're still entitled to have the spells they do get to work.

Kyutaru
2020-08-14, 12:10 AM
Bugbears are by default not equipped to deal with Fireballs, since Fireball is a level 5 thing. Compare a Bugbear to Magic Missile or Scorching Ray - they also won't die from one of those. Monster HP doesn't scale linearly with CR - HD gain is way faster that CR gain.
This is part of balancing too. Bugbears could easily be CR 17 if you wanted them to be and have the HP and adjustments to match. D&D was based on what Gary did and his monsters scaled according to his world with spells that were geared towards taking out certain threats before becoming obsolete against higher ones.

It's like how JRPGs will throw you into a poison swamp with no access to poison curing magic and just a handful of antidotes if you're lucky. Then after the swamp or during it partway you get access to curing magic that makes future poisonous creatures easier to deal with. When it's obtained Fireball is great against the masses of weak goblins and kobolds and bugbears you might find in low level campaigns while falling off once you reach stronger monsters. Whatever CR it is you're facing you can expect the options for dealing with them will be either appropriate or slightly underwhelming until acquiring a later skill that trivializes your past encounters.

NigelWalmsley
2020-08-14, 06:51 AM
Because it doesn't matter 90% of the time if your solution is 10/10 or 6/10 - what matters is whether you can do it at all.

Then how is Teleport better than Shadow Walk? If it is in fact true that these things are binary yes/no checks, then the Beguiler isn't actually substantively less versatile than the Wizard for having the latter rather than the former.

Moreover, even if it is true that challenges are all binary yes/no switches, that still doesn't mean you can't make meaningful choices between abilities. If all you need is a hammer, it still matters if you can use that hammer at-will (Warlock) or learn that hammer for free (Warmage).


Well, make it a ritual, at least. Fabricate is certainly not a thing that should be on spell lists and cast with a single level 5 slot in a few minutes.

Why not? The balance of Fabricate really isn't particularly effected by how long it takes to cast as by how many times per day you can do it. I can certainly imagine that you might want to make spell slots in general an encounter-level resource, at which point Fabricate would need to have some other balancing mechanism, but that could very easily be a pool of daily charges, or costing some kind of mana gems.


If you want to rely on the Rogue for stealth, they have to be better at stealth than Invisibility starting at level 3.

No, they don't. They have to be good enough at stealth that the resources they save from not requiring you to use a 2nd level spell slot on Invisibility are worth more than the resources you'd save from more efficient stealth. You have an oversimplified model of costs, and it is causing you to blithely assert that problems that are actually quite easy to deal with must be insoluble.


Of course, we also need to make sure that it's not something that's best solved with "the Wizard can teleport us there, and then charm the king into believing us, and scry on the cultists, and then set up wards". Because that would be the current situation

Except no it wouldn't, because the Beguiler is better at charming the king, and the Cleric is (depending what you mean) better at setting up wards. So all we actually need to do is write a Fighter class with meaningful scrying or teleporting and we're done.


Bugbears are by default not equipped to deal with Fireballs, since Fireball is a level 5 thing. Compare a Bugbear to Magic Missile or Scorching Ray - they also won't die from one of those. Monster HP doesn't scale linearly with CR - HD gain is way faster that CR gain.

If you go back to the original point I made, I was using the Bugbear as an example of a monster you'd encounter in a group at 5th level, and comparing it to a monster you'd encounter in a group at 10th level to see how Fireball scales over that period. The CR 2 Bugbear is the same relative CR as the CR 7 Hill Giant, but has way less HP relative to an equal-level Fireball. Which means that Fireball is not keeping up at 10th level.


Having solutions to problems that couldn't really be handled without them. Or making it way easier to handle problems the party did encounter.

You're still not really defining things in a way that's usable for relative measurement. The question isn't if a 8th level Wizard can do some stuff we think is cool. The question is if the stuff that Wizard can do is more useful than what a 10th or 11th level Dread Necromancer can do. You've got to think in terms of opportunity cost, and to acknowledge not just the points where the character might be better ("we need exactly Dimension Door for some reason") but also the points where they are worse ("it turns out having 5th level spells is pretty cool").

Ignimortis
2020-08-14, 08:10 AM
Then how is Teleport better than Shadow Walk? If it is in fact true that these things are binary yes/no checks, then the Beguiler isn't actually substantively less versatile than the Wizard for having the latter rather than the former.

It's a binary check of "does this solve the current situation". Thus, there are situations where you need Teleport, and some where Shadow Walk would be preferable - but no situation where both are used at the same time. There's no cooperation in that, you just push the button that solves the problem.



Moreover, even if it is true that challenges are all binary yes/no switches, that still doesn't mean you can't make meaningful choices between abilities. If all you need is a hammer, it still matters if you can use that hammer at-will (Warlock) or learn that hammer for free (Warmage).

It does. However, seeing as the game is frequently upset by people not running it with a proper adventuring day (and I understand why they wouldn't adhere to that), you need to evaluate abilities on the assumption they function often enough to be used almost every time when the situation calls for it. Frankly, the concept of the adventuring day and resource management being bound to that has been rather bad for the game in the end, because unless everyone functions on the same power schedule like 4e, you will have days where limited resources just break the game wide open compared to at-will ones, because there are enough resources to solve every single problem.



Why not? The balance of Fabricate really isn't particularly effected by how long it takes to cast as by how many times per day you can do it. I can certainly imagine that you might want to make spell slots in general an encounter-level resource, at which point Fabricate would need to have some other balancing mechanism, but that could very easily be a pool of daily charges, or costing some kind of mana gems.

That's the point. If it's a long enough ritual, your capability of doing often enough is curtailed. You can invent other limitations, but the ones that currently exist aren't enough.



No, they don't. They have to be good enough at stealth that the resources they save from not requiring you to use a 2nd level spell slot on Invisibility are worth more than the resources you'd save from more efficient stealth. You have an oversimplified model of costs, and it is causing you to blithely assert that problems that are actually quite easy to deal with must be insoluble.

See above. The only way you can balance a wizard-like character right now is to drag them through several encounters without any possible rests. I've seen a lot of groups and GMs who were unable to adapt their narrative and doings to a normal "adventuring day". I can also understand why that happened - because very few narratives involve solving enough problems to drain a mid-level (so 5+, when the tutorial's over and the actual game begins) Vancian caster who has a similar amount of slots to 3.5 full casters.

In a more flexible resource management system, things would need to be different. And the resource management system needs to change, IMO.



Except no it wouldn't, because the Beguiler is better at charming the king, and the Cleric is (depending what you mean) better at setting up wards. So all we actually need to do is write a Fighter class with meaningful scrying or teleporting and we're done.

Well, you've replaced the Rogue by a Beguiler all of a sudden. I'm pretty sure normal Rogue should be able to handle that about as well, if not better, than someone who's 50% Wizard.



If you go back to the original point I made, I was using the Bugbear as an example of a monster you'd encounter in a group at 5th level, and comparing it to a monster you'd encounter in a group at 10th level to see how Fireball scales over that period. The CR 2 Bugbear is the same relative CR as the CR 7 Hill Giant, but has way less HP relative to an equal-level Fireball. Which means that Fireball is not keeping up at 10th level.

It's slowing down a lot, yes. It still does about the same damage percentage-wise against targets that were designed with Fireball in mind, though.



You're still not really defining things in a way that's usable for relative measurement. The question isn't if a 8th level Wizard can do some stuff we think is cool. The question is if the stuff that Wizard can do is more useful than what a 10th or 11th level Dread Necromancer can do. You've got to think in terms of opportunity cost, and to acknowledge not just the points where the character might be better ("we need exactly Dimension Door for some reason") but also the points where they are worse ("it turns out having 5th level spells is pretty cool").

Yes, there are high points and low points. But as a Wizard, even 8th level casting can bring a lot of stuff that a Dread Necromancer simply cannot do. Dimension Door, Blink, Mass Darkvision, Polymorph, plus a lot of esoteric stuff from other sourcebooks.

johnbragg
2020-08-14, 08:16 AM
It's the spells themselves. Depending on the spell even if the target fails the save you don't get what you wanted the spell to do. You only get a minor inconvenience. The target has to critically fail to get the effect you wanted. Roll a 1 or (10 or more) below the target number. Therefore the spell is highly unreliable. Buff spells don't have this problem, which is why they're more valued.

It is a limitation that nerfs spellcasters. It's not even a "punishment" that I soap box against. I'm not a fan of it either. Complain all you want spellcasters are too powerful. They're still entitled to have the spells they do get to work.

I wonder if Paizo stress-tested the math enough on "failed save / critical fail" spells.

Something I'm playing with is writing up spells with a "dual save" mechanic. Roll 2 saving throws at the same time, full effect on 2 failures, partial effect on a single failure. And designing the spell with the knowledge that the most likely outcome is "partial effect", with "full effect" and "no effect" as outliers.

So replace sleep with deeper daze. Full save, no effect. Partial save, target is dazed for one round. Full effect, target is dazed for one minute. (Damage breaks the spell). Now you have a spell that is less of a "win button" than sleep at low levels (no free coup-de-grace), that still scales as you level up (as long as save DCs scale).

Instead of petrification as a single-roll binary save-or-die-or-no-effect, you get petrification/slow/no-effect.

Vaern
2020-08-14, 09:14 AM
4e did a decent job of making everyone roughly equal, but it also made every character of a given role feel kind of boring and same-y. I wasn't a big fan of the edition as a whole, but as far as balancing classes against each other I might look there for inspiration as a starting point.

NorthernPhoenix
2020-08-14, 09:15 AM
It's the spells themselves. Depending on the spell even if the target fails the save you don't get what you wanted the spell to do. You only get a minor inconvenience. The target has to critically fail to get the effect you wanted. Roll a 1 or (10 or more) below the target number. Therefore the spell is highly unreliable. Buff spells don't have this problem, which is why they're more valued.

It is a limitation that nerfs spellcasters. It's not even a "punishment" that I soap box against. I'm not a fan of it either. Complain all you want spellcasters are too powerful. They're still entitled to have the spells they do get to work.

This only applies to powerful foes though. In PF2, spellcasters can still bring their full godhood to bare against foes that are only 3-4 levels lower than they are.

Kyutaru
2020-08-14, 09:25 AM
This only applies to powerful foes though. In PF2, spellcasters can still bring their full godhood to bare against foes that are only 3-4 levels lower than they are.

Which, frankly, is already how most RPGs are balanced. The uber bosses are immune to the status effects that you can throw around on mooks and have specific weaknesses. Spellcasters are support characters who can rain destruction on the meek but struggle more against the powerful. Min-maxing in 3E and beyond made this very unclear because it appeared like casters were meant to land their spells with a high degree of certainty but these were flaws of the system rather than their intent. Having combat be 95% hit and 5% miss was never the goal and past editions had flat saves that scaled which produced enemies that progressively grew easier to land control effects on. The Wizard has always been a bully of the weak and buffs/debuffs are better options for the strong.

NorthernPhoenix
2020-08-14, 09:33 AM
Which, frankly, is already how most RPGs are balanced. The uber bosses are immune to the status effects that you can throw around on mooks and have specific weaknesses. Spellcasters are support characters who can rain destruction on the meek but struggle more against the powerful. Min-maxing in 3E and beyond made this very unclear because it appeared like casters were meant to land their spells with a high degree of certainty but these were flaws of the system rather than their intent. Having combat be 95% hit and 5% miss was never the goal and past editions had flat saves that scaled which produced enemies that progressively grew easier to land control effects on. The Wizard has always been a bully of the weak and buffs/debuffs are better options for the strong.

Yeah i agree, it's by far my favorite part of PF2. Casters keep their god-fantasy and Melee Heroes get to shine during the Hero Moment. It only becomes a problem if you think a fight with a Pit Fiend General should involve 1 turn of the Wizard pressing the same god button they use to make playthings of mortals.

johnbragg
2020-08-14, 10:05 AM
The Wizard has always been a bully of the weak and buffs/debuffs are better options for the strong.

But can the Pathfinder 2 caster effectively debuff strong opponents? At all?

Without a Critical Failure on a save, can they...make a Pit Fiend more vulnerable to attacks? (5e Advantage is what I'm thinking of). Can they use their action-and-spell-slots to negate a Pit Fiend action or two? Can they counterspell Pit Fiend spells/ SLAs?

I'm 100% on board with the Big Strong Fighter guys doing the bulk of the HP damage. What I want to know is, in PF2 at high levels, do the casters get to manipulate the BSF vs BBEG dogfight in meaningful ways, or are they just clearing away minions to kill time?

To use a pro wrestling, the caster is the "heel" manager and the Big Strong Fighter is the heel wrestler vs the Champion. The manager distracts the ref--so the wrestler can cheat. The manager tosses a Foreign Object to the wrestler (big bonus to a single attack). The manager takes a cheap shot at the Champion (debuff status effect on the BBEG).

NorthernPhoenix
2020-08-14, 10:11 AM
But can the Pathfinder 2 caster effectively debuff strong opponents? At all?

Debuff yes, neutralize no (mostly).

johnbragg
2020-08-14, 10:12 AM
Debuff yes, neutralize no (mostly).

Then good job with the math, Pathfinder 2 developers.

NigelWalmsley
2020-08-14, 04:45 PM
It's a binary check of "does this solve the current situation". Thus, there are situations where you need Teleport, and some where Shadow Walk would be preferable - but no situation where both are used at the same time. There's no cooperation in that, you just push the button that solves the problem.

But it's not like taking one of those abilities away creates cooperation. If there are situations where Teleport is preferable and situations where Shadow Walk is preferable, the solution that causes maximal spotlight sharing is for someone to have Teleport and someone else to have Shadow Walk. Otherwise you end up with the party just shaking the one guy with the vaguely-appropriate ability at the problem. Isn't that less interesting than sometimes using different abilities, even if we accept that you never consider tradeoffs in the context of a specific problem?


However, seeing as the game is frequently upset by people not running it with a proper adventuring day (and I understand why they wouldn't adhere to that), you need to evaluate abilities on the assumption they function often enough to be used almost every time when the situation calls for it.

Sure. But that still leaves you with the reality that if one character can select their abilities, selecting overlapping abilities is stupid. If "can we open this lock" is, as you suggest, purely a binary challenge, the Knock is only of value in those situations where the Rogue's Open Lock is insufficient to open the lock in question. Are those situations really more common as to make Knock a better choice than the other options a Wizard has for 2nd level spells, either to learn or to prepare?


That's the point. If it's a long enough ritual, your capability of doing often enough is curtailed. You can invent other limitations, but the ones that currently exist aren't enough.

A 10th level Sorcerer gets four Fabricates per day (assuming 20+ Charisma). That's as effective as a three or four hour ritual time in limiting the amount of Fabricating he can do. That seems like an entirely reasonable level of limitation to me, for something that is ultimately not really all that important.


The only way you can balance a wizard-like character right now is to drag them through several encounters without any possible rests.

Trivially false: such a character is also balanced in a party of full casters. You may not like that balance point, but it is factually false to assert that the only way to balance a Wizard is resource exhaustion. It's not even the only way to balance such a character against martial classes, as the various artifact swords that have been found by the Fighters of the world can attest.


In a more flexible resource management system, things would need to be different. And the resource management system needs to change, IMO.

I don't disagree. But such a system only really impacts casters outside combat. And outside combat is the place where it is hardest to make the case that anything that isn't a caster is remotely sufficient to be a functional model.


Well, you've replaced the Rogue by a Beguiler all of a sudden. I'm pretty sure normal Rogue should be able to handle that about as well, if not better, than someone who's 50% Wizard.

If you're willing to accept that, then sure, we can go with a Rogue there. I was assuming that if I suggested a Rogue would be sufficient, you would assert that Charm Person was inevitably better-suited to the task than Diplomacy. The broader point stands.


Yes, there are high points and low points. But as a Wizard, even 8th level casting can bring a lot of stuff that a Dread Necromancer simply cannot do. Dimension Door, Blink, Mass Darkvision, Polymorph, plus a lot of esoteric stuff from other sourcebooks.

So what? The game isn't a series of boxes where you write "Polymorph" or "Blink" or "Dimension Door" and if you can't you lose. It's a series of challenges that can be overcome in a variety of ways. Yes, the Wizard has a lot of toys the Dread Necromancer doesn't. As it happens, the Incarnate has a lot of toys the Warmage doesn't, but people still recognize that Warmage > Incarnate.

Imagine you had a character with one ability: Kill Anything, a free action ability that instantly kills any target. Obviously, this character can't do a bunch of stuff the Wizard can do. Equally obviously, you don't care, because this character's overwhelming superiority in combat means you'd pick him over a Wizard in all but the combat-lightest campaigns.

Alternatively, if that's too hypothetical an argument for your tastes, take a look at these lists of encounters at EL 5/10/15 (https://www.dandwiki.com/wiki/The_Same_Game_Test_(DnD_Guideline)). Which are the ones that a level N Dread Necromancer loses, but a level N-2 or N-3 Wizard wins, and vice versa? How do the numbers of those compare?


4e did a decent job of making everyone roughly equal, but it also made every character of a given role feel kind of boring and same-y. I wasn't a big fan of the edition as a whole, but as far as balancing classes against each other I might look there for inspiration as a starting point.

Honestly, given how much 4e reduced class diversity, it's horrifically badly balanced. If you limit 3e to classes that are as similar as 4e classes, the power discrepancy is even smaller than it is in that game.

Ignimortis
2020-08-14, 10:39 PM
But it's not like taking one of those abilities away creates cooperation. If there are situations where Teleport is preferable and situations where Shadow Walk is preferable, the solution that causes maximal spotlight sharing is for someone to have Teleport and someone else to have Shadow Walk. Otherwise you end up with the party just shaking the one guy with the vaguely-appropriate ability at the problem. Isn't that less interesting than sometimes using different abilities, even if we accept that you never consider tradeoffs in the context of a specific problem?

I consider it more interesting when different characters get their chance to shine in their specialty, because nobody else in the party can do that anywhere on the same level. Shaking one guy with the vaguely appropriate ability at the problem is spotlight sharing. If everyone has a vaguely appropriate ability, there's no spotlight, you're just optimizing how you're gonna solve the problem that you know each one of you can solve in passably good ways. It significantly reduces the impact of the spotlight if you can say "well, we could've done it without you, but you did it 20% better, so good job" instead of "we couldn't have done this without you!".



Sure. But that still leaves you with the reality that if one character can select their abilities, selecting overlapping abilities is stupid. If "can we open this lock" is, as you suggest, purely a binary challenge, the Knock is only of value in those situations where the Rogue's Open Lock is insufficient to open the lock in question. Are those situations really more common as to make Knock a better choice than the other options a Wizard has for 2nd level spells, either to learn or to prepare?


Having overlapping abilities, to some small extent, should be a good backup measure. It's up to you whether you value the ability to instantly open any door that isn't physically barred over another 2nd level spell. I'm pretty sure a Rogue would love to have Knock as backup, though.



A 10th level Sorcerer gets four Fabricates per day (assuming 20+ Charisma). That's as effective as a three or four hour ritual time in limiting the amount of Fabricating he can do. That seems like an entirely reasonable level of limitation to me, for something that is ultimately not really all that important.


Perhaps. I just don't like Fabricate being widely available - to me it's a perfect example of something that probably shouldn't be just a spell.



Trivially false: such a character is also balanced in a party of full casters. You may not like that balance point, but it is factually false to assert that the only way to balance a Wizard is resource exhaustion. It's not even the only way to balance such a character against martial classes, as the various artifact swords that have been found by the Fighters of the world can attest.

A party of full casters will be even more broken if they don't face resource exhaustion. And if we're talking artifact swords, then yes, tailoring the game to consider the power of the caster and trying to pull others up to his level might also be a solution, but that's on individual GMs, not the game mechanics.



I don't disagree. But such a system only really impacts casters outside combat. And outside combat is the place where it is hardest to make the case that anything that isn't a caster is remotely sufficient to be a functional model.


It's pretty simple to me. Casters do too much out of combat, non-casters do too little. There is certainly a midpoint between these that I would consider satisfactory. There is such a thing as "too good" for the challenges usually presented.



If you're willing to accept that, then sure, we can go with a Rogue there. I was assuming that if I suggested a Rogue would be sufficient, you would assert that Charm Person was inevitably better-suited to the task than Diplomacy. The broader point stands.

I was assuming a theoretical Rogue and Fighter who actually can rival Wizard/Cleric in charming and info gathering. Sorry if that wasn't clear enough. In that theoretical situation, Wizard either doesn't have easy access to Charm Person, or Diplomacy is indeed better than Charm Person in the long run (though with how 3.5 RAW works, it very well might be).



So what? The game isn't a series of boxes where you write "Polymorph" or "Blink" or "Dimension Door" and if you can't you lose. It's a series of challenges that can be overcome in a variety of ways. Yes, the Wizard has a lot of toys the Dread Necromancer doesn't. As it happens, the Incarnate has a lot of toys the Warmage doesn't, but people still recognize that Warmage > Incarnate.

Warmage is fully superior to the Incarnate? They're really very close in the recent rankings, and they have wildly different specialties to compare them directly. The reason why Wizard's toys are good because they're powerful, and Incarnate's aren't. So a limited access to good stuff is balanced with wide access to mediocre stuff. I see no issue here, as long as neither a Warmage-type class nor an Incarnate-type class can replace the other reasonably well.



Imagine you had a character with one ability: Kill Anything, a free action ability that instantly kills any target. Obviously, this character can't do a bunch of stuff the Wizard can do. Equally obviously, you don't care, because this character's overwhelming superiority in combat means you'd pick him over a Wizard in all but the combat-lightest campaigns.

Alternatively, if that's too hypothetical an argument for your tastes, take a look at these lists of encounters at EL 5/10/15 (https://www.dandwiki.com/wiki/The_Same_Game_Test_(DnD_Guideline)). Which are the ones that a level N Dread Necromancer loses, but a level N-2 or N-3 Wizard wins, and vice versa? How do the numbers of those compare?

Let's combine both for a start. If that "kill anything" ability is put on a semi-decent chassis (say, d10 HP, good will/fort, whatever proficiencies you want), then that character can solve most of those encounters solo with little trouble, because all of them, except one per tier, focus on killing a hostile creature. There are some obstacles, but most of them can be overcome with just poking around, rolling Will saves and surviving HP damage.

Failing that, I'm pretty sure some of those encounters, played even semi-intelligently by the GM, can destroy any single unprepared full-caster character. 12 shadows during rest time against a character who is unlikely to have high strength? One lucky round and it's over, and there's nothing you can do about it other than getting lucky (or Nerveskittery) and winning initiative to be able to respond.

NigelWalmsley
2020-08-15, 09:43 AM
I consider it more interesting when different characters get their chance to shine in their specialty, because nobody else in the party can do that anywhere on the same level.

That's not shining in your specialty. It doesn't demonstrate any skill to solve a problem because no one else can solve it, because it doesn't highlight your personal abilities at all. If Teleport is a checkbox the Wizard checks off because he is the character who is allowed to check off the "travel long distances" encounters, it feels like exactly that: a checkbox. And checking boxes is not a satisfying demonstration of skill.


It significantly reduces the impact of the spotlight if you can say "well, we could've done it without you, but you did it 20% better, so good job" instead of "we couldn't have done this without you!".

Again, the way people behave around combat puts lie to this. The margins of a standard combat encounter in D&D are such that you could cut a party member or two without turning victory into defeat. And yet I have never once seen (or even heard of) this kind of complaint as it relates to combat. People like getting to use their abilities to do cool things. They don't particularly think about the hypothetical "what if I hadn't been there" (you can see this in the total refusal to understand opportunity cost when talking about Fighters).


Perhaps. I just don't like Fabricate being widely available - to me it's a perfect example of something that probably shouldn't be just a spell.

I just think you need to define what you mean by "a spell". I can get behind the argument that Fabricate ought to be a different kind of ability than Fireball, but I don't see any particular reason it can't be an ability you can just get for being a Wizard.


A party of full casters will be even more broken if they don't face resource exhaustion.

What do you mean by "broken"? Define your terms, don't just appeal to emotionally-loaded language to avoid advancing an argument.


There is such a thing as "too good" for the challenges usually presented.

And there is such a thing as "too easy" for the abilities people actually have. It is not really that hard to write meaningful challenges for the abilities casters get. Plotting around Teleport just means writing an adventure that does not reduce to "go from A to B", such as a Bug Hunt or any kind of exploration. Writing an intrigue that challenges people with divinations is as simple as writing an actual intrigue.


In that theoretical situation, Wizard either doesn't have easy access to Charm Person, or Diplomacy is indeed better than Charm Person in the long run (though with how 3.5 RAW works, it very well might be).

That's not necessarily true. It could simply be that (as it currently is) it costs resources for the Wizard to get access to Charm Person, and Diplomacy provides a comparative advantage.


Warmage is fully superior to the Incarnate?

That would be what the higher ranking means, yes. If it makes you feel better, we could talk about the Beguiler and the Soulborn instead.


Let's combine both for a start.

I don't understand how you think that proves your point.


Failing that, I'm pretty sure some of those encounters, played even semi-intelligently by the GM, can destroy any single unprepared full-caster character.

Once again, I fail to see how this proves your point, and the assumption of such a gauntlet is that the enemies are encountered with standard (but not customized to the encounter) preparation.

Ignimortis
2020-08-15, 01:10 PM
That's not shining in your specialty. It doesn't demonstrate any skill to solve a problem because no one else can solve it, because it doesn't highlight your personal abilities at all. If Teleport is a checkbox the Wizard checks off because he is the character who is allowed to check off the "travel long distances" encounters, it feels like exactly that: a checkbox. And checking boxes is not a satisfying demonstration of skill.

In that case, every challenge should be at least half as detailed as combat, to allow for different contributions that all work together to provide a singular total outcome, i.e. victory or failure. There is little skill in using an autowin ability, that is true. But I don't see how allowing everyone to have an autowin ability that has some different parameters of what exactly is won is any better in that case.

I mean, Shadowrun does that - the only part of the game where there are very few skill-based movements is social encounters. Magic/Astral, Matrix, scouting and combat all have their complexity that allows for multiple events to influence the outcome, and for player and character skill to do the same.



Again, the way people behave around combat puts lie to this. The margins of a standard combat encounter in D&D are such that you could cut a party member or two without turning victory into defeat. And yet I have never once seen (or even heard of) this kind of complaint as it relates to combat. People like getting to use their abilities to do cool things. They don't particularly think about the hypothetical "what if I hadn't been there" (you can see this in the total refusal to understand opportunity cost when talking about Fighters).

Then my experience is wildly different to yours, because the most common complaint players I know usually have about classes or characters or how the game is going, is "you know, I don't feel that my presence is important enough to actually have me there. You could've done it all without me with very few changes along the way". Almost everyone I know is bothered when they don't contribute anything.

See above, my previous party that plays PF2 now (and that I talk to often, but don't play with) has several people (all playing casters) saying that they don't really feel any fun because they don't impact things in unique ways, and could've done the same things if they rolled a martial. They aren't exaggerating too much - martials have access to very similar CC/debuff options, out-of-combat rituals that Rogue can do better than casters, and perform better on the damage/defense front too.



I just think you need to define what you mean by "a spell". I can get behind the argument that Fabricate ought to be a different kind of ability than Fireball, but I don't see any particular reason it can't be an ability you can just get for being a Wizard.


A spell is an ability you use through spellcasting rules, usually by using a spell slot, which is recovered each day, and certain classes get to swap which spells they have in their arsenal-ready-to-go every day. Basically, a customizable X/day use ability with fully defined effects and costs.



What do you mean by "broken"? Define your terms, don't just appeal to emotionally-loaded language to avoid advancing an argument.

Able to surpass/bypass most of typical challenges for characters of this level with ease or even automatically.



And there is such a thing as "too easy" for the abilities people actually have. It is not really that hard to write meaningful challenges for the abilities casters get. Plotting around Teleport just means writing an adventure that does not reduce to "go from A to B", such as a Bug Hunt or any kind of exploration. Writing an intrigue that challenges people with divinations is as simple as writing an actual intrigue.

Yes. I do not mean "too good" as any one ability. I mean "too good" as a a whole. Characters should be able to solve problems. Characters should be able to invalidate problems they have outlevelled. But, IMO, no single character should be able to solve anywhere close to any problem or most problems. If your typical party consists of four people, you have to use that to spread the problem-solving around so that everyone feels needed and valuable to the team. It's fine to have a little overlap, perhaps each character can solve 35% or 40% of problems that happen in the game. But there shouldn't be characters that can solve 65% or more, unless all of their solutions are noticeably worse (as in, the drawbacks are immediately apparent and massive, and do not cnnsist solely of "I expend a reasonably small portion of my resources, while you do your stuff at-will") than "proper" ones.



That's not necessarily true. It could simply be that (as it currently is) it costs resources for the Wizard to get access to Charm Person, and Diplomacy provides a comparative advantage.

That advantage is, usually, too small. 3.5 casters simply have too many slots for it to matter unless you drag them with no rests a long time. You can try to remedy that by reducing spell slots and nerfing specific spells, as 5e did (Charm Person is now a very poor option if you don't intend to shank the target by the end of the spell). I don't like that, I feel that casters deserve to use magic often, but I also feel that magic shouldn't sideline everything else.



That would be what the higher ranking means, yes. If it makes you feel better, we could talk about the Beguiler and the Soulborn instead.

Beguiler and Soulborn are way further apart, though, and while they fulfill different niches, that would be more apt, because at that point, having Beguiler's options, which come online faster, pack more power, and don't particularly lack in versatility, means that you outclass the Soulborn handily in any situation that doesn't involve direct HP damage through attacks.




I don't understand how you think that proves your point.

It proves that the offered test is unnecessarily skewed towards combat effectiveness. "kill anything" is the best ability you can have in many of situations offered. An ubercharger Fighter with pumped-up Will saves or a Ring of Truesight could've probably succeeded on most of these tests, but would we count that as a good design?



Once again, I fail to see how this proves your point, and the assumption of such a gauntlet is that the enemies are encountered with standard (but not customized to the encounter) preparation.

In that case, the 5th level tests will probably mess up the Wizard badly, since level 2/3 casting is terrible at that point, the jump is too much. Most level 10 tests are doable with level 7/8 casting. Though I don't have time to run the numbers specifically, I can still point out tools that will solve issues. Don't know much about Dread Necros, since I was never interested in them and never built one, so this is pretty Wizard-centric for me.

Hallway of runes: Detect Magic to find, Dispel Magic as an AoE, repeat several times if dispelling gets hard.
Fire Giant might be a problem, unless...Invisibility+Shivering Touch, perhaps. Not sure Wizards carry around Shivering Touch on a regular basis, though - might be a weak link.
Blue Dragon might also fall prey to the same tactic, though you'd also have to spend Fly. Shivering Touch starts looking like a very good spell to prepare or at least have on a scroll. Huh.
Bebilith is a tough one, since I'm not sure how any one character can handle it properly. Then again, Fly and stupid magic missile spam from a wand actually might do the trick, since it has no ranged options beyond 30 feet.
A Vrock has no ranged options, can teleport only as a standard action and flies at less speed than Fly. The hard part is actually dealing with them, since they have some resistance to almost all damage. You don't have Dismissal yet and it's not very likely that you'd prepare it anyway, unless you know you're going to a demonic forest.
Tag team of Mind Flayers, well, I'm not sure. This one might be tough. I don't have the books on hand and Mind Flayers aren't on SRDs, so let's consider this one forfeit by me.
Evil Necromancer in catacombs - depends on whether this is supposed to be a whole dungeon or a single encounter with appropriate enemies. Dread Necromancer certainly has the advantage here, just take control of enemy undead and throw them back at the NPC necro.
6 trolls - a Nerveskitter (I assume you don't know the trolls are there, and you're almost ambushed), a Fly (to take you out of the cave) and two Fireballs ought to do the trick. 10d6 (I assume only the spell progression is stunted, not the caster level?) x2 at 18+ DC means that trolls will, on average, take 70 fire damage. Even if some survive, they're severely wounded and won't regenerate that, meaning you can finish them off with ease.
12 shadows - same as above, if they're in close formation. If not, Mage Armor and Shield actually grant you a good AC against shadows, and you can probably Magic Missile them or something.

While writing this up, I realized that I'm still very much a brute force player at heart. The amount of times I suggest direct damage as a solution is too high. 15th level tests might get better, since you'd have access to at least level 6 magic, and that has enough options to do basically anything you'd need.

NigelWalmsley
2020-08-15, 03:04 PM
In that case, every challenge should be at least half as detailed as combat, to allow for different contributions that all work together to provide a singular total outcome, i.e. victory or failure. There is little skill in using an autowin ability, that is true. But I don't see how allowing everyone to have an autowin ability that has some different parameters of what exactly is won is any better in that case.

Because it makes what ability to use a choice. It means that you can have a situation where Teleport is the best power for a situation, rather than the only power you have for that situation. It's like coming in first in a race where you're the only participant. Sure, you got the gold, but does that really feel like it matters?


Almost everyone I know is bothered when they don't contribute anything.

Sure, but that's different from your contribution not being critical. People are upset if the fight ends without them doing anything. They aren't upset if the fight ends with everyone having enough resources to do the same fight again twice over, despite the fact that it implies their contribution wasn't really essential for the party's victory.


See above, my previous party that plays PF2 now (and that I talk to often, but don't play with) has several people (all playing casters) saying that they don't really feel any fun because they don't impact things in unique ways, and could've done the same things if they rolled a martial. They aren't exaggerating too much - martials have access to very similar CC/debuff options, out-of-combat rituals that Rogue can do better than casters, and perform better on the damage/defense front too.

That seems to me like a straighforward "my character is underpowered" complaint. It doesn't sound like what they really want is for the Fighter to lose its CC effects so much as for their characters to not feel less effective than Fighters.


Able to surpass/bypass most of typical challenges for characters of this level with ease or even automatically.

But aren't casters of a given level, by definition, characters of that level? Given that, the argument seems like it smuggles in the assumption that non-casters are the "correct" balance point implicitly. You could try to correct that by talking about printed CRs, but I don't think that's a good argument against casters. Plenty of printed monsters simply are casters, in addition to having whatever abilities they normally have. The CR 14 Trumpet Archon has the powers of a 14th level Cleric and also an archon. Seems a bit unfair to complain about players getting to be 14th level Clerics in that context.


But, IMO, no single character should be able to solve anywhere close to any problem or most problems.

Recall the math. Characters need to be able to solve more than half the problems for the party to be able to consistently solve all problems. That, or characters need to customize their abilities around each other's options. Which, hey, that's exactly what the Wizard is doing when he doesn't learn Knock because Open Lock is good enough.


That advantage is, usually, too small. 3.5 casters simply have too many slots for it to matter unless you drag them with no rests a long time.

How many people do you think there are in a government? A 10th level Wizard has about twenty slots that can cast Charm Person. If they do absolutely nothing else, they can charm a high school classroom's worth of people. Less if any of those people make saves. Casters have a bunch of spell slots if you are talking about something that takes five minutes. They absolutely do not if you are talking about something that takes five hours.


It proves that the offered test is unnecessarily skewed towards combat effectiveness.

The system is skewed towards combat effectiveness. It defines what you are supposed to be able to fight at 3rd, 7th, or 19th level. It does not do that for non-combat encounters. You certainly could define a set of non-combat challenges, but it would inevitably end up being biased towards whatever class you were using as a baseline. What is the appropriate level for the challenge "go to Hell"? Is it 9th level (when the Cleric can do it), 13th level (when the Wizard can do it), or never (when the Fighter can do it)? There's no fair way to answer that question.


Hallway of runes: Detect Magic to find, Dispel Magic as an AoE, repeat several times if dispelling gets hard.

Bear in mind that this requires you to dedicate most or all of your 3rd level spell slots to Dispel Magic. I don't know that I'd consider that reasonable for standard kit.


Fire Giant might be a problem, unless...Invisibility+Shivering Touch, perhaps. Not sure Wizards carry around Shivering Touch on a regular basis, though - might be a weak link.

A Wizard that had enough Dispels to handle the first encounter certainly doesn't carry Shivering Touch by default. I would also personally consider Shivering Touch to be well past the level of optimization where the Dread Necromancer would be justified it showing up with things like Arcane Disciple, Prestige Domains, or maybe Runestaves (it's harder for them than for Beguilers, as they don't natively get UMD). That does a great deal to mitigate any issues they have resulting from their limited spell list.


Blue Dragon might also fall prey to the same tactic, though you'd also have to spend Fly. Shivering Touch starts looking like a very good spell to prepare or at least have on a scroll. Huh.

Flying around after a dragon is actually not a great tactic. It's much faster than you. Unless you have permanent flight, it can just make a tactical retreat until your spell runs out, then come back and strafe you to death. Also, again, every Fly you have is a Dispel Magic you don't have in the first round.


Bebilith is a tough one, since I'm not sure how any one character can handle it properly. Then again, Fly and stupid magic missile spam from a wand actually might do the trick, since it has no ranged options beyond 30 feet.

Well, the Dread Necromancer has a hundred to a hundred and twenty hit dice worth of zombie meatshield, and spells like Cloudkill (which the zombies fight super well in) and Magic Jar. Also, I would assume the cave is probably small enough that you can't get past 30ft range in it.


A Vrock has no ranged options, can teleport only as a standard action and flies at less speed than Fly. The hard part is actually dealing with them, since they have some resistance to almost all damage. You don't have Dismissal yet and it's not very likely that you'd prepare it anyway, unless you know you're going to a demonic forest.

The Vrock gets Telekinesis at will. Even assuming it's only getting something like 3d6 damage per round on you rather than its nominal 12d6 maximum, that's still very likely a lot faster than you're damaging it, and it has more HP and isn't worried about running out of spell slots.


6 trolls - a Nerveskitter (I assume you don't know the trolls are there, and you're almost ambushed), a Fly (to take you out of the cave) and two Fireballs ought to do the trick. 10d6 (I assume only the spell progression is stunted, not the caster level?) x2 at 18+ DC means that trolls will, on average, take 70 fire damage. Even if some survive, they're severely wounded and won't regenerate that, meaning you can finish them off with ease.

My assumption was that you were literally a lower-level character. That said, it doesn't matter, because you don't have the third level slots for the Fireballs, and Shivering Touch, and Dispel Magics, and Fly. However, I could imagine a more plausible path to victory on the back of something like Fly + Reserve Feat. That said, there's still a decent chance you just get mooked before you can do anything -- on Wizard hit dice, a Troll full attack is almost certainly lethal, even at 8th level.

RedMage125
2020-08-15, 04:33 PM
So suppose - say, for 6th edition - people wanted to build the game from the ground up, build the math from the ground up to make all D&D classes "balanced", by which I mean "able to contribute, and occasionally shine", and no more "linear Fighter, quadratic Wizard".

Talking to people, the Wizard has effects like Charm and ESP. Which… have negative reproductions, and, in earlier editions, can drive the Wizard bonkers. How do we make the Fighter "balanced" here?

Dealing with traps, the Wizard could use summons (and scrying for maximum safety). How do we make the Fighter "balanced" here?

Also, what if, rather than the microscope of "a single challenge", we look at a larger scenario, like "rescue the Dragon from the evil princess", or "close an underwater extradimensional portal protected by invisible, incorporeal guardians", or "save the NPC writer with massive gambling debts from loan sharks"? What should each class bring to the table in each of these scenarios, and how do we make that "balanced"?

It's probably already been said, but...4e did ALL of this.

"Charm Person" was a Utility power that let a wizard make an Arcana check, and have it count as a Persuasion check.

Most traps required multiple skill checks that were usually spread out among skills likely to be trained from multiple classes.

Skill Challenges covered a vast amount of possible scenarios.

The balance of "Defender-Leader-Striker-Controller" remains the same across all levels of play. High level wizards may have larger, crazier powers, but so do high level fighters, rogues, etc.

Lagtime
2020-08-15, 06:28 PM
The problem will always be spells vs mundane because of the basic game rules.

Just look at the big three Magic Spells get:

1. There is a huge number of spells to pick from, and more added to the list all the time.

2. A spellcaster can switch, change and swap out spells very easily..often on a whim.

3. While there are a few very focused spells, most spells have a wide range of uses.

So: a ton of spells to pick from and picking the spells with effects they want. Being able to switch the spells with ease. And each spell is a toolbox of effects.

A great example of the last one is just about any fire attack spell. Other then just attacking with the spell, a spellcaster can:

*Set flammable object on fire (notably oil and fuses)
*Destroy flammable objects
*Use the effect as a signal
*Use the effect for intimidation

Now look at martial abilities:

The list is much smaller in every case, they don't have the ability to pick and choose and change on a whim and just about all their abilities are very, very, very, narrowly focused to do one thing only.


The only way to "balance" this is for martials to have a huge pool of abilities that they can pick from and change freely and each ability must have at least least two or three possible uses.

NigelWalmsley
2020-08-15, 07:27 PM
It's probably already been said, but...4e did ALL of this.

4e's issue was that it approached the problem of "Wizards have interesting abilities but Fighters don't" by ensuring that no one had an ability that was more interesting than what Fighters could do in 3e (which some limited exceptions that are still less compelling than 3e magic items). Unsurprisingly, this approach crippled D&D as a product because it turns out that the abilities Wizards have are an important part of the game, and the solution is not to nerf them into the ground.


Skill Challenges covered a vast amount of possible scenarios.

Skill Challenges mathematically did not work as printed and went through multiple rounds of errata without ever producing a functional system. The basic concept of "roll multiple times" is good (although you will note it was first introduced to D&D in 3e's Unearthed Arcana, not 4e), but 4e's execution defined the concept of "dumpster fire".


The problem will always be spells vs mundane because of the basic game rules.

Of course magic is better than mundane. That's why high level characters shouldn't be mundane. Just like they aren't in the source material. Goddamn Lord of the Rings figured out that the Fighter is supposed to get a ghost army, it is well past time for D&D to follow suit.

NorthernPhoenix
2020-08-15, 07:31 PM
4e's issue was that it approached the problem of "Wizards have interesting abilities but Fighters don't" by taking the approach of ensuring that no one had an ability that was more interesting than what Fighters could do in 3e (which some limited exceptions that are mostly still less compelling than magic items). Unsurprisingly, this approach crippled D&D as a product because it turns out that the abilities Wizards have are an important part of the game, and the solution is not to nerf them into the ground.



Of course magic is better than mundane. That's why high level characters shouldn't be mundane. Just like they aren't in the source material. Goddamn Lord of the Rings figured out that the Fighter is supposed to get a ghost army, it is well past time for D&D to follow suit.

The army idea is bunk, be it ghost or regular. The modern game is about playing an individual, and the solution to that individual not being cool isn't to make the player stop playing that character and start playing a whole army of faceless dudes instead.

And separately from that, it's a pretty bold and mostly not correct claim you make about 4e there.

NigelWalmsley
2020-08-15, 07:50 PM
The army idea is bunk, be it ghost or regular. The modern game is about playing an individual, and the solution to that individual not being cool isn't to make the player stop playing that character and start playing a whole army of faceless dudes instead.

Sure, in modern D&D you would need to get personal supernatural powers. But within the context of Lord of the Rings, the clash of armies is at least as relevant as that of individuals, so it's entirely sufficient for Aragorn's high level ability to be "ghost army" rather than "flying brick". The point is that the broader fantasy genre understands that you can't just have "a dude who is strong" be the endgame protagonist, he needs abilities that are appropriate to the challenges he faces.

And, frankly, D&D should have more use for armies. Having a bunch of tiny men to command shows up in a lot of the source material. And while that doesn't mean it needs to happen in every campaign, the rules are insufficient for it to happen at all. D&D can't do large parts of even LotR without massive amounts of handwaving, and I think that's a real flaw of the game.


And separately from that, it's a pretty bold and mostly not correct claim you make about 4e there.

Actually, it's a fairly standard and largely correct claim. If you've got some point you feel like disputing, feel free. But simply asserting that I'm wrong is a waste of both our time. In the interest of giving you something to work with, I'll make two concrete claims for you to engage with:

1. 4e characters never get class abilities that have the impact on the story and ease of use of 5th level utility spells including, but not limited to, Fabricate, Major Creation, Teleport, and Plane Shift.
2. The core mechanic of skill challenges (ending the challenge when a certain number of failures are accumulated) creates a strong incentive for only the PC who is most likely to succeed to participate, which is in direct tension with the stated goal of encouraging broad participation.

Hopefully those claims are simple and explicit enough that you'll be able to find meaningful evidence to contradict them. If you can't, I have to say that I've found your opening argument fairly disappointing.

Lagtime
2020-08-15, 08:27 PM
The army idea is bunk, be it ghost or regular. The modern game is about playing an individual, and the solution to that individual not being cool isn't to make the player stop playing that character and start playing a whole army of faceless dudes instead.

Except this is not true for D&D. One of the most basic balance problems for magic is the spellcasters ability to have an army. Summoning spells alone allow for a ton of creatures that serve the spellcaster. On top of that are things like animal companions and familiars. Plus a number of created construct and undead. And on top of that is all the mind control magic to add to the group.

With very little effort a spellcaster can have at least a good sized squad of creatures.....and can have an army with just a little work.

So a nice supernatual ability for fighters would be Ghost Ancestor: That you could summon an ancestor for advise, or to fight or other utilities. And the ability allowed for more and more ghosts as the levels went up.

NorthernPhoenix
2020-08-15, 09:11 PM
Except this is not true for D&D. One of the most basic balance problems for magic is the spellcasters ability to have an army. Summoning spells alone allow for a ton of creatures that serve the spellcaster. On top of that are things like animal companions and familiars. Plus a number of created construct and undead. And on top of that is all the mind control magic to add to the group.

With very little effort a spellcaster can have at least a good sized squad of creatures.....and can have an army with just a little work.

So a nice supernatual ability for fighters would be Ghost Ancestor: That you could summon an ancestor for advise, or to fight or other utilities. And the ability allowed for more and more ghosts as the levels went up.

That's not how 5e is usually played, which is my benchmark for the modern game. I find the argument in favor of "armies" as a balancing factor draws from historical 1e era rules, which unsurprisingly are designed around a very different type of intended gameplay which was more closely connected to table top wargaming than anything resembling modern fantasy TTRPG.

Kyutaru
2020-08-15, 10:55 PM
That's not how 5e is usually played, which is my benchmark for the modern game. I find the argument in favor of "armies" as a balancing factor draws from historical 1e era rules, which unsurprisingly are designed around a very different type of intended gameplay which was more closely connected to table top wargaming than anything resembling modern fantasy TTRPG.
Not exactly, it may have stemmed from wargaming at its roots but D&D was fundamentally different from other tabletop games because the rules were not explicitly defined. For wargames they were. D&D threw out most of the rules those games had to allow the DM to make arbitrary calls. There was even a time when DCs weren't a thing and the DM simply decided if your action succeeded or not based on the closest approximation to common sense with your stats as a guideline. The armies thing was something that took place at level cap and represented a new stage of the game, the precursor to wargaming. D&D was the backstory and evolution of your would-be king-general. Wargames like Warhammer 40k now have RPGs of their own doing the same thing. It was still all about the roleplay and managing the kingdom rather than actually taking control of a hundred minis to battle another army. For that you play a different game (like Chainmail).

NorthernPhoenix
2020-08-16, 09:33 AM
Not exactly, it may have stemmed from wargaming at its roots but D&D was fundamentally different from other tabletop games because the rules were not explicitly defined. For wargames they were. D&D threw out most of the rules those games had to allow the DM to make arbitrary calls. There was even a time when DCs weren't a thing and the DM simply decided if your action succeeded or not based on the closest approximation to common sense with your stats as a guideline. The armies thing was something that took place at level cap and represented a new stage of the game, the precursor to wargaming. D&D was the backstory and evolution of your would-be king-general. Wargames like Warhammer 40k now have RPGs of their own doing the same thing. It was still all about the roleplay and managing the kingdom rather than actually taking control of a hundred minis to battle another army. For that you play a different game (like Chainmail).

Personally i find that interpretation even sadder, that the end goal of the character is not only for your character to take a back seat, but after that you just stop playing the game and go play something else.

I don't think it's a concept worth revisiting in a game that increasingly is a bout the personal journey of a single character.

johnbragg
2020-08-16, 10:00 AM
Personally i find that interpretation even sadder, that the end goal of the character is not only for your character to take a back seat, but after that you just stop playing the game and go play something else.

I don't think it's a concept worth revisiting in a game that increasingly is a bout the personal journey of a single character.

Well, it may be sad, but that's often how the story goes. "Adventurer, Conqueror, King" are three different phases of gameplay. Not every character concept is suited to all three phases. Sometimes "Happily Ever After" is the best you can do.

Imagine the original Star Wars trilogy as an RPG campaign. After the Battle of Endor, the game changes and some great PCs from the trilogy would suck to play in whatever game follows.

Jedi Knight Luke Skywalker can obviously go and start a monastery and train up the next generation of Jedi, travel the galaxy hunting for Jedi artifacts, force-sensitives, etc.
Princess-Senator-General Leia Organa Solo transitions right into the Senate game, not skipping a beat.
General Lando Calrissian will do well in the Senate game (has experience in politics, business, government administration in Cloud City).
"General" Han Solo (courtesy title) really has nothing to do. A man whose time has past, and anything he could to in the game to take advantage of his skills (smuggling, underworld diplomacy) would seriously undercut whatever Leia is doing politically. May be best used as Jedi Master Skywalker's bodyguard and chauffeur?

So you have two barely-overlapping games, if the campaign continues past the climax at Endor. Leia and Calrissian are dealing with political intrigue, Luke and Han (and presumably Chewbacca) are mucking around ruined temples and battle sites. Threepio is best suited for the politics-and-intrigue campaign on Coruscant, Artoo's strengths are as an astromech and trapmonkey. (Although you could easily justify sending Threepio on the Quest for the Lost Jedi MacGuffins, because he can speak and read the Ancient East Armpit dialect that the obscure carvings are in.)

Does the DM resort to increasingly strained railroading to justify sending Leia and Lando out to search the swamps of Dagobah, or use Luke and Han as vigilante spies on Leia's corrupt political opposition?

Or do you just accept the realities that "guerilla insurgent space opera" and "high politics" are just different games, and have Han and Chewbacca's players roll up new characters? Or decide that the game still centers on Luke's progress as a Jedi, and have Leia and Lando retire and be replaced by new PCs?

Lagtime
2020-08-16, 10:09 AM
That's not how 5e is usually played, which is my benchmark for the modern game. I find the argument in favor of "armies" as a balancing factor draws from historical 1e era rules, which unsurprisingly are designed around a very different type of intended gameplay which was more closely connected to table top wargaming than anything resembling modern fantasy TTRPG.

I don't think it's a concept worth revisiting in a game that increasingly is a bout the personal journey of a single character.

Ok, so drop the idea of an army as only like "a group of 25,000 warriors".

Take the idea of a Small Army, that is your "single character on a personal journey" having two to five to ten other characters and/or minions.

This is just as common in 5E with druids, conjurers and necromancers as it always has been in D&D. And on top of that are created constructs and charmed minions too.

As most spellcasters get the small army, why should not the martial characters?

Ignimortis
2020-08-17, 03:21 AM
Because it makes what ability to use a choice. It means that you can have a situation where Teleport is the best power for a situation, rather than the only power you have for that situation. It's like coming in first in a race where you're the only participant. Sure, you got the gold, but does that really feel like it matters?

It also means there are several other situations where there's no clear choice, and perhaps the spotlight for your specific brand of Teleport never comes up. The system you're proposing only works out if the GM sets up situations where you clearly need an ability to lead an army behind you, or get there right now instead of an hour later, etc. In other situations, the party would just use whatever is the most convenient/cheapest.



Sure, but that's different from your contribution not being critical. People are upset if the fight ends without them doing anything. They aren't upset if the fight ends with everyone having enough resources to do the same fight again twice over, despite the fact that it implies their contribution wasn't really essential for the party's victory.

That seems to me like a straighforward "my character is underpowered" complaint. It doesn't sound like what they really want is for the Fighter to lose its CC effects so much as for their characters to not feel less effective than Fighters.

The people I talked about are upset not because they don't do anything, but because nothing they do is unique and has little impact. Their debuffs still stick, they can still do damage, but the situation is basically that if they rolled a Fighter or a Champion, they'd have way more impact and would still have ways to impart debuffs and do damage if they built for it. Out-of-combat casting is also pretty lackluster, as they say, because they could've been a Rogue or an Investigator ritual master who would do the same thing anyway. People do want to have unique abilities that aren't just "X, but a bit better if Y and worse if Z". In short, their complaint actually is that anyone can do almost anything that they do. Class identity is very much a thing.



But aren't casters of a given level, by definition, characters of that level? Given that, the argument seems like it smuggles in the assumption that non-casters are the "correct" balance point implicitly. You could try to correct that by talking about printed CRs, but I don't think that's a good argument against casters. Plenty of printed monsters simply are casters, in addition to having whatever abilities they normally have. The CR 14 Trumpet Archon has the powers of a 14th level Cleric and also an archon. Seems a bit unfair to complain about players getting to be 14th level Clerics in that context.

The CR system is pretty bad at evaluating power of certain things. We're still talking about a system that presumes a level 20 Fighter is supposed to have a 50% chance to kill a Balor with no outside assistance, just with his WBL and bunch of Fighter feats.

But alright, this is pretty subjective. My personal idea of "non-broken" is somewhere around T3, which is generally described as capable of handling printed challenges well, but unable to break the game or completely change its' direction just by using the abilities they get.



Recall the math. Characters need to be able to solve more than half the problems for the party to be able to consistently solve all problems. That, or characters need to customize their abilities around each other's options. Which, hey, that's exactly what the Wizard is doing when he doesn't learn Knock because Open Lock is good enough.


Again, your math is predicated on the party being absolutely random with no thought given to roles and capabilities of every member. If you have a somewhat clear divide of, say, "Arcane/Combat/Divine/Skill" spheres, and each class is X% of each, adding up to 100%, and every sphere has talents relating to solving a particular game challenge, then you can very easily cover from 90-100% of problems in a somewhat typical party. If a Beguiler can pick from certain parts of Arcane and certain parts of Skill, you can tailor them to whatever problem you wish for them to solve from those two spheres.

The issue with Wizard not learning Knock is that the opportunity cost for actually going and learning Knock, or Fly, or Scorching Ray, is extremely low. It's GP and some time. You can spend a third of your WBL at level 10 and get at least a few dozen new spells, each of which is a discrete ability, and due to how spells are written, generally a strong ability. It's far less than putting skill points into Open Lock (which become invalidated at the point where Knock is cheap enough to learn/use constantly, or even put in a wand), and it's far less than picking a feat, or a class level, or anything else, really.

It's very easy for a Wizard to get new abilities that with no prerequisites other than "you are able to use a spell of that level" and "you have enough GP/time to transcribe a scroll". Sure, it's not exactly free (though 5e made it way cheaper and faster), but it's still basically buying abilities from a very wide spectrum for later use.

If Wizards only ever got their 2 spells per level-up, their potential would be much diminished. Sure, you could still play around with toolkit spells like Polymorph and Summon X, but in general, picking up Knock and other stuff would have a much higher opportunity cost. 350 GP and two days of downtime for a level 2 spell is almost nothing, but if you sacrifice one of your 40 slots EVER, it's a much more major investment.

You could make everyone use the same format as Wizards, but that would really play havoc with class identity and mechanics that aren't spells, especially for classes who tend to gain power from less discrete abilities like skills.



How many people do you think there are in a government? A 10th level Wizard has about twenty slots that can cast Charm Person. If they do absolutely nothing else, they can charm a high school classroom's worth of people. Less if any of those people make saves. Casters have a bunch of spell slots if you are talking about something that takes five minutes. They absolutely do not if you are talking about something that takes five hours.

Good thing we've got separated powers instead of monarchies, right? That's actually an interesting defense against mind-control magic - not putting all the power in one pair of hands.



The system is skewed towards combat effectiveness. It defines what you are supposed to be able to fight at 3rd, 7th, or 19th level. It does not do that for non-combat encounters. You certainly could define a set of non-combat challenges, but it would inevitably end up being biased towards whatever class you were using as a baseline. What is the appropriate level for the challenge "go to Hell"? Is it 9th level (when the Cleric can do it), 13th level (when the Wizard can do it), or never (when the Fighter can do it)? There's no fair way to answer that question.

True enough. There's no fair answer, because it's entirely subjective even without classes and their abilities. If you want a party to be able to go to Hell at level 11, you'll give them a means of doing so. I also agree that perhaps someone other than Cleric should be able to get the party to Hell by some means. All I disagree with is that everyone should be able to do it - at least



My assumption was that you were literally a lower-level character. That said, it doesn't matter, because you don't have the third level slots for the Fireballs, and Shivering Touch, and Dispel Magics, and Fly. However, I could imagine a more plausible path to victory on the back of something like Fly + Reserve Feat. That said, there's still a decent chance you just get mooked before you can do anything -- on Wizard hit dice, a Troll full attack is almost certainly lethal, even at 8th level.

If all of those encounters are supposed to happen in a single day with no rests, no single character outside of, perhaps, some sort of DMM Persist Cleric or Natural Spell Druid will be able to solve them. Martials will run out of HP and have no way to replenish it, casters without strong long-term buffs and self-healing or good ways to get temo HP (like Wildshape) will run out of both HP and spells. Spread them out as 2-3 per day, and then both nerfed Wizard and full Dread Necromancer (with access to things they're supposed to have, like WBL and corpses for minions or w/e) should be able to clear them. Victory wouldn't be guaranteed, but I'd rate their chances higher than 50%.

NigelWalmsley
2020-08-17, 06:25 AM
It also means there are several other situations where there's no clear choice, and perhaps the spotlight for your specific brand of Teleport never comes up.

The former doesn't seem like a problem. The latter is true, but in such a paradigm you'd presumably have other abilities for other kinds of situations which do see use. It's not like very Wizard or Cleric spell comes up in every campaign right now.


The system you're proposing only works out if the GM sets up situations where you clearly need an ability to lead an army behind you, or get there right now instead of an hour later, etc. In other situations, the party would just use whatever is the most convenient/cheapest.

Sure, you need a variety of problems to have a variety of solutions. But it's not like having a variety of problems is all that difficult to pull off. The typical fantasy novel has situations where various kinds of fast movement would be ideal.


In short, their complaint actually is that anyone can do almost anything that they do.

It seems like you're reading things into their position. The complaints they're making about Caster v Champion sound like "the Champion is better than me" not "the Champion gets to do things I do". If you can build a different class in a way that gets all your class's abilities and also extra stuff, that doesn't prove you're upset about other classes getting your abilities.


Class identity is very much a thing.

Certainly. But "Summoner" and "Necromancer" have distinct identities despite the fact that both fill the same niche (magical minionmancer). Themes and aesthetics are as important to identity as literal mechanics.


But alright, this is pretty subjective. My personal idea of "non-broken" is somewhere around T3, which is generally described as capable of handling printed challenges well, but unable to break the game or completely change its' direction just by using the abilities they get.

I don't think that definition holds water, really. In combat, I don't think casters really "break the game". You could argue that they're slightly ahead of CR, but it's not like you can't challenge a 13th level Wizard in a fight. Outside combat, you hit the undefined expectations problem I mentioned earlier. It's true that with Teleport, a Wizard can trivialize things that would be difficult challenges for a Warblade or Rogue. But there's nothing in the game that says that's wrong.


If a Beguiler can pick from certain parts of Arcane and certain parts of Skill, you can tailor them to whatever problem you wish for them to solve from those two spheres.

I mean, isn't that exactly how the Wizard works now? If you want people to pick what problems they can solve from a big list, you are endorsing the model of the Wizard, or at the very least a buffed Sorcerer.


The issue with Wizard not learning Knock is that the opportunity cost for actually going and learning Knock, or Fly, or Scorching Ray, is extremely low. It's GP and some time.

It's also another spell. Whatever the GP price tag is, the practical cost is that there's some other spell you didn't get. So for it to be worth it to learn Knock when the Rogue has Open Lock, you have to learn not just every spell that's better than Knock (which is already a pretty big list), but every spell that's bigger than the gap in utility between Knock and Open Lock (which is a huge list).


(which become invalidated at the point where Knock is cheap enough to learn/use constantly, or even put in a wand)

Putting Knock in a wand is at least as bad for the Wizard as it is for the Rogue. The Rogue can UMD that wand, and still has a (admittedly much smaller) comparative advantage over that wand, because his skill is even cheaper. Whereas if you've got a wand of Knock, there isn't a damn reason in the world to learn or prepare the spell.


You could make everyone use the same format as Wizards, but that would really play havoc with class identity and mechanics that aren't spells, especially for classes who tend to gain power from less discrete abilities like skills.

You don't need to make everyone use the same format as Wizards to make everyone as good as Wizards. The Beguiler and Dread Necromancer do an admirably good job of competing with the Wizard even now, and that's with a reduced progression, incomplete lists in their niche, and (moreso in the Beguiler's case) a lack of class features that enhance their capabilities. If you look at that list of combat encounters, I find it really implausible that the only way to write something that does as well as a Wizard is to write something that works in the same way as the Wizard.


Good thing we've got separated powers instead of monarchies, right? That's actually an interesting defense against mind-control magic - not putting all the power in one pair of hands.

Even in a monarchy, there's a limit to how much you'd be able to do by charming just the king. Just because he trusts and listens to you doesn't mean he ignores all his advisors, or that he can unilaterally give you what you want. In a serious intrigue plot, you need to be able to actually do politics. Getting concessions for people, persuading them around to your side. Charm certainly can help with that, but it's not an I Win button. Even Dominate doesn't, because the DC to detect it is low enough that a person with no particular skill who is merely "kinda wise" has a close to even chance of detecting it.


If all of those encounters are supposed to happen in a single day with no rests, no single character outside of, perhaps, some sort of DMM Persist Cleric or Natural Spell Druid will be able to solve them.

They're not supposed to happen in the same day, you're just not supposed to get to prepare for one individually. So the notion is that you don't know in advance if you'll get the Traps or the Trolls of the Vrock, meaning you need to prepare generally-effective spells.

Man_Over_Game
2020-08-17, 10:22 AM
Ok, so drop the idea of an army as only like "a group of 25,000 warriors".

Take the idea of a Small Army, that is your "single character on a personal journey" having two to five to ten other characters and/or minions.

This is just as common in 5E with druids, conjurers and necromancers as it always has been in D&D. And on top of that are created constructs and charmed minions too.

As most spellcasters get the small army, why should not the martial characters?

Thing is, the examples you provided don't generally have their own stories, and any stories they do have are often centered around their master.

Sure, soldiers following a Fighter follow the same example, but there is a trend in DnD that mundane consequences are no longer being defined by class abilities. In other words, since those soldiers could technically follow anyone for their own personal reasons, binding their service to the Fighter implies that nobody else should be convincing soldiers to join them.

So now instead of all of your players recruiting allies, it's limited to one.

And that could be fine - it's not like everyone needs to be a shapeshifter or anything - but the concept of controlling a group of living NPCs isn't a versatile one, while conjuring or shapeshifting into whatever animal you need is. Not to mention that any solution that the soldiers could provide, the Fighter could also likely provide (while a shapeshifter/conjurer uses those alternate creatures and forms to usually provide something that they're missing).

Nowadays, it'd make more sense for the Bard to be the one to have a band of merry men following them, as their soldiers would both do things that the Bard would have trouble doing themselves (like physical combat), and they also support the primary playstyle of Bards of socializing.

NigelWalmsley
2020-08-17, 04:51 PM
but the concept of controlling a group of living NPCs isn't a versatile one

What? The concept of "controlling a bunch of other characters" is the most versatile concept in the game, because it gives you access to every concept in the game. Even if we assume that you just have a bunch of Warrior (the NPC class) types it still gives you a huge range of things to do in combat, and non-combat utility that competes with the likes of Fabricate or Wall of Stone just by having a bunch of people to work on the problem.

NorthernPhoenix
2020-08-17, 06:47 PM
What? The concept of "controlling a bunch of other characters" is the most versatile concept in the game, because it gives you access to every concept in the game. Even if we assume that you just have a bunch of Warrior (the NPC class) types it still gives you a huge range of things to do in combat, and non-combat utility that competes with the likes of Fabricate or Wall of Stone just by having a bunch of people to work on the problem.

Goon Commander is at best a specific concept, not something you make any class that isn't cool enough by themselves.

Kyutaru
2020-08-17, 07:05 PM
Goon Commander is at best a specific concept, not something you make any class that isn't cool enough by themselves.
Could always abstract the help. Instead of actually participating in the combat they are simply there like so many NPC cheerleaders in anime. They can even provide perks in the form of abilities. Wizards get sending but you get messenger sending. The wizard version takes a 3rd level spell slot while the fighter version takes a week.

Lagtime
2020-08-17, 07:16 PM
Thing is,

Well, you lost me at "D&D martial characters can't have any sort of minions or followers as you don't like the idea."

Just for mundane followers, why is it "so hard" to picture people following a martial character? Knights had squires. Even some of the big name heroes had a loyal companion or three.

And why do you assume they must all be fighters? There is a huge list of useful mundane people. Plus things like a brawler type fighter having some archer companions. Again, providing something that the character is missing.

A spellcaster can charm/control or summon/call or create a person/creature to do their bidding....but no mundane person can? Why? If a wizard can create a homucuils to make magic items, why can't a fighter have a loyal weaponsmith to do the same? If a spellcaster can conjure up a (any) creature and force it to do a long time task, why can't a mundane character do something similar?

And if your really hung up on the 'problem' that no NPC would ever follow a mundane character....why not, as suggested, make them all ghosts. Or constructs?

NigelWalmsley
2020-08-17, 07:18 PM
Goon Commander is at best a specific concept, not something you make any class that isn't cool enough by themselves.

Sure, not every class is going to command soldiers in the tactical layer of the game, or have strategic powers that are primarily a result of ordering people around. But anyone could. "Has a bunch of minions that are weaker versions of them" is a concept that's available to everyone, whether it's a Warlock collecting a bunch of acolytes or a Marshal ordering some actual soldiers around.

Ignimortis
2020-08-17, 09:54 PM
The former doesn't seem like a problem. The latter is true, but in such a paradigm you'd presumably have other abilities for other kinds of situations which do see use. It's not like very Wizard or Cleric spell comes up in every campaign right now.

Sure, you need a variety of problems to have a variety of solutions. But it's not like having a variety of problems is all that difficult to pull off. The typical fantasy novel has situations where various kinds of fast movement would be ideal.

<...>

I mean, isn't that exactly how the Wizard works now? If you want people to pick what problems they can solve from a big list, you are endorsing the model of the Wizard, or at the very least a buffed Sorcerer.

<...>

I don't think that definition holds water, really. In combat, I don't think casters really "break the game". You could argue that they're slightly ahead of CR, but it's not like you can't challenge a 13th level Wizard in a fight. Outside combat, you hit the undefined expectations problem I mentioned earlier. It's true that with Teleport, a Wizard can trivialize things that would be difficult challenges for a Warblade or Rogue. But there's nothing in the game that says that's wrong.

For a campaign to use every single Cleric or Wizard spell printed for 3.5, it'd have to last for years and have insane, Monty Haul-ish loot to actually get all those spells. I get your point, but as far as I see, most broken stuff for casters is usually in the corebook, and only few really strong spells show up in splats. You just don't need all the spells in the game to have most of base effects at your disposal.

I guess what I'm saying is isn't that some class should never get anything resembling a Teleport, but that they have to pay a substantial cost in build-points or whatever to actually get that. Everyone should have abilities that are as strong as spells are right now, but not all of them, even in potentia - one must simply be unable to build a character that can solve too many problems by themselves.

I'm not against Rogue Shadow Walk or Fighter cutting open a gate in space or non-magical healing or literally replicating anything represented through magic on a non-caster class. I'm just against being able to do that one day and then replacing it with another ability the very next. And, of course, I'm against summoning/shapeshifting being something that lets you circumvent every limitation by simply digging through books and finding someone who can do X anyway. The opportunity costs have to be higher than that, you have to commit to the bit.

So yes, a Sorcerer mixed with specialist Wizard - give people large swaths of abilities to choose from, but make their choices at least semi-permanent (retraining and rare limited switching like Sorcerer's "once per 2 levels switch one spell" should be in the game) and limited enough so that no character can function absolutely fine outside a team and on their own. Short solo missions that embrace their niche are fine, of course.



Certainly. But "Summoner" and "Necromancer" have distinct identities despite the fact that both fill the same niche (magical minionmancer). Themes and aesthetics are as important to identity as literal mechanics.

I'd say that summoner and necromancer are both similar enough to be one broad class, where you choose mechanics for your minions. Otherwise archer Fighter and sword Fighter are also aesthetically different enough to be different classes - at least after they've chosen a few feats that solidify their fighting style.



It's also another spell. Whatever the GP price tag is, the practical cost is that there's some other spell you didn't get. So for it to be worth it to learn Knock when the Rogue has Open Lock, you have to learn not just every spell that's better than Knock (which is already a pretty big list), but every spell that's bigger than the gap in utility between Knock and Open Lock (which is a huge list).

Putting Knock in a wand is at least as bad for the Wizard as it is for the Rogue. The Rogue can UMD that wand, and still has a (admittedly much smaller) comparative advantage over that wand, because his skill is even cheaper. Whereas if you've got a wand of Knock, there isn't a damn reason in the world to learn or prepare the spell.


Skillpoints are cheaper than getting a 4500 GP spell wand? That's a hard no from me. Of course, at some point that might be theoretically true, if you use that skill several hundred times, the amount of wands and their cost begins to pile up. But the opportunity cost of getting a Wand of Knock or even two is significantly less than investing 10 skill points into Open Lock, despite that +10 not guaranteeing you're gonna open any lock in the game. In fact, the best locks have a DC of 40. You won't be able to open those as a typical Rogue until several levels after your Wizard's got Knock, unless you get a specific magic item like +10 to Open Lock checks. Your typical level 3 Rogue will only be able to open DC30 locks on a roll of 20.

NigelWalmsley
2020-08-17, 11:18 PM
Everyone should have abilities that are as strong as spells are right now, but not all of them, even in potentia - one must simply be unable to build a character that can solve too many problems by themselves.

Sure. But that doesn't mean anything. It's like saying "you shouldn't be able to build a character who is overpowered" or "you shouldn't be able to build a character that can't solve enough problems". Those statements only make any sense relative to a set of benchmarks. My point isn't that the Wizard is perfect. You should certainly make changes to the Wizard -- though even then, many of those things will be buffs like "gets class features at levels that aren't multiples of five" -- but the starting point of "rain down a bunch of nerfs on the Wizard" is unhelpful. You have to start by thinking about what characters should be able to do. And starting from that point of view, the Wizard is clearly doing a lot of things right.


I'd say that summoner and necromancer are both similar enough to be one broad class, where you choose mechanics for your minions. Otherwise archer Fighter and sword Fighter are also aesthetically different enough to be different classes - at least after they've chosen a few feats that solidify their fighting style.

Summoner and Necromancer are minionmancers. The "mechanics for your minions" is the whole class. If your class is "you could have this core mechanic or this entirely separate core mechanic", it is too broad. It's like making Warlock and Wizard the same class and saying "just choose a mechanic for your magic". Conversely "archer Fighter" and "sword Fighter" aren't even distinct concepts. You use a sword and a bow at different times, and it is entirely plausible (even desirable) that you would have access to both of those things, just as the Summoner and Necromancer should each have access to multiple types of minion.

You've got to let go of the notion that "Sword Fighter" is a meaningful character concept if you want to have any hope of balancing the game. You'll never get there unless you're able to accept that martial character concepts need to be things like "Hero of Ragnarok" or "Bear Warrior", rather than "uses this kind of pointy stick instead of that kind of pointy stick". Kaladin is good at fighting with a spear, but he's not a "Spear Fighter", he's a Windrunner. Because that's the kind of concept that has legs at high levels.


Skillpoints are cheaper than getting a 4500 GP spell wand? That's a hard no from me.

The marginal cost of using Open Lock is 0 GP. The marginal cost of activating a Wand of Knock (even an Eternal Wand of Knock) is some larger number than that. Even if you want to talk about opportunity cost, I think Open Lock is very plausibly one of the ten-ish best skills on the Rogue list, and therefore not taking it makes your character worse.


Your typical level 3 Rogue will only be able to open DC30 locks on a roll of 20.

So what? Who says that the DC 30 lock that Knock beats is a more common problem than the "two locked doors in a row" that Open Lock beats? Again, you're getting caught up on "I can do this thing you can't do" without actually considering the overall package of capabilities these characters have and the challenges they might face (and, yes, Wand of Knock screws with that but A) charged magic items are broken and B) it also screws over the Wizard).

Quertus
2020-08-18, 01:01 AM
Skillpoints are cheaper than getting a 4500 GP spell wand? That's a hard no from me. Of course, at some point that might be theoretically true, if you use that skill several hundred times, the amount of wands and their cost begins to pile up.

Using "open locks" 100+ times can be done IRL in a day. Just saying.

Morphic tide
2020-08-18, 01:34 AM
With regards to the minion discussion, the thing with Necromancers vs. Summoners is what else they can do. Necromancers are in many cases expected to have plenty enough personal killing power, and the iconic minion roster is various flavors and scales of chaff. Meanwhile, the flavor on Summoners is typically a matter of getting very nearly anything done by calling up the relevant form of creature to solve it for you, with personal ability actually being largely irrelevant. In both cases, the on-the-face "basic" idea is far too broad in options so you need to bleed in limitations to have either be one decent class, but the Necromancer has enough mechanical overhead to justify being its own thing, given it generally needs dead things to animate.

The issues brought up with Martial minion masters drawing on stuff that should be universal is very much the issue, but to me the real problem is the second-order justifications and third-order balancing issues for the boosting solutions. Because if they have caster-type minions, they need caster-type buffs, and that's something very hard to justify without the class being flat-out Magical itself, or spellcasters directly reliant on stuff that ties directly into the non-magical fluff. And for this to be good niche-filling, the minions need to reach level-appropriate abilities, and pulling this off without the minions outright stepping on the party's toes runs into either needing frequent turnover of specialists that makes running them outside the urban very iffy and ruins the distinction from the summoners, or faces the problem of the boosts needing very weird availability schemes for a Martial character to have the normal PC specialization be run by proxy.

And if they can target party members, then everything will be nasty. Even if you manage to balance the performance shifts so it's sensible to take the chaffy hireling and make them level-appropriate at a couple things while still getting to apply those to allies, the party can then end up wildly more versatile at a given level than expected because far more build resources can be focused on specializing while the Martial master keeps their other things level appropriate, leading to forced specialization degrees or parties with campaign-distorting levels of versatility.

Ignimortis
2020-08-18, 02:02 AM
Sure. But that doesn't mean anything. It's like saying "you shouldn't be able to build a character who is overpowered" or "you shouldn't be able to build a character that can't solve enough problems". Those statements only make any sense relative to a set of benchmarks. My point isn't that the Wizard is perfect. You should certainly make changes to the Wizard -- though even then, many of those things will be buffs like "gets class features at levels that aren't multiples of five" -- but the starting point of "rain down a bunch of nerfs on the Wizard" is unhelpful. You have to start by thinking about what characters should be able to do. And starting from that point of view, the Wizard is clearly doing a lot of things right.

Summoner and Necromancer are minionmancers. The "mechanics for your minions" is the whole class. If your class is "you could have this core mechanic or this entirely separate core mechanic", it is too broad. It's like making Warlock and Wizard the same class and saying "just choose a mechanic for your magic". Conversely "archer Fighter" and "sword Fighter" aren't even distinct concepts. You use a sword and a bow at different times, and it is entirely plausible (even desirable) that you would have access to both of those things, just as the Summoner and Necromancer should each have access to multiple types of minion.

You've got to let go of the notion that "Sword Fighter" is a meaningful character concept if you want to have any hope of balancing the game. You'll never get there unless you're able to accept that martial character concepts need to be things like "Hero of Ragnarok" or "Bear Warrior", rather than "uses this kind of pointy stick instead of that kind of pointy stick". Kaladin is good at fighting with a spear, but he's not a "Spear Fighter", he's a Windrunner. Because that's the kind of concept that has legs at high levels.

Not really. Spells are doing a lot of things right. Wizard is doing a lot of things wrong. My benchmark would involve spells and perhaps the general speed of progression between levels from the Wizard list, but not any of the actual Wizard class features, including spell preparation or methods of adding new abilities.

Sorcerer would be far more workable as a baseline, and even Sorcerer would have to suffer some restrictions - as a very simple (and probably too unrestrictive) example, Sorcerers should be Fire Sorcerers (or Efreet/Fire Elemental/Red Dragon Sorcerers, if you like), not just Sorcerers. And that should be both a bonus and a limitation, instead of just a bonus - not only you get better at fire spells, but you cannot take cold spells, and perhaps your fire resistance is offset by somewhat less powerful weakness to cold.

The same goes for every other class - yes, perhaps Sword Fighter and Bow Fighter are concepts that don't work anywhere past level 5. But no Fighter should be a Warlord and an Armsmaster or an Eldritch Knight at the same time. You're either one or the other, despite both being, at their core, a Fighter. The best you should be able to do is to be a poor Warlord and a poor Armsmaster at the same time - by not picking successive talents from one way, and instead picking entry features from both - so you get a retinue, but it's not very numerous and not very strong, and you get some special moves, but they're not that strong. The core issue here is to balance the game so that the hybrid would suffer in performance, but still be able to clear challenges, and the single-class would not excel as much as to make the hybrid fully irrelevant.

That's why Summoner and Necromancer can be the same class with a distinction by archetype. The difference between them is usually defined by two things - how they get their minions/what type their minions are, and how long their minions last. Is that enough to make them two different base classes, especially if you have to design summoned/raised creature statblocks to avoid splatbook diving for summons with specific abilities?



The marginal cost of using Open Lock is 0 GP. The marginal cost of activating a Wand of Knock (even an Eternal Wand of Knock) is some larger number than that. Even if you want to talk about opportunity cost, I think Open Lock is very plausibly one of the ten-ish best skills on the Rogue list, and therefore not taking it makes your character worse.

So what? Who says that the DC 30 lock that Knock beats is a more common problem than the "two locked doors in a row" that Open Lock beats? Again, you're getting caught up on "I can do this thing you can't do" without actually considering the overall package of capabilities these characters have and the challenges they might face (and, yes, Wand of Knock screws with that but A) charged magic items are broken and B) it also screws over the Wizard).

How does the wand screw over the Wizard, who can just stop preparing Knock and free up a spell slot if they even were using it? Rogue would have to retrain away (if they even can) those Open Lock skillpoints, perhaps to UMD. Wizard can just take that Wand and use it without UMD. You are paying 90 GP for each lock, opened in this manner - that's it.

You can also get an at-will Knock item for 12000 GP. How does it compare to investing, say, 20 ranks into Open Lock? Can you buy skill ranks for 600 GP per rank? Probably not. Does that mean that when the party can afford to spend 12000 GP on that, Open Lock becomes an irrelevant skill unless caught in a rarely occurring antimagic zone?

Quertus
2020-08-18, 11:46 AM
With regards to the minion discussion, the thing with Necromancers vs. Summoners is what else they can do. Necromancers are in many cases expected to have plenty enough personal killing power, and the iconic minion roster is various flavors and scales of chaff. Meanwhile, the flavor on Summoners is typically a matter of getting very nearly anything done by calling up the relevant form of creature to solve it for you, with personal ability actually being largely irrelevant. In both cases, the on-the-face "basic" idea is far too broad in options so you need to bleed in limitations to have either be one decent class, but the Necromancer has enough mechanical overhead to justify being its own thing, given it generally needs dead things to animate.

Conceptually, either can do a lot. Limitation? How about "not yet"? Sure, a 100th level Necromancer or Summoner could solve any problem, but an Xth level one only has "level X appropriate" abilities.


The issues brought up with Martial minion masters drawing on stuff that should be universal is very much the issue, but to me the real problem is the second-order justifications and third-order balancing issues for the boosting solutions. Because if they have caster-type minions, they need caster-type buffs, and that's something very hard to justify without the class being flat-out Magical itself, or spellcasters directly reliant on stuff that ties directly into the non-magical fluff. And for this to be good niche-filling, the minions need to reach level-appropriate abilities, and pulling this off without the minions outright stepping on the party's toes runs into either needing frequent turnover of specialists that makes running them outside the urban very iffy and ruins the distinction from the summoners, or faces the problem of the boosts needing very weird availability schemes for a Martial character to have the normal PC specialization be run by proxy.

And if they can target party members, then everything will be nasty. Even if you manage to balance the performance shifts so it's sensible to take the chaffy hireling and make them level-appropriate at a couple things while still getting to apply those to allies, the party can then end up wildly more versatile at a given level than expected because far more build resources can be focused on specializing while the Martial master keeps their other things level appropriate, leading to forced specialization degrees or parties with campaign-distorting levels of versatility.

You've lost me.

If "level X appropriate" abilities are granted to a class through minions, what's the problem?


Not really. Spells are doing a lot of things right. Wizard is doing a lot of things wrong. My benchmark would involve spells and perhaps the general speed of progression between levels from the Wizard list, but not any of the actual Wizard class features, including spell preparation or methods of adding new abilities.

Sorcerer would be far more workable as a baseline

Well, that removes the D&D Wizard. Go that route, and you should just remove all the troublesome, unbalanced muggle classes, too.


, and even Sorcerer would have to suffer some restrictions - as a very simple (and probably too unrestrictive) example, Sorcerers should be Fire Sorcerers (or Efreet/Fire Elemental/Red Dragon Sorcerers, if you like), not just Sorcerers. And that should be both a bonus and a limitation, instead of just a bonus - not only you get better at fire spells, but you cannot take cold spells, and perhaps your fire resistance is offset by somewhat less powerful weakness to cold.

Are you talking about something as mechanically unimportant as 2e kits as a solution to balance? :smallconfused:


The same goes for every other class - yes, perhaps Sword Fighter and Bow Fighter are concepts that don't work anywhere past level 5. But no Fighter should be a Warlord and an Armsmaster or an Eldritch Knight at the same time. You're either one or the other, despite both being, at their core, a Fighter. The best you should be able to do is to be a poor Warlord and a poor Armsmaster at the same time - by not picking successive talents from one way, and instead picking entry features from both - so you get a retinue, but it's not very numerous and not very strong, and you get some special moves, but they're not that strong. The core issue here is to balance the game so that the hybrid would suffer in performance, but still be able to clear challenges, and the single-class would not excel as much as to make the hybrid fully irrelevant.

Maybe it's just my hubris as a genius, but "can be the best at multiple sub-fields" sounds realistic and desirable to my ears.

I guess "game balance" would likely be the deciding factor (at least for this thread), so let's not "guy at the gym" the muggles in the design phase.


That's why Summoner and Necromancer can be the same class with a distinction by archetype. The difference between them is usually defined by two things - how they get their minions/what type their minions are, and how long their minions last. Is that enough to make them two different base classes, especially if you have to design summoned/raised creature statblocks to avoid splatbook diving for summons with specific abilities?

Hmmm… actually, splatbook expansions could be fine, *if* there were build resources involved.

For example, if summoners could summon X *types* of things, and splatbook support introduced new, balanced types.


How does the wand screw over the Wizard, who can just stop preparing Knock and free up a spell slot if they even were using it? Rogue would have to retrain away (if they even can) those Open Lock skillpoints, perhaps to UMD. Wizard can just take that Wand and use it without UMD. You are paying 90 GP for each lock, opened in this manner - that's it.

You can also get an at-will Knock item for 12000 GP. How does it compare to investing, say, 20 ranks into Open Lock? Can you buy skill ranks for 600 GP per rank? Probably not. Does that mean that when the party can afford to spend 12000 GP on that, Open Lock becomes an irrelevant skill unless caught in a rarely occurring antimagic zone?

It means neither should invest in the ability to open locks. My theoretical Hermione expy, whose only "signature" spell is "Aloha Mora", looks dumb in the presence of a Wand of Knock.

Morphic tide
2020-08-18, 12:45 PM
Conceptually, either can do a lot. Limitation? How about "not yet"? Sure, a 100th level Necromancer or Summoner could solve any problem, but an Xth level one only has "level X appropriate" abilities.
The problem is how many areas of function they get ahold of, rather than going too high. The Summoner has too much breadth they can Summon to solve tasks with, being able to call up all manner of thieving demons, healing angels, crippling fae, and all manner of other things. To say "Not Yet" isn't enough because a general Necromancer not being able to control Ghosts, Ghouls, Zombies, and Skeletons is off-brand, but each of those has different possibilities attached to them. It's much worse with the Summoner, as a general Summoner has little justification in lack of kind of Summon. If a creature of the relevant type exists with a kind of function, the Summoner can access it by proxy. Angels to heal, fae to steal, demons to kill, and so very much more.

In both cases, because of the breadth covered by the high-level concept, they need subdivided to limit variety of tasks. So the one who summons Fae to charm and steal and manipulate can't turn around and call up an Angel to heal the party, and the Necromancer doesn't have functionally unbreakable meatshields and intangible scouts while simultaneously possessing a wide array of curses, blights, and raw necrotic energy expressions to kill or disable virtually everything in existence in every permutation of kind that may be needed. "Not Yet" is a function of how high they can punch, my issue is that the high-level concepts are so broad because they're iconically all-solving hammers.


You've lost me.

If "level X appropriate" abilities are granted to a class through minions, what's the problem?
Because in this case those minions are other people, not summoned outsiders, reanimated corpses, or some variety of awakened natural force, and thus making the basic access to that form of proxy a class feature means that you're "breaking the rules" to RP your way into having a small army's worth of niche-filling hangers-on. Solving this means the class features are buffs, so either the minions or the buffs need specialized, and the former has RP problems while the latter is complicated to justify on a Martial character's usage schemes.

And if those level-appropriate abilities include magic, the fluff becomes very weird unless you contort the magic system around being Martial-boost compatible, while allowing the buffs on party members cracks party design open spectacularly because either somebody's specialized in punching ridiculously above their level with those buffs, or somebody's deliberately leaning on them to function at their current level so they can dump resources in being a lot more versatile than intended, and balancing these build-around cases is going to become a mind-numbing exercise in frustration and mathematical tedium.

This is also in addition to the above issue of minions as a class specialty being difficult to niche-confine to prevent a class carrying them becoming the wielder of an all-solving hammer, though at least with actual allies they have fairly limited ability to decide they'll do something completely different today, unlike a summoner deciding to call up an Angel to deal with the packs of plague-based Undead instead of the Fae they summoned yesterday to drive half the guards insane, or a Necromancer deciding to make an incorporeal level-draining spirit instead of a nearly indestructible zombie from the latest fight.

NigelWalmsley
2020-08-18, 05:04 PM
Not really. Spells are doing a lot of things right. Wizard is doing a lot of things wrong.

The Wizard is, at worst, slightly too versatile. That's it, and even insofar as it's a problem, it's more a problem for conceptual reasons than power ones. People really like the idea that their character is a "Necromancer" or a "Fire Mage" or a "Shadowcraft Adept" rather than a "Wizard", even if those things are all mechanically balanced. Almost all the problems people complain about are spells. Planar Binding is broken, but the reasons it's broken have **** all to do with anything about the Wizard.


Sorcerer would be far more workable as a baseline, and even Sorcerer would have to suffer some restrictions - as a very simple (and probably too unrestrictive) example, Sorcerers should be Fire Sorcerers (or Efreet/Fire Elemental/Red Dragon Sorcerers, if you like), not just Sorcerers.

Why? Any Sorcerer is going to be, de facto, extremely limited in their spell selection (as a 10th level Sorcerer, you get one 5th level spell). You don't need to declare that they can only take Fire spells on top of that, the fact is that they only ever have a single-digit number of spells at any relevant level.


The same goes for every other class - yes, perhaps Sword Fighter and Bow Fighter are concepts that don't work anywhere past level 5. But no Fighter should be a Warlord and an Armsmaster or an Eldritch Knight at the same time.

Yes, and no Wizard should ever be an Evoker and a Diviner at the same time. Meaningful specialization does exist for casters. Moreover, without defining what those archetypes are, it's not necessarily clear that they should be mutually exclusive. I can absolutely imagine characters who fight with sword and spell while leading armies.


Is that enough to make them two different base classes, especially if you have to design summoned/raised creature statblocks to avoid splatbook diving for summons with specific abilities?

Yes, absolutely. FFS, we have different base classes for "Wizard" and "Wizard from China". Is there a system where there's one "has minions" class and you can choose if those minions are summoned monsters, bound demons, raised undead, charmed enemies, hired soldiers, or crafted constructs? Sure. But that system is not D&D. D&D is a system with a whole bunch of classes in it. Even Pathfinder, with its more restrained approach of making some things archetypes ended up at least doubling the number of classes over the lifespan of the system, and probably more.

Also, it's not like you save any time writing up the minions by making them the same class. Classes can share abilities, and often do (take a look at the number of classes that get Cure Light Wounds (https://www.d20pfsrd.com/magic/all-spells/c/cure-light-wounds/)). And in this particular case, it's not clear to me there's that much overlap in minions even if they are the same class. Hordes of zombies should be mechanically distinct from angelic bodyguards, whether the people who get them are under the same class umbrella or not.


How does the wand screw over the Wizard, who can just stop preparing Knock and free up a spell slot if they even were using it?

It means that he's not getting to solve the challenge. I thought the whole point was that getting to use Knock to solve challenges was a big deal. If it isn't, who cares if it displaces the Rogue in the first place? The point is that once you've got the item, no one's abilities matter. And you'll note that even in the scenario of "custom item of Knock", it's still replacing the Wizard more than the Rogue, because the Wizard is also screwed over by an AMF.


How does it compare to investing, say, 20 ranks into Open Lock? Can you buy skill ranks for 600 GP per rank?

You're only looking at one version of the opportunity cost. The question isn't just "can you buy a skill point for 600 GP", but "can you buy something worth more than a skill point for 600 GP" and "can you buy something better than Open Lock with your skill points". I submit that the answers to those questions indicate that the most efficient use of your resources is still going to involve the Rogue taking Open Lock.

Also, technically, if we're allowing custom magic items, you can buy four different kinds of +5 bonus for only 10k GP.


It's much worse with the Summoner, as a general Summoner has little justification in lack of kind of Summon.

In fairness, they also have little justification to have any particular kind of Summon. No one is particularly upset that your standard summoner can't summon a Phase Spider. The nice thing about summoning is that you can put pretty much whatever you want on the list of "stuff you can summon" and exclude things equally arbitrarily. If you feel it's morally important that the summoner not get Enervation, you can just not put anything with Enervation on the list of stuff they are allowed to summon.


that the high-level concepts are so broad because they're iconically all-solving hammers.

Then maybe we should accept that characters have a wide range of competencies? It seems to me that if your choices are "characters do a range of stuff" or "every Necromancer is gimped", the former is an obviously superior prospect.

RedMage125
2020-08-18, 06:18 PM
4e's issue was that it approached the problem of "Wizards have interesting abilities but Fighters don't" by ensuring that no one had an ability that was more interesting than what Fighters could do in 3e (which some limited exceptions that are still less compelling than 3e magic items). Unsurprisingly, this approach crippled D&D as a product because it turns out that the abilities Wizards have are an important part of the game, and the solution is not to nerf them into the ground.
I feel like...based on your responses, that you never actually PLAYED 4e. Like, at all. And you're basing your criticisms off of half-remembered readings of a book from years ago, combined with all the 4e hate that permeates our hobby.

For starters "everyone only got what Fighters could do in 3e" is 100% blatantly false. There's not a shred of anything remotely resembling truth in this.

Just going off memory:
Rogues had a level 1 Daily that could BLIND enemies in a 3x3 square.
Fighters in Heroic Tier (1-10) had an encounter power that targetted EVERY enemy within 2 squares' WILL defense, pulled them closer if that hit, and then did a weapon attack against all of them.
Wizard had at-will AoEs, and encounter powers that changed terrain, even from low levels.
Sorcerers has an at-will that could bounce to multiple targets
Barbarian rages were their Daily powers, and each one gave a unique buff after one big attack at the start.

"What a 3e Fighter could do" equates in 4e to a "Basic Melee/Ranged Attack".

So...yeah. Everything in this first paragraph is SO wrong, that I'm going to call it what it is...BLATANTLY FALSE.



Skill Challenges mathematically did not work as printed and went through multiple rounds of errata without ever producing a functional system. The basic concept of "roll multiple times" is good (although you will note it was first introduced to D&D in 3e's Unearthed Arcana, not 4e), but 4e's execution defined the concept of "dumpster fire".

And another falsehood.

Skill Challenges worked great, and they actually didn't go through ANY major errata, least of all that altered the math. The only math alterations 4e had errors with was the hit points of monsters above level 10 (especially elites and solos), and the to-hit numbers of PCs (which was "corrected" only in terms of the "X Focus" feats, which were basically a feat tax).

The DMG2 gave us some better ideas about USING Skill Challenges, yes. Especially because what the DMG1 called "secondary skills" was not as useful as what they clarified in the DMG2 (which, by the way, was also the way Secondary Skills were used in Skill Challenges in the published modules, even before the DMG2 was printed).

But as for "multiple rounds of errata"...no. Simply untrue. And they worked fine, and could easily be worked into the narrative of the game. I've seen some posters who have claimed that a Skill Challenge meant that the game ground to a complete halt, and everyone just treated it as a mini-game where only one person makes all the skill checks to pass. Which is patently absurd.

At any rate, as I said to QUERTUS (not you), 4e answered to all of his suggested "fixes".

And those same "fixes" were what made people say it "didn't feel like D&D". Although I never had that complaint at MY table. I even converted a few "h4ters". But my experience, as I have gathered, was not the norm.

Kyutaru
2020-08-18, 06:42 PM
And those same "fixes" were what made people say it "didn't feel like D&D". Although I never had that complaint at MY table. I even converted a few "h4ters". But my experience, as I have gathered, was not the norm.
The sentiment was common around my area too. What 4E did was try to turn the game into a tactics tabletop game which it blatantly is not. Combat is but one of the three pillars and not even the one most valued until 3rd edition brought in the munchkins. The game was always meant to have abstraction incorporated into the experience and 4E fought hard to give a rigid play experience. It would have worked great if they went the full way and just made D&D the Tactics Wargame with exact rules like Mage Knight, Warhammer, or Chainmail but folks would still yearn for the more free-form counterpart as well. 5E did an alright job combining the playstyles of the various editions including the stack-free simplicity of AD&D but it has room to grow.

Man_Over_Game
2020-08-18, 06:51 PM
I feel like...based on your responses, that you never actually PLAYED 4e. Like, at all. And you're basing your criticisms off of half-remembered readings of a book from years ago, combined with all the 4e hate that permeates our hobby.

For starters "everyone only got what Fighters could do in 3e" is 100% blatantly false. There's not a shred of anything remotely resembling truth in this.

I think a big part is the emphasis on REAL grid combat. In 3.5, and now in 5e, the majority of builds that really care about any finnicky cover, Opportunity Attack, movement, Reach, etc. rules that all were very technical for the grid itself were the Fighter-types. The ones that attacked with weapons and defended themselves with their own body (instead of some kind of debuff or conjured obstacle).

Consider that 5e's Fireball hits a 8x8 grid, and has a 120ft range. Most of my battlemaps are about 60 game-feet to get into melee range of the enemy, as a creature generally moves 30 feet per round and I don't want more than one round of repositioning.

Something that's 120 feet of range is an abstract, non-combat aspect. That's not something you handle on a grid, that's "Yeah, you guys see each other at 200 feet out and there's a window of opportunity for a skirmish of explosions before each side get within range." An 8x8 grid is enough to cover most of the relevant parts of a battlefield, and it ignores cover, and it deals half damage if you save, and it rolls a ton of dice so that the damage is even consistent.

A wizard basically points, says "These people take about 30 damage unless they roll this number". The "grid" is hardly relevant.

For a Fighter, though, he may need to split off from the party to avoid being hit by an enemy's AoE, but not too far so that he doesn't get hit by Hold Person and then surrounded without his allies. He has to stand in the proper position to ensure that enemies are focusing him enough to make sure the Wizard isn't running around like a chicken with his head cut off casting Misty Step, and he has to be aware of the burst capabilities of the enemy so that he isn't running out of HP too fast. Any ranged attacks he makes takes cover into account (and creatures usually count as cover in DnD against ranged attacks), and there's naturally the token Opportunity Attacks that end up using more grid-based rules than anything else in the game.



Then 4th edition tipped everything on its head by making grid-based concepts the standard:

You can't solve a badguy problem from casting Call Lightning from almost a mile away to smite the badguys, now you have to actually be in range of a counterattack. Having knowledge of the enemy isn't always enough anymore, but that was always the case for the Fighter.
So of course the Wizard feels like a Fighter now.

The effects you DID use in combat often had physics-changing effects that had few means to counter against (Wall of Force, for example), but the Fighter never really had any of those.
So of course the Wizard feels like a Fighter now.

Not to mention that 4th edition took away almost all of the simulationist spell and skill features that people used out of combat to modify the world to their choosing. Sure, the Fighter didn't really change, but the Wizard sure did.
So of course the Wizard feels like a Fighter now.



And those simulationist, "I solve combat before it starts" aspects of DnD are often what people actually want out of the game. So when 4e took all of those away and focused on making everyone equals in combat, it was natural for people to hate it for "not being DnD".
But it also meant support for hate on a lot of the other changes too, as making it so "the Wizard feel like a fighter now" was "not being DnD".

DnD does a lot of things well. It does not do combat well, and it never really has (from the combat/board game perspective, DnD can be fun with bad combat).

So it's no surprise that the edition with the most focus on combat is also the one that most people have decided as "not being DnD".

Kyutaru
2020-08-18, 07:02 PM
And those simulationist, "I solve combat before it starts" aspects of DnD are often what people actually want out of the game. So when 4e took all of those away and focused on making everyone equals in combat, it was natural for people to hate it for "not being DnD".
But it also meant support for hate on a lot of the other changes too, as making the Wizard 'feel like a fighter' was "not being DnD".
Big thumbs up on that one. Magical combat frequently looked like an anime with both sides trying to outsmart the other. Fighter combat was more boring but there was also a huge assortment of magical weapons they could collect which helped against various creatures, especially back in AD&D's immunity-heavy days. You needed the right tool for the right job which of course had nothing to do with what tactics you employed once combat actually began. It was all theater of the mind planning and contingency plans and a twisty labyrinth of move/countermove/counter-countermove that made D&D more like a thought experiment. Players would take mundane tools with no purpose or value and come up with ingenious ways to actually abuse them for something purposeful. Hard to do that when the system is quite clear on what you can and cannot do with no room for improvisation.

D&D was founded as a roleplaying game. Roleplayers LOVE improvisation.

NigelWalmsley
2020-08-18, 07:04 PM
"What a 3e Fighter could do" equates in 4e to a "Basic Melee/Ranged Attack".

No, it doesn't. Fighters got things like Trips, Disarms, and Sunders that would have been powers in 4e. They got the various weapon style feats that granted additional tricks. They also got access to martial maneuvers, which are the equivalent of encounter powers. Moreover, the real thrust of this argument is about non-combat powers, not combat ones. 4e characters simply do not get the non-combat effects 3e ones did, at least not in any source I have seen, nor seen 4e fanboys produce in any of the numerous edition war threads I've seen across the various gaming forums of the world.


Skill Challenges worked great

This is mathematically false. The design incentives of skill challenges point in the opposite of the direction they are supposed to. This is not a question where there is subjective debate to be had like "is trying to focus on a specific sweet spot better than trying to support a range of power levels" or "are dragonborn cooler than gnomes". It's not even a complex mechanical question like "are martial characters more versatile in 3e or 4e". It's simply an objective, mathematical fact. Counting failures means discouraging participation. It's not a subject you get to argue about, it's just a simple function of the fact that numbers that are smaller aren't as big as numbers that are larger.


and they actually didn't go through ANY major errata, least of all that altered the math.

This is straightforwardly and objectively a lie. And unlike the times you call me a liar, I can back it up with evidence. Here's some skill challenge errata (http://wizards.com/dnd/files/UpdateDMG.pdf) (specifically, the bit starting on page four). You'll note that it changes the DCs and the required numbers of successes acceptable number of failures or, in layman's terms, "the math".


And those same "fixes" were what made people say it "didn't feel like D&D".

People are good at understanding when they are unhappy, but bad at understanding why they are unhappy. People didn't like 4e because it was a bad game. The core mechanic of skill challenges had incentives that pointed in the wrong direction. Classes lost their cool non-combat powers. Combat was grindy and miserable, especially against high-level solos. But most people aren't doing detailed enough analysis to express that. So the meme that caught on was "doesn't feel like D&D". That doesn't mean they hated everything, or even any particular thing. After all, this like of logic leads us to conclude that "having 30 levels" or "including a Warlock" don't feel like D&D.


Combat is but one of the three pillars and not even the one most valued until 3rd edition brought in the munchkins.

Again, no. Combat has always been the core of the game. That's why we have Monster Manuals and Fiend Folios, but not big books of intrigue setups or military campaigns.


Not to mention that 4th edition took away almost all of the simulationist spell and skill features that people used out of combat to modify the world to their choosing. Sure, the Fighter didn't really change, but the Wizard sure did.

Yes, exactly. The point is not what happened in the tactical minigame. Some stuff moved around there, and Fighters are at least arguably ahead (though not nearly as far as RedMage is trying to claim). The point is what happened on the strategic layer. Frankly, it was never all that robust, but in 4e it's basically gone and the thing that was supposed to replace it is broken.

Man_Over_Game
2020-08-18, 07:42 PM
D&D was founded as a roleplaying game. Roleplayers LOVE improvisation.


Moreover, the real thrust of this argument is about non-combat powers, not combat ones.

[...]

The point is not what happened in the tactical minigame. Some stuff moved around there, and Fighters are at least arguably ahead (though not nearly as far as RedMage is trying to claim). The point is what happened on the strategic layer. Frankly, it was never all that robust, but in 4e it's basically gone and the thing that was supposed to replace it is broken.

The point I was trying to emphasize by explaining what happened to 4th Edition DnD was to show that what it did wasn't wrong, it was just wrong for DnD.

It made its foundation based on combat, and made everything centered around combat. As a result, since it has a foundation built on combat, the narrative noncombat rules of the game failed the deeper you got into it, and THAT was what killed it from the DnD crowd (which is to say, everyone).



Then 5th edition basically produced mediocrity from both sides, compensated by making so many things open-ended that a DM can just fill in the weakpoints as-needed. You still have to choose one or the other, causing one side to fail or for your balanced character to feel boring.

Consider that a Barbarian isn't really allowed to "Barbarian" in a civilization. He's just not really able to, and the times that he can is usually because the DM gave him a toy to play with (like someone to Intimidate or someone from the wilds to talk to or something else that generally gets the player involved without actually doing anything "Barbarian"). This is because we have a learned bias that "Barbarian" means "Savage Guy who fights all the time", and he's not really supposed to do anything other than that.

But Tarzan taught himself how to read and could learn a language in days. Conan was a master thief and strategist. Yet we can't break the mold that there is a class that's only good at killing or savagery.


Combat has always been the core of the game.
You're right, which is why it made a LOT of sense for them to attempt to make everyone equals by focusing on combat. They just forgot that the non-combat stuff is just as important for the players' vision of DnD.

5e tried to learn, but still have to choose between roleplaying or gaming. Bards deal the least damage, yet can basically command all of the NPC attention by himself. They compensated for this by making everyone basically output the same levels of combat contribution as everyone else (so Bards don't really feel that useless in combat, in the sense that nobody ever does). If Fighters want to have noncombat features, it's generally limited to the equivalent of a noncombat cantrip, or spending one of their extra feats on something that doesn't improve combat (which is counterintuitive, since combat features on weapons often synergize with other weapon combat features, making it feel like a waste to not do).

Combined, it feels like if you want to be interesting out of combat, you have to be boring in combat. Even though there are options (to choose a different problem), it's still "Us vs. Them", where you have to make a choice on where your priorities lie. This doesn't sound like a big deal, until you get someone that wants to fight all the time in a table where they don't, or someone who made a politician in a group of murderhobos, or just someone who doesn't want either half of the game to be boring for them.

The lesson? You can't have tactical combat and narrative world-powers in the same game, not without making it so that you don't have to prioritize one over the other.



So what's the answer?

Well, don't focus on making everyone equals in combat right off the bat, like 4e did. Focus instead on making them equals out of it, and don't separate combat and noncombat features. When something does a noncombat effect, explain what that means in combat. Give the player an expectation on when it's reasonable to convince someone to give up, or what kinds of things Religion checks should provide you in most fights, or how reading someone's mind can give you an edge, with enough room for DMs to adjust per situation. Every noncombat feature needs to also have a combat feature.

That doesn't mean you need a whole bunch of unique combat rules for every single spell. It could just be something like "Disguise Self gives you the Disguised tag that's held by the Illusion tag" (and then both Disguises and Illusions are addressed on how you could expect them to work in combat under a list of combat conditions).

You might think that sounds like adding a bunch of more confusing rules, but that's a lot better than the current method of adding the Disguise Self spell with a bunch of unique Disguise text with no info on what it does in combat, and the Disguise Kit with its own list of unique/copied Disguise text with no info on what it does in combat, and the Mastermind feature with its own list of unique/copied Disguise text with no info on what it does in combat, or the Assassin feature..., or the College of Whispers feature..., or the Actor feat... If Disguise Self has an exception to it that [Disguise + Illusion] can't cover, you can friggin' add it to the spell description and still cut down a lot of the unnecessary "This is an illusion!" and "This is a disguise!" text. I don't even need to read Disguise Self to get a gist as to what it does as is, and that could still be done with just the concept of [Disguise+Illusion] with a couple lines of text.

So that's my theory. Make the foundation for every class be noncombat features, to identify them as equals, on the most important attribute of ROLEPLAYING games, right off the bat. Then define what all of those noncombat features do in combat, as combat comes down to numbers and numbers can be modified to fit what you need (while saying Illusions don't work against paranoid creatures as a means of nerfing illusions doesn't make sense in the simulationist element).

So when you you make an Illusion-specialist Wizard, he literally fights with illusions. When the Barbarian goes into town, he knows exactly who is watching him, that they are a Polymorphed humanoid, and what kind of mood they have, from his Primal Instinct feature. Why should you ever have to choose between playing a tactical game or a storytelling game when TTRPGs are usually supposed to be both?



If you can do that - if you can make the Barbarian as useful out of combat as the Bard or Wizard AND break the divide between combat and noncombat features - you can make a balanced game. The rest comes easy.
The question is...can you?

RedMage125
2020-08-18, 08:26 PM
No, it doesn't. Fighters got things like Trips, Disarms, and Sunders that would have been powers in 4e. They got the various weapon style feats that granted additional tricks. They also got access to martial maneuvers, which are the equivalent of encounter powers. Moreover, the real thrust of this argument is about non-combat powers, not combat ones. 4e characters simply do not get the non-combat effects 3e ones did, at least not in any source I have seen, nor seen 4e fanboys produce in any of the numerous edition war threads I've seen across the various gaming forums of the world.
Trips in 3e required specific weapons that could be used to trip. Disarm and Sunder were next to worthless without investing in the specific feat tree to do them well. These weren't things that saw universal or near-universal use at 3e tables, so that's disingenuous vis your original claim that 4e "ensured nobody had anything more interesting than a Fighter could do in 3e".

And as far as non-combat effects:
Druids could still change into beast forms.
Rituals were still a thing, for divinations, teleportation, and several utility spells.
EVERYONE got utility powers. Some more useful than others, true. Rogues might have one that allowed them to shift several squares (AoO-free movement). Pretty sure Battleminds got teleportation. Leader classes got healing powers.



This is mathematically false. The design incentives of skill challenges point in the opposite of the direction they are supposed to. This is not a question where there is subjective debate to be had like "is trying to focus on a specific sweet spot better than trying to support a range of power levels" or "are dragonborn cooler than gnomes". It's not even a complex mechanical question like "are martial characters more versatile in 3e or 4e". It's simply an objective, mathematical fact. Counting failures means discouraging participation. It's not a subject you get to argue about, it's just a simple function of the fact that numbers that are smaller aren't as big as numbers that are larger.

{scrubbed}

"Counting failures means discouraging participation" is NOT a factual statement. Skill Challenges were never meant to be some kind of "mini game within the game" where everyone stops playing their character and has only one person make a few dice rolls to make it stop.

There was a chart for what an Easy, Moderate, or Hard DC is for each level, and Skill Challenges made in accordance with the RAW should allow for multiple skills to be used. Skills which usually appeal to a wide variety of expected character strengths. Even if it was only as a "Secondary Skill" (which might negate a failure, or grant a bonus to the next Primary Skill check, or have some other effect except counting as success or failure for the overall challenge). So at least 3 or 4 (of the expected party size of 5), if not ALL members of a party should be able to contribute meaningfully to each Skill Challenge, outside of some niche situations (you have a homogenous party where everyone only has the same 5 or 6 skills trained, for example). That actually IS in the RAW for how to build a Skill Challenge, and is further seen in the Skill Challenges in published adventures.

It's not a subject you get to argue about, it's just a simple function of the fact that you have a very narrow definition of how a Skill Challenge should be approached, one that is NOT in the rules, NOR is supported by anecdotal evidence from those who played 4e.



This is straightforwardly and objectively a lie. And unlike the times you call me a liar, I can back it up with evidence. Here's some skill challenge errata (http://wizards.com/dnd/files/UpdateDMG.pdf) (specifically, the bit starting on page four). You'll note that it changes the DCs and the required numbers of successes or, in layman's terms, "the math".
I said that what you were saying was "blatantly untrue", not that you were a liar. That just means you are blatantly WRONG, not that you are telling untruths intentionally to mislead (which would be lying).
{scrubbed}.

The DC changes were part of the overall math fix that applied to ALL skill uses, not just Skill Challenges. And that errata happened in January 2009, mere months after 4e came out, and no further errata came out after that. I actually still have a digital copy of that errata from January 2009, and just compared it to the final errata from August 2012. No change between them.

SO...what does that mean? I was wrong about "any errata", because there was one within 3 months of the book being published. And that change was incorporated into later published hard copies. But your claims about "multiple rounds of errata" is STILL completely wrong. Especially because the system was quite functional.

And only the change to "required # of failures by complexity" (which, the errata actually made MORE simply by making them all "3") is the only errata that EXPLICITLY affected Skill CHALLENGES.



People are good at understanding when they are unhappy, but bad at understanding why they are unhappy. People didn't like 4e because it was a bad game. The core mechanic of skill challenges had incentives that pointed in the wrong direction. Classes lost their cool non-combat powers. Combat was grindy and miserable, especially against high-level solos. But most people aren't doing detailed enough analysis to express that. So the meme that caught on was "doesn't feel like D&D". That doesn't mean they hated everything, or even any particular thing. After all, this like of logic leads us to conclude that "having 30 levels" or "including a Warlock" don't feel like D&D.
Thank you for your expert insight into the psyche of every single person, everywhere, and their true feelings and motivations. You are so much smarter than everyone else, and only you actually understand real truth especially of what people you've never met ACTUALLY want, and WHY they feel the way they do. Everyone is dumber than you.

Is that...what you were hoping to hear? Does seeing it in print assuage your ego?

4e wasn't a "bad game". It was different from every other edition of D&D...drastically so. But a great deal of what was so different was part of the design plan from the beginning (this can be verified by reading the 4e preview books "Races&Classes" and "Worlds&Monsters"). It had its faults, certainly. A lot of the classes in the PHB1 were too similar, it wasn't until the PHB2 classes came out that we got more variety, but by then a lot of people were already turned off the system. Combat took too long, but that was a side effect of "more cinematic combat encounters" with so many combatants. Hit point values for High-level solos...yes that actually was a failing that they admitted to. The whole "padded sumo" effect.

But your claims about skill challenges, and the incentives...just wrong. {scrubbed}



Yes, exactly. The point is not what happened in the tactical minigame. Some stuff moved around there, and Fighters are at least arguably ahead (though not nearly as far as RedMage is trying to claim). The point is what happened on the strategic layer. Frankly, it was never all that robust, but in 4e it's basically gone and the thing that was supposed to replace it is broken.

What I'm "trying to claim" was a response to Quertus, and what he said about getting rid of the "quadratic wizard, linear fighter" dynamic, and several other points. All of which were done by 4e, and 4e was not well received, overall.

You've inserted yourself with your baseless claims about 4e Skill Challenges ({scrubbed}). And you're still wrong.

Ignimortis
2020-08-18, 09:32 PM
Well, that removes the D&D Wizard. Go that route, and you should just remove all the troublesome, unbalanced muggle classes, too.

It's either that or making obtaining new spells very cost-prohibitive. Muggle classes don't have any of those problems - their problem is not getting anything level-appropriate after level 7 but damage.



Are you talking about something as mechanically unimportant as 2e kits as a solution to balance? :smallconfused:


I don't think anything on the level of subclasses/archetypes is mechanically unimportant.



Maybe it's just my hubris as a genius, but "can be the best at multiple sub-fields" sounds realistic and desirable to my ears.

I guess "game balance" would likely be the deciding factor (at least for this thread), so let's not "guy at the gym" the muggles in the design phase.

I don't see how that's "guy at the gym". Anyone who doesn't specialize in one field should be worse at that field than the specialist. If hybrids are just as effective as specialists, why would anyone play a specialist?



Hmmm… actually, splatbook expansions could be fine, *if* there were build resources involved.

For example, if summoners could summon X *types* of things, and splatbook support introduced new, balanced types.


So you'd have to invest into summoning new things instead of summoning old things? Yes, perhaps that could work. Your demon summoner might have an archetype where they become a devil summoner, something like that. The issue is that a demon summoner without custom demons would be able to reach into some Fiend Folio 6 and drag out a caster-demon that knows about as many spells as a party caster of the same level.


The Wizard is, at worst, slightly too versatile. That's it, and even insofar as it's a problem, it's more a problem for conceptual reasons than power ones. People really like the idea that their character is a "Necromancer" or a "Fire Mage" or a "Shadowcraft Adept" rather than a "Wizard", even if those things are all mechanically balanced. Almost all the problems people complain about are spells. Planar Binding is broken, but the reasons it's broken have **** all to do with anything about the Wizard.

Except the opportunity cost of getting Planar Binding on a Wizard is way lower than on any other caster who doesn't get it innately.



Why? Any Sorcerer is going to be, de facto, extremely limited in their spell selection (as a 10th level Sorcerer, you get one 5th level spell). You don't need to declare that they can only take Fire spells on top of that, the fact is that they only ever have a single-digit number of spells at any relevant level.


Well, perhaps that will be balance enough. I'm not saying that they can only take Fire spells - I'm saying they can't take Cold spells. D&D casters, in general (at least those that get into every PHB), are very lax on themes. Druid and Bard are somewhat more limited, but Wizard and Cleric are "all the concepts at once, and you can mix-n-match most of them". There should be at least some more conceptual bindings. I like Warmage, Beguiler and so on, because they have a clear theme and concept - "I blow things up", "I sneak about and charm people", etc. Short, bounded concepts.



Yes, and no Wizard should ever be an Evoker and a Diviner at the same time. Meaningful specialization does exist for casters. Moreover, without defining what those archetypes are, it's not necessarily clear that they should be mutually exclusive. I can absolutely imagine characters who fight with sword and spell while leading armies.

All at once? Then they should be less of a warrior or a mage or a leader than anyone who specialized in one of those things. Noticeably so, I presume, and not like "well, you lose +2 to-hit and half a spell level progression and you have to have 14 CHA, I guess".



Yes, absolutely. FFS, we have different base classes for "Wizard" and "Wizard from China". Is there a system where there's one "has minions" class and you can choose if those minions are summoned monsters, bound demons, raised undead, charmed enemies, hired soldiers, or crafted constructs? Sure. But that system is not D&D. D&D is a system with a whole bunch of classes in it. Even Pathfinder, with its more restrained approach of making some things archetypes ended up at least doubling the number of classes over the lifespan of the system, and probably more.

Also, it's not like you save any time writing up the minions by making them the same class. Classes can share abilities, and often do (take a look at the number of classes that get Cure Light Wounds (https://www.d20pfsrd.com/magic/all-spells/c/cure-light-wounds/)). And in this particular case, it's not clear to me there's that much overlap in minions even if they are the same class. Hordes of zombies should be mechanically distinct from angelic bodyguards, whether the people who get them are under the same class umbrella or not.


I mean, if you take the classplosion approach like 3.5 and to a lesser extent PF 1e, then yes, they have to be different classes. If you go the 5e or refined PF 1e route, they can be subclasses/archetypes.

It's the hardest part about balancing minionmancers - their minions are so obviously narratively different that it's hard to make them anywhere balanced. Especially if someone wants to summon/animate a statblock from somewhere instead of the predetermined "bruiser" or "specialist" or "horde" template with some adjustments for type.



It means that he's not getting to solve the challenge. I thought the whole point was that getting to use Knock to solve challenges was a big deal. If it isn't, who cares if it displaces the Rogue in the first place? The point is that once you've got the item, no one's abilities matter. And you'll note that even in the scenario of "custom item of Knock", it's still replacing the Wizard more than the Rogue, because the Wizard is also screwed over by an AMF.

You're only looking at one version of the opportunity cost. The question isn't just "can you buy a skill point for 600 GP", but "can you buy something worth more than a skill point for 600 GP" and "can you buy something better than Open Lock with your skill points". I submit that the answers to those questions indicate that the most efficient use of your resources is still going to involve the Rogue taking Open Lock.

If that's not such a big deal, then would Knock granting a +10 bonus to Open Lock attempts on a particular lock and perhaps allowing you to try it untrained be better than its' current effect? Because that would be an equal boon to Wizard and Rogue, even somewhat benefitting the Wizard because they probably don't have Open Lock trained. Wand of Knock would no longer invalidate Rogue's skill in any situation, too.



Also, technically, if we're allowing custom magic items, you can buy four different kinds of +5 bonus for only 10k GP.


Weird. IIRC, getting a +10 to one skill is also 10k GP.

NigelWalmsley
2020-08-18, 09:55 PM
Trips in 3e required specific weapons that could be used to trip. Disarm and Sunder were next to worthless without investing in the specific feat tree to do them well. These weren't things that saw universal or near-universal use at 3e tables, so that's disingenuous vis your original claim that 4e "ensured nobody had anything more interesting than a Fighter could do in 3e".

Could a Fighter, in fact, do those things? Why, yes, they could! They are, therefore, "things a Fighter could do".


Rituals were still a thing, for divinations, teleportation, and several utility spells.

Rituals are the equivalent of buying scrolls, not the abilities 3e characters got.


"Counting failures means discouraging participation" is NOT a factual statement. Skill Challenges were never meant to be some kind of "mini game within the game" where everyone stops playing their character and has only one person make a few dice rolls to make it stop.

Well, then the designers should have made them something other than that. But that is what they are. I'm not going to bother arguing with you about this, because {scrubbed}. Instead, I want you to find me some numbers that prove you right. If I am wrong, and it is not in fact mathematically true that having people with a lower chance of succeeding makes you more likely to fail, you should be able to do this. If I am right, and you cannot do this, I expect you to eat your crow before I pay any attention to another word you say. To be specific, I expect:

1. A chance of success between 0% and 100%, S.
2. Another chance of success in the same range that is smaller than the first one, S'.
3. A non-zero number of attempts made at the second chance of success, N.

And those numbers should together satisfy the property that if I make N attempts at S', I expect more successes than if I make N attempts at S. You will note that this is actually much easier than defending skill challenges as written, because I'm allowing you to pick whatever numbers you want, rather than saddling you with the numbers the game uses. So if you can't do this, or refuse to do it, it will be a direct admission that I am in fact correct about the mathematical properties of the core mechanic of skill challenges.


Skill Challenges made in accordance with the RAW should allow for multiple skills to be used. Skills which usually appeal to a wide variety of expected character strengths. Even if it was only as a "Secondary Skill" (which might negate a failure, or grant a bonus to the next Primary Skill check, or have some other effect except counting as success or failure for the overall challenge).

Allowing multiple skills doesn't do anything. I don't care about whatever secondary skills did in the version of skill challenges you believe in, because the claim I am making is about the core mechanic, not whatever epicycles have been added.


I said that what you were saying was "blatantly untrue", not that you were a liar.

I consider that a distinction without a difference. Saying that I might merely be ignorant is, in this respect, also calling me a liar, it's just saying that I'm lying when I claim to know how things work. Either I'm lying when I present my points as informed, or I'm lying about my specific points. In either case, you're calling me a liar.


And only the change to "required # of failures by complexity" (which, the errata actually made MORE simply by making them all "3") is the only errata that EXPLICITLY affected Skill CHALLENGES.

You understand how that still makes you wrong though, right? I mean, setting aside the fact that "they errata'd other things" doesn't make the errata magically not effect Skill Challenges, if the errata'd the failure numbers that is in fact errata to Skill Challenges, which is the exact thing you claimed didn't happen.


4e wasn't a "bad game".

D&D has failed to be the market leader in TTRPGs twice. Once, TSR went bankrupt in the late 90s, and Vampire took over for a time. Then, WotC released 4e, and Pathfinder took over (admittedly, not instantly). I feel quite comfortable saying that a product that is as bad for your business as bankrupcy is, in fact, a bad product.


{scrub the post, scrub the quote}

{scrubbed}

Ignimortis
2020-08-18, 10:11 PM
D&D has failed to be the market leader in TTRPGs twice. Once, TSR went bankrupt in the late 90s, and Vampire took over for a time. Then, WotC released 4e, and Pathfinder took over (admittedly, not instantly). I feel quite comfortable saying that a product that is as bad for your business as bankrupcy is, in fact, a bad product.

Well, as we all in this forum should probably know by now, quality and popularity are only tangentially related when we're talking about TTRPGs. Hell, Vampire was always trash as a game (still is, in lots of ways), but it was very popular (and still is to some extent). Same with Shadowrun. Same with D&D, which is popular more than ever because it caters to the lowest common perception of D&D these days, and has the lowest entry barrier in years, not because it's actually good (3.5 was better than 5e in lots of ways at that same point in development, as in, 6 years after release).

NigelWalmsley
2020-08-18, 10:37 PM
Well, as we all in this forum should probably know by now, quality and popularity are only tangentially related when we're talking about TTRPGs. Hell, Vampire was always trash as a game (still is, in lots of ways), but it was very popular (and still is to some extent). Same with Shadowrun. Same with D&D, which is popular more than ever because it caters to the lowest common perception of D&D these days, and has the lowest entry barrier in years, not because it's actually good (3.5 was better than 5e in lots of ways at that same point in development, as in, 6 years after release).

Well, sure. But since RedMage is unwilling to accept "the game mathematically does not do the thing it is supposed to do" as a reason the game is bad, there's not really anywhere else to go but the market.

I'll probably just end up putting him on ignore. I doubt he'll be able to come up with an explanation of why being more likely to fail a single test doesn't also make you more likely to fail multiple tests (seeing as that is just how probability works), so I assume he'll continue to tell me I'm lying and claim that I'm actually someone else. He seems to have a big chip on his shoulder, and based on this conversation, I'm not optimistic about being able to get anywhere productive with him on this or any subject.

Actually, I'm just going to do that now. If he's reading this, he can feel free to not reply to the previous post, because I'm certainly not going to reply to any of his. There are people in this thread making more interesting points in better faith.


If hybrids are just as effective as specialists, why would anyone play a specialist?

Because they're just as effective? People like specialized classes. People are interested in playing classes that reflect their particular character concept. If someone wants to command the dead and curse their enemies, they'll pick Dread Necromancer over Wizard, even if the latter might be equally effective.

But beyond that, I think you're not really considering your terms very well. What does it mean to be a specialist? Consider the various specialist casters that exist in the game, like the Warmage, the Beguiler, and the Dread Necromancer. I'll talk about specifically the Warmage, because it's by far the weakest, and because it illustrates the point best. As it happens, the Warmage gets a bunch of blasting spells, and maybe one decent BFC spell per level. Is that because they're a "specialist"? Well, not really. The Warmage is, conceptually, a Mage that does War. That's a pretty clear specialty, distinct from things like "mage who summons things" or "mage who messes with people's minds". Except is it? Because there's actually a lot of magic that one might use for war. Divination spells provide useful intelligence. Summoning spells provide fresh allies. Buffs improve your troops. Fabricate produces equipment without needing logistics. The Warmage doesn't get any of that. But would giving those things to him really dilute his identity that much? It depends whether you think his identity is defined by his spell list, or his class concept.


Except the opportunity cost of getting Planar Binding on a Wizard is way lower than on any other caster who doesn't get it innately.

So what? The spell gives you infinite power. It doesn't really matter what the opportunity cost of learning Planar Binding is, because if you have spell slots you can use for Planar Binding, that's what you use them for. Planar Binding is, assuming pure RAW and no desire to sandbag, the single best spell you can take at 6th level.


D&D casters, in general (at least those that get into every PHB), are very lax on themes.

Sure, but there are pressures driving things in that direction. The PHB, as any book, is of a finite length. That means PHB classes need to be broader than other classes. Just as the core sneaky type is a Rogue (who could be anything from a miltary spec ops guy to a fast-talking con man), while splat sneaky types are Scouts, Ninjas, or Factotums, the core casters are going to be more diverse than later ones. Certainly, they could be more focused than they are now, but that would require either abandoning some concepts, or adding more classes to the PHB. And even then, you'd still end up with relatively broad classes. Your PHB might have an Elementalist in it, but it's not going to have a Fire Mage, even though Fire Mage has a decent shot at being more popular.


All at once?

Yeah. That's just Kaladin. He has magic (flight, super speed, absurd healing speed), he fights in melee, and he leads a bunch of men. I guess my issue is that what you seem to see as three things (sword, spell, followers), I only really see as two (not considering "sword" a thing that is particularly character-defining), one of which I think should be a default assumption for high level characters (having a bunch of followers).


It's the hardest part about balancing minionmancers - their minions are so obviously narratively different that it's hard to make them anywhere balanced. Especially if someone wants to summon/animate a statblock from somewhere instead of the predetermined "bruiser" or "specialist" or "horde" template with some adjustments for type.

I dunno. Zombies work pretty well as minions. In general, I think the only really problematic minionmancy spells are ones like Planar Binding or Charm Monster that are (almost) completely open-ended. The ones that define a specific creature or creatures you can summon are fine, and are probably better for verisimilitude that summoning a "Demon Bruiser" that is completely different from all the melee demons in the MM. Basically, minions need to work like Summon Monster or Animate Dead.


If that's not such a big deal, then would Knock granting a +10 bonus to Open Lock attempts on a particular lock and perhaps allowing you to try it untrained be better than its' current effect?

A 3rd level Rogue could easily have a +10 bonus to Open Lock. I'm not necessarily opposed to the notion that Knock could work in a less absolute way (if only because that makes the eventual "magic lock that beats Knock" and "better Knock that unlocks that magic lock" less stupid to write), but that bonus seems clearly too small to have an interesting dynamic. The limited-use ability needs to blow the unlimited-use one away, or it's worthless.


Weird. IIRC, getting a +10 to one skill is also 10k GP.

The custom magic item rules do dumb things. A +10 Competence bonus is 10k GP, but +5 is only 2.5k GP, and you can (in theory, as with all things about custom items) convince your DM to let you buy as many of those as there are bonus types. And there are a lot of bonus types.

Quertus
2020-08-18, 11:10 PM
The problem is how many areas of function they get ahold of

Sure. That's part of the math to be solved. There's disagreement whether that's 20% of expected scenarios, 60% of expected scenarios, 100% of expected scenarios, so I'll not weigh in on that at this time. But, once you've chosen your math, you let them handle that much.

That said, bringing a Diplomacer to a fist fight, or a Barbarian to the royal ball, or a Fighter to anything but a fight? It's not just suboptimal, it's kinda boring for the odd man out. My (likely misguided) original intent with this thread was to let everyone participate everywhere (ie, 80+% coverage). But the problem is, realistically, so many problems really only get solved by one person - it's not "participate", it's "solo". (Nevermind 4e's misguided attempt at skill challenges. "Rolling dice" isn't "playing the game". And "I get to lose for the party" is just about the worst - tis better to have not participated at all than 4e skill challenges.)

So, we're looking (apparently) for abilities that can do their fair share of soloing solo encounters. Making the different types of summons be at different levels of power could allow others to shine more if, say, the Summoner's tertiary ability overlapped a specialist's primary area of expertise. So, even if everyone got 80% coverage, there'd still be clear area where, for example, just because the tertiary fey summons *could* try a simple theft, the Rogue who chose to primary legerdemain is clearly the goto for such acts. As one example of attempting to make the math work.


Because in this case those minions are other people, not summoned outsiders, reanimated corpses, or some variety of awakened natural force, and thus making the basic access to that form of proxy a class feature means that you're "breaking the rules" to RP your way into having a small army's worth of niche-filling hangers-on. Solving this means the class features are buffs, so either the minions or the buffs need specialized, and the former has RP problems while the latter is complicated to justify on a Martial character's usage schemes.

And if those level-appropriate abilities include magic, the fluff becomes very weird unless you contort the magic system around being Martial-boost compatible, while allowing the buffs on party members cracks party design open spectacularly because either somebody's specialized in punching ridiculously above their level with those buffs, or somebody's deliberately leaning on them to function at their current level so they can dump resources in being a lot more versatile than intended, and balancing these build-around cases is going to become a mind-numbing exercise in frustration and mathematical tedium.

This is also in addition to the above issue of minions as a class specialty being difficult to niche-confine to prevent a class carrying them becoming the wielder of an all-solving hammer, though at least with actual allies they have fairly limited ability to decide they'll do something completely different today, unlike a summoner deciding to call up an Angel to deal with the packs of plague-based Undead instead of the Fae they summoned yesterday to drive half the guards insane, or a Necromancer deciding to make an incorporeal level-draining spirit instead of a nearly indestructible zombie from the latest fight.

So, as one of my class features, I have an ally who has a starship, who can solve our "get from point A to point B" problem. I also have a hacker ally, who can bypass *most* security systems… if we bring them to him. And my tertiary ally is a small-time fence.

My primary summons is social Demons; my secondary is transportation-focused elementals; my tertiary is trickster fey.

My Necromancer has primary in animating (and reanimating and reanimating) masses of humanoid corpses; secondary in breeding new creations; tertiary in life transferral.

What does this have to do with buffs? What (other than errors in my "back of the napkin math") makes one concept more or less versatile than another?

Give everyone an equal amount of level-appropriate abilities. Where is the necessity for any added complexity?

Hytheter
2020-08-18, 11:22 PM
{scrub the post, scrub the quote}

I have no background on this but if you suspect some kind of funny business you should probably take it up with the mods rather than making passive-aggressive insinuations in the middle of an argument.

Ignimortis
2020-08-18, 11:37 PM
Because they're just as effective? People like specialized classes. People are interested in playing classes that reflect their particular character concept. If someone wants to command the dead and curse their enemies, they'll pick Dread Necromancer over Wizard, even if the latter might be equally effective.

I'll correct that - why would anyone play a specialist if a generalist is just as effective at that one thing specialist does? I don't mind them generally being a valuable party member, but someone who can do 10 things doesn't deserve to do any of them as well as someone who does only 2 things does theirs.



But beyond that, I think you're not really considering your terms very well. What does it mean to be a specialist? Consider the various specialist casters that exist in the game, like the Warmage, the Beguiler, and the Dread Necromancer. I'll talk about specifically the Warmage, because it's by far the weakest, and because it illustrates the point best. As it happens, the Warmage gets a bunch of blasting spells, and maybe one decent BFC spell per level. Is that because they're a "specialist"? Well, not really. The Warmage is, conceptually, a Mage that does War. That's a pretty clear specialty, distinct from things like "mage who summons things" or "mage who messes with people's minds". Except is it? Because there's actually a lot of magic that one might use for war. Divination spells provide useful intelligence. Summoning spells provide fresh allies. Buffs improve your troops. Fabricate produces equipment without needing logistics. The Warmage doesn't get any of that. But would giving those things to him really dilute his identity that much? It depends whether you think his identity is defined by his spell list, or his class concept.


Warmage's fluff is lacking, because magic would be the ultimate tool in war, in any shape or form. Instead, I presume Warmage is an artillery mage, someone who functions only to inflict incredible bodily harm to as many targets as possible, while staying safe. As such, I tend to take interpretations that fit the mechanics, not the fluff. So a fixed-up Warmage should be, perhaps, an Evocation/Abjuration (damage and shields) specialist mage.



So what? The spell gives you infinite power. It doesn't really matter what the opportunity cost of learning Planar Binding is, because if you have spell slots you can use for Planar Binding, that's what you use them for. Planar Binding is, assuming pure RAW and no desire to sandbag, the single best spell you can take at 6th level.


It does, if the opportunity cost is incredibly high. As in, you cannot learn it naturally, and instead have to spend, say, 100k GP to learn it. Sure, it's still powerful enough to do that, but that balances things out a bit. Also, I just remembered a nice neat concept from Pathfinder - spell rarity. If you can only learn Common spells on levelup, and perhaps Uncommon spells at (current spell level -1), and Rare spells at (current spell level -2), that would provide an interesting balancing tool, while giving designers the ability to increase opportunity costs for learning really valuable and powerful spells, even for something like Wizard. If a Rare scroll is ten times the price of a Common scroll, that really puts things into perspective, because getting that one spell is now equivalent to one third your WBL.



Sure, but there are pressures driving things in that direction. The PHB, as any book, is of a finite length. That means PHB classes need to be broader than other classes. Just as the core sneaky type is a Rogue (who could be anything from a miltary spec ops guy to a fast-talking con man), while splat sneaky types are Scouts, Ninjas, or Factotums, the core casters are going to be more diverse than later ones. Certainly, they could be more focused than they are now, but that would require either abandoning some concepts, or adding more classes to the PHB. And even then, you'd still end up with relatively broad classes. Your PHB might have an Elementalist in it, but it's not going to have a Fire Mage, even though Fire Mage has a decent shot at being more popular.

That much is true, except the PHB also has Bard, Barbarian, Ranger and Druid, who are pretty clear-cut in their niche. They can still be rather varied, but mostly on the same level as later releases, not as Rogue or Wizard. Perhaps we should replace those with broader chassises, then.



Yeah. That's just Kaladin. He has magic (flight, super speed, absurd healing speed), he fights in melee, and he leads a bunch of men. I guess my issue is that what you seem to see as three things (sword, spell, followers), I only really see as two (not considering "sword" a thing that is particularly character-defining), one of which I think should be a default assumption for high level characters (having a bunch of followers).

Does he actually do spellcasting, or is he just fantastical (i.e. non-mundane) enough to fly, have super speed and heal absurdly fast? Because I have a Street Samurai in Shadowrun who can attest to almost the same things (well, no flight, but slow controlled falls) to some extent, no magic involved. If he's just fantastical, and doesn't do any spellcasting or have any wider-reaching magic powers, then he's just what a high-level Warlord could look like.

Also, I disagree on that "every high level character should have a bunch of followers" part. I like having all my power compacted into my own character, thank you very much.



I dunno. Zombies work pretty well as minions. In general, I think the only really problematic minionmancy spells are ones like Planar Binding or Charm Monster that are (almost) completely open-ended. The ones that define a specific creature or creatures you can summon are fine, and are probably better for verisimilitude that summoning a "Demon Bruiser" that is completely different from all the melee demons in the MM. Basically, minions need to work like Summon Monster or Animate Dead.

That's because zombies pretty much remove every special ability and turn anything into a bruiser, don't they? Summon Monster lists need to be vetted harshly to avoid giving the summoner access to casting X of level Y.



A 3rd level Rogue could easily have a +10 bonus to Open Lock. I'm not necessarily opposed to the notion that Knock could work in a less absolute way (if only because that makes the eventual "magic lock that beats Knock" and "better Knock that unlocks that magic lock" less stupid to write), but that bonus seems clearly too small to have an interesting dynamic. The limited-use ability needs to blow the unlimited-use one away, or it's worthless.

Yes, but by how much? And what is supposed to happen when we combine the limited ability and the unlimited one? 3.5 (and 5e) already fell deep into that pit of "at-wills need to be several orders of magnitude worse than per-days, even if those per-days are numerous enough to use them on everything that occurs in a typical day", and I think that we'd need to climb back out a little.



The custom magic item rules do dumb things. A +10 Competence bonus is 10k GP, but +5 is only 2.5k GP, and you can (in theory, as with all things about custom items) convince your DM to let you buy as many of those as there are bonus types. And there are a lot of bonus types.

That's why I dislike the abundance of bonus types. It leads to dumb stuff like this.

Hytheter
2020-08-19, 12:12 AM
Warmage's fluff is lacking, because magic would be the ultimate tool in war, in any shape or form. Instead, I presume Warmage is an artillery mage, someone who functions only to inflict incredible bodily harm to as many targets as possible

You don't have to presume. The flavour text for the class states outright that Warmages are concerned primarily with raining death and destruction on the battlefield. The text equates them with artillery just as you have and there's even a line that basically boils down to "Support magic? That's someone else's job!" Maybe Warmage is a slight misnomer (Battlemage might serve better, perhaps?) but the description is pretty clear on what they're all about.

Satinavian
2020-08-19, 02:17 AM
And if those level-appropriate abilities include magic, the fluff becomes very weird unless you contort the magic system around being Martial-boost compatible, while allowing the buffs on party members cracks party design open spectacularly because either somebody's specialized in punching ridiculously above their level with those buffs, or somebody's deliberately leaning on them to function at their current level so they can dump resources in being a lot more versatile than intended, and balancing these build-around cases is going to become a mind-numbing exercise in frustration and mathematical tedium.I don't see much of a problem. Why should the fluff that allows to buff mundane activities not help with magical activities ? Raising morale to benefit spellcasting ? Doing auxilaty activities for some rituals ? Coordinating things ? You only need a magic system that actually can have broad, not spell-specific buffs (which would benefit from casters actually rolling things) and you can have abilities to buff it.


This is also in addition to the above issue of minions as a class specialty being difficult to niche-confine to prevent a class carrying them becoming the wielder of an all-solving hammer, though at least with actual allies they have fairly limited ability to decide they'll do something completely different today, unlike a summoner deciding to call up an Angel to deal with the packs of plague-based Undead instead of the Fae they summoned yesterday to drive half the guards insane, or a Necromancer deciding to make an incorporeal level-draining spirit instead of a nearly indestructible zombie from the latest fight.

I will tell you how Splittermond does summoning. Splittermond also has distinct rules for companions so all of those concepts don't rely on summoning ules and don't need to be modelled with them.

There is a white-list of creatures that can be summoned. Each of them is assigned a number to represent its usefulness as a summon. This number is not closely related toits combat strenth. Additionally there is a creation system to build other summonable creatures by stacking templates.

There is a list of discrete tasks a summoner can command the creature to do with specific rules to set boundaries of those tasks. Giving such commands costs mana points in addition to the actual spellcasting cost (Splittermond has a mana point system)

All creatures only can do a limited subset of this list. There are for example spirits with healing powers or invisible spies or advising ancestors or mounts or fighting mosters etc. But if a task is not on a summons list, it never can be given as a command.


When a character learns a summoning spell (and learning a spell is a heavy investment similar to D&Ds sorcerers spell knowns) he chooses a single creature of usefulness appropriate to the spell level and a single task that summon has on its list. And he can only summon this particular creature and give this particular task with that spell.

Now a specialized summoner can do more. There are things that work like feats that allow e.g. to choose a more powerful creature for a spell level (but still only one per spell), or allow to give different kinds of orders (but they still need to be on the summons list) or buff all summons or reduce mana cost for summoning.




From experience this system works reasonably well. You can build most kinds of summons from different stories / inspirations. It is no longer a toolbox that can do anything, a summon spell is roughly as versatile as another spell, not more. You can still be a summoner specialist that solves most of his problems with summons. But that will cost you and in the end you won't be able to solve more problems than other characters. It is just that your tools are summons.

NigelWalmsley
2020-08-19, 07:18 AM
It does, if the opportunity cost is incredibly high. As in, you cannot learn it naturally, and instead have to spend, say, 100k GP to learn it. Sure, it's still powerful enough to do that, but that balances things out a bit.

You are correct in general, increasing costs enough can make things balanced. But Planar Binding is just broken. As long as the spell allows you to bind an Efreet, which can itself cast not just Planar Binding but Greater Planar Binding, there's no way to make it balanced.


That much is true, except the PHB also has Bard, Barbarian, Ranger and Druid, who are pretty clear-cut in their niche. They can still be rather varied, but mostly on the same level as later releases, not as Rogue or Wizard. Perhaps we should replace those with broader chassises, then.

The Bard is doing a pretty wide range of things. They've got illusion magic, enchantment magic, healing magic, summoning magic, magical music, and they're supposed to be competent as a combatant or a skillmonkey. And as the game went on, Bards got support for builds that try to do most of those things. It's true that "magical musician" is a fairly limited concept, but mechanically they were quite diverse.

The Druid is even less focused. They get animal magic, elemental magic, plant magic, nature magic, shapeshifting, and an animal companion. Any one of those could be its own class and still have range on par with the full casters.

The Ranger and the Barbarian are pretty focused. The Ranger at least has a couple of different things going on, trying to capture both an Aragorn-esque figure and something more like a WoW Hunter, but it definitely doesn't have nearly the range of the Wizard or the Rogue. That granted, it is true that there's just less variety in stuff for martials to do. When you consider the range of martial character concepts, it may well be that "Barbarian" is covering a reasonable percentage of them.


Does he actually do spellcasting, or is he just fantastical (i.e. non-mundane) enough to fly, have super speed and heal absurdly fast?

It depends what you mean by "spellcasting". I definitely wouldn't consider him a Wizard, but he has a spirit companion, the ability to alter the gravity of other objects, and the ability to make stuff stick together unbreakably. He doesn't have the range of magical effects a spellcaster would, but equally he doesn't just physical enhancements.


That's because zombies pretty much remove every special ability and turn anything into a bruiser, don't they?

Skeletons too. And that seems fine to me. I don't think you need particularly complicated for minions. Something that absorbs punishment and scales relatively well is enough.


3.5 (and 5e) already fell deep into that pit of "at-wills need to be several orders of magnitude worse than per-days, even if those per-days are numerous enough to use them on everything that occurs in a typical day", and I think that we'd need to climb back out a little.

I don't think that really applies with Knock. If you look at the level where Knock becomes available, and you don't let people buy wands or scrolls, getting enough Knocks to get past even minimal defensive precautions (like "the safe is inside a house that is also locked") is crippling for your combat ability. Even at higher levels, while you don't need to give up combat power to get half a dozen Knocks, that's still a fairly small number of locks in real terms.

That said, I am generally in favor of moving away from daily resources for basically this reason, which necessarily complicates the balance of an ability like Knock.

Kyutaru
2020-08-19, 08:09 AM
Does he actually do spellcasting, or is he just fantastical (i.e. non-mundane) enough to fly, have super speed and heal absurdly fast? Because I have a Street Samurai in Shadowrun who can attest to almost the same things (well, no flight, but slow controlled falls) to some extent, no magic involved. If he's just fantastical, and doesn't do any spellcasting or have any wider-reaching magic powers, then he's just what a high-level Warlord could look like.

Also, I disagree on that "every high level character should have a bunch of followers" part. I like having all my power compacted into my own character, thank you very much.
Fantastical powers and followers sound like something that could be part of Fighter bonus feats or Rogue expertises. Perhaps rather than trying to force archetypes to fit a certain spread of abilities we simply let players choose what abilities they want their characters to have from a list. Rather than worrying about lore conflicts, it's up to the player to explain why his character is able to slow fall or regenerate. Not only fighters would be the same. Some can heal fast, some can detect enemies a mile away, some can teleport behind you instantly, some can float through the rooftops, whatever sort of style or theme you want your character to have you create from the selection of these extraordinary abilities. Wizards get spell choices, Fighters get physical upgrades.

Morphic tide
2020-08-19, 09:59 AM
Sure. That's part of the math to be solved. There's disagreement whether that's 20% of expected scenarios, 60% of expected scenarios, 100% of expected scenarios, so I'll not weigh in on that at this time. But, once you've chosen your math, you let them handle that much.
Balance isn't that simple. The issue at hand is sticking to that portion of expected scenarios with such wildly divergent methods as turning dead enemies into answers, pulling your answers out of Hell, personally answering the situation, and making a device to answer it. These have starkly different mechanical expectations that need balanced against eachother, and adding "buffs allies as mechanic of contribution" means that you have to account for the buff in the balancing prospects, making another layer of surprisingly complex math to work out. And all the math in the world doesn't matter if the DM steps out of line of expected rewards and conflicts!


So, as one of my class features, I have an ally who has a starship, who can solve our "get from point A to point B" problem. I also have a hacker ally, who can bypass *most* security systems… if we bring them to him. And my tertiary ally is a small-time fence.
So nobody can RP their way into having an ally who has a starship because that invalidates one of your class features, nobody else can hire hacker allies to be escort mission fodder, and nobody else gets to have access to fencing? By making those class features, you make it much more difficult to justify allowing other players to roleplay their way into accessing mechanics that way or allowing similarly potent classless mechanics, because if those are things you can do, why bother playing the class that gets them as features?


What does this have to do with buffs? What (other than errors in my "back of the napkin math") makes one concept more or less versatile than another?
It's because of justifications, like the root of the "Guy at the Gym" fallacy. Because the summoner is calling stuff up from other planes, there's not much thematic limitation, and so you have to invent justifications for why a demon summoner can't get every kind of demon. Sure, there's mechanics you can get that with, but the ones that are compatible with actually summoning existing demons come down to various flavors of limited contracting for access to specific types. With Necromancers and Enchanters (of the D&D mind-altering magic kind), you are talking about literal direct control of enemies, making for a spectacular degree of "can't"s that aren't baked into the theme long before you actually get out from the All Solving Hammer problem.


Give everyone an equal amount of level-appropriate abilities. Where is the necessity for any added complexity?
Because the Artificer requires downtime to make their abilities and limiting how many they get is a frustrating mess, the Summoner calls theirs up as needed, the Fighter's locked to the gear they have and training they've done, the Necromancer needs dead enemies to work with, and generally different concepts function in different ways if you're going to actually implement the fantasy mechanically. Reanimating corpses is as versatile as the corpses you have access to, unless specifically limited in what abilities are retained, and item creation abilities are completely nuts with any but the strictest of resources to work with.

And whenever a character's ability is "provides bonus to other creature" that can apply to another character, you now have to balance for people merging their class features by way of one being a buff monster and the other being a monster to buff, thereby ending up some degree above the expected curve. Unless you specifically enshrine a buff class role in the expected math, which makes the parties without buffers suffer. Game balance is not basic math, especially with fungible resources like sharable items and bonus applications.

What's to stop the party from shopping around to over-gear the Fighter ridiculously by pooling their wealth? What's stopping a party of three Bards and a Fighter from running over the game with enormously overstacked buffs? Notably, both actually have answers in 3.5, in the form of item slots and unstackable bonuses respectively, but these are additional mechanical complexity that has to be added to reduce game breakage, and it very much was unsuccessful.

RedMage125
2020-08-19, 07:42 PM
Could a Fighter, in fact, do those things? Why, yes, they could! They are, therefore, "things a Fighter could do".
And again, your original claim vis a vis this was "4e ensured nobody had anything more interesting than a Fighter could do in 3e".

Which I debunked immediately with several examples that I was able to remember from the top of my head. ALL more interesting than Grapple, Trip, Disarm, Sunder.



Rituals are the equivalent of buying scrolls, not the abilities 3e characters got.
They were non-combat powers that 4e characters could do. Many of which imitated effects of 3e spells. Several classes got Ritual Caster as a class feature, and anyone could get it with a feat. Furthermore, there were guidelines for including Ritual scrolls as treasure, so I find this point to be intentionally disingenuous.



Well, then the designers should have made them something other than that. But that is what they are. I'm not going to bother arguing with you about this, because {scrubbed}. Instead, I want you to find me some numbers that prove you right. If I am wrong, and it is not in fact mathematically true that having people with a lower chance of succeeding makes you more likely to fail, you should be able to do this. If I am right, and you cannot do this, I expect you to eat your crow before I pay any attention to another word you say. To be specific, I expect:

1. A chance of success between 0% and 100%, S.
2. Another chance of success in the same range that is smaller than the first one, S'.
3. A non-zero number of attempts made at the second chance of success, N.

And those numbers should together satisfy the property that if I make N attempts at S', I expect more successes than if I make N attempts at S. You will note that this is actually much easier than defending skill challenges as written, because I'm allowing you to pick whatever numbers you want, rather than saddling you with the numbers the game uses. So if you can't do this, or refuse to do it, it will be a direct admission that I am in fact correct about the mathematical properties of the core mechanic of skill challenges.

How is this an indictment of Skill Challenges at all?

Everything you are saying applies to ALL uses of skills, hell, even attack rolls, in any d20 system TO INCLUDE 3e.

The only thing different about Skill Challenges, SPECIFICALLY, is that they were geared to be an "encounter-like" system wherein skills could be used to reach a goal, bypass an obstacle, avoid damage, etc.




Allowing multiple skills doesn't do anything. I don't care about whatever secondary skills did in the version of skill challenges you believe in, because the claim I am making is about the core mechanic, not whatever epicycles have been added.
Allowing multiple skills is key to group participation in the Skill Challenge. The DC should be the same, regardless of what skill is being used, because a Skill Challenge has a given level, and the DCs of a given difficulty (Easy, Moderate, Hard) are set by level.

And Secondary Skills also play into that, because they allow a player who may not have a good modifier in one of the Primary Skills (and thus, be more likely to accrue a failure than a success, as per your own reasoning), to still contribute to the group. They could give another player a bonus to their roll, or even remove a failure that the group had accrued.

So you would be making N attempts at S, P, or R (all with a given DC of X). The Party Fighter may have a +9 modifier for S, the party Wizard a +9 for P, and the party Rogue a +9 for R. The Cleric and Warlock, not having good modifiers for S, P, or R, but having good modifiers for skills Y and Z, use their turns to make skill checks for those. Or, worse case scenario, take the Aid Another action, which is always an option.

This is in the RAW. Check the DMG2, or Skill Challenges in the published modules. It's also in the RAW for designing Skill Challenges in the DMG1 (page 75). So that IS in the Core mechanic. Your refusal to see that is not a sign that those rules don't exist.



I consider that a distinction without a difference. Saying that I might merely be ignorant is, in this respect, also calling me a liar, it's just saying that I'm lying when I claim to know how things work. Either I'm lying when I present my points as informed, or I'm lying about my specific points. In either case, you're calling me a liar.
No, lying is intentionally misrepresenting something with intent to mislead. You are just wrong.

It's okay to be wrong, it's not an insult. And it would be the sign of an extremely fragile ego to insist that it is an insult. You CHOOSE to be offended and take it personally when I say you are mistaken. I haven't called you a liar.



You understand how that still makes you wrong though, right? I mean, setting aside the fact that "they errata'd other things" doesn't make the errata magically not effect Skill Challenges, if the errata'd the failure numbers that is in fact errata to Skill Challenges, which is the exact thing you claimed didn't happen.

And I believe I addressed that. *looks up* Yup, I did. I admitted I was wrong about "any errata", but that was the ONLY errata, so your claim about "multiple rounds of errata is STILL in error.



D&D has failed to be the market leader in TTRPGs twice. Once, TSR went bankrupt in the late 90s, and Vampire took over for a time. Then, WotC released 4e, and Pathfinder took over (admittedly, not instantly). I feel quite comfortable saying that a product that is as bad for your business as bankrupcy is, in fact, a bad product.
I'm going to borrow a quote from another poster, Morty here:
"To put it another way, "I don't like 4E" is an opinion. "4E is a bad game" is an assessment that should be backed up with something even if it's still subjective."

Couching your opinion as "fact" is just an attempt to be contrarian and start fights. 4e had its flaws, to be sure, and I am certainly willing to engage in honest discussion about them. I do NOT, however, sit idly while people try and couch their opinion as objective fact.

And again, all this was a reply to SOMEONE OTHER THAN YOU in regards to "fixes" they were looking for that 4e DID. And 4e was, overall, not well received.


Well, sure. But since RedMage is unwilling to accept "the game mathematically does not do the thing it is supposed to do" as a reason the game is bad, there's not really anywhere else to go but the market.
I did not, have not, and WILL not contest that 4e "failed" as a product line, economically.

It did. It's why I ended up putting 4e on my list of "Fantasy Heart Breakers" in a thread about a year and a half back. 4e was not a "bad game". It suffered from a poor start, certainly. It differed DRASTICALLY from other editions, absolutely. And it divided the D&D community. It is directly responsible for Paizo stepping up and entering the market with Pathfinder, further hurting the D&D brand.

But it was a fun game, and it accomplished a lot of what it set out to do*. It just happens that those results created a game that a lot of people didn't find familiar to them.

Good games can do poorly in terms of sales or customer response. It wasn't what people expected, and apparently, not what they wanted. Which was kind of my whole point in bringing it up (again, to QUERTUS, not you). "Balancing the classes, so all classes can shine", and so on. 4e did those, and the response was overwhelmingly negative. People thought that those things made it "not feel like D&D".

What's funny is that when I introduced my brother-in-law to D&D, we were playing 4e. Later, when I changed duty stations, 5e had come out, and he tried his hand at both 5e and Pathfinder. But he didn't like them because THEY "didn't feel like D&D" to him. So it's all a matter of subjective perception.

*The 4e preview books "Races&Classes" and "Worlds&Monsters" showcased the design goals of the ORCUS team (the team name for the project as it was being worked on, combinign the first initials of the people on the team, I think). 4e succeeded at those goals.


I'll probably just end up putting him on ignore. I doubt he'll be able to come up with an explanation of why being more likely to fail a single test doesn't also make you more likely to fail multiple tests (seeing as that is just how probability works), so I assume he'll continue to tell me I'm lying and claim that I'm actually someone else. He seems to have a big chip on his shoulder, and based on this conversation, I'm not optimistic about being able to get anywhere productive with him on this or any subject.
Ah yes, the "fingers in the ears" approach. A mature, and well-reasoned response to someone with a different viewpoint. Although, with the current zeitgeist of our country, it shouldn't surprise me.

Mechalich
2020-08-20, 01:57 AM
Good games can do poorly in terms of sales or customer response. It wasn't what people expected, and apparently, not what they wanted. Which was kind of my whole point in bringing it up (again, to QUERTUS, not you). "Balancing the classes, so all classes can shine", and so on. 4e did those, and the response was overwhelmingly negative. People thought that those things made it "not feel like D&D".

To add to this, games consist of mechanics, fluff, and production design, and there's considerable evidence that, when it comes to market share, mechanics are the least important part of the equation. When Vampire overtook D&D as the most popular game on the market, it wasn't because Vampire's mechanics were better than those of 2e AD&D, the mechanics of vampire were a dumpster fire and they always have been, but that were a slightly less complex dumpster fire (there was no adding negative numbers in VtM) which seems to have been the only thing that really mattered.

4e differed dramatically from all previous D&D editions in both mechanics and fluff, and a lot of people were primarily angry about the changes to the fluff, often because said changes made certain settings, impossible to play in the new system. Pathfinder, despite having to change the names of almost everything, actually maintains greater fluff continuity with earlier D&D editions than 4e does. And one of the key moves for 5e was to basically put all the old fluff back in place. It's worth noting that Star Wars SAGA, which has an awful lot of 4e-style mechanics and was to at least some degree used as a 4e testbed, faced none of the vitriol of 4e, because it made every effort to lean in to extant fluff and make the game work around it.

And this circles back to the central problem of modifying D&D. D&D has a lot of major mechanical problems, with balance and otherwise, baked into the fluff that are essentially impossible to fix as a result, because if you actually do it you get a 4e-style rebellion. It's not even unique to D&D - White-Wolf tried it with the nWoD (I wouldn't say the nWoD is mechanically superior to the oWoD but it's certainly different) and the company ended up bankrupt as the result.

Ultimately, a huge portion of the player base has sacred cows in the fluff that they value more than the entire mechanical system.

Kyutaru
2020-08-20, 07:23 AM
Ultimately, a huge portion of the player base has sacred cows in the fluff that they value more than the entire mechanical system.
Yep. D&D has always been about the roleplay more than the combat. Other games like Vampire which were almost 100% roleplay and DM fiat even showed how important it was to people.

Quertus
2020-08-20, 11:59 PM
Balance isn't that simple. The issue at hand is sticking to that portion of expected scenarios with such wildly divergent methods as turning dead enemies into answers, pulling your answers out of Hell, personally answering the situation, and making a device to answer it. These have starkly different mechanical expectations that need balanced against eachother, and adding "buffs allies as mechanic of contribution" means that you have to account for the buff in the balancing prospects, making another layer of surprisingly complex math to work out. And all the math in the world doesn't matter if the DM steps out of line of expected rewards and conflicts!


So nobody can RP their way into having an ally who has a starship because that invalidates one of your class features, nobody else can hire hacker allies to be escort mission fodder, and nobody else gets to have access to fencing? By making those class features, you make it much more difficult to justify allowing other players to roleplay their way into accessing mechanics that way or allowing similarly potent classless mechanics, because if those are things you can do, why bother playing the class that gets them as features?


It's because of justifications, like the root of the "Guy at the Gym" fallacy. Because the summoner is calling stuff up from other planes, there's not much thematic limitation, and so you have to invent justifications for why a demon summoner can't get every kind of demon. Sure, there's mechanics you can get that with, but the ones that are compatible with actually summoning existing demons come down to various flavors of limited contracting for access to specific types. With Necromancers and Enchanters (of the D&D mind-altering magic kind), you are talking about literal direct control of enemies, making for a spectacular degree of "can't"s that aren't baked into the theme long before you actually get out from the All Solving Hammer problem.


Because the Artificer requires downtime to make their abilities and limiting how many they get is a frustrating mess, the Summoner calls theirs up as needed, the Fighter's locked to the gear they have and training they've done, the Necromancer needs dead enemies to work with, and generally different concepts function in different ways if you're going to actually implement the fantasy mechanically. Reanimating corpses is as versatile as the corpses you have access to, unless specifically limited in what abilities are retained, and item creation abilities are completely nuts with any but the strictest of resources to work with.

And whenever a character's ability is "provides bonus to other creature" that can apply to another character, you now have to balance for people merging their class features by way of one being a buff monster and the other being a monster to buff, thereby ending up some degree above the expected curve. Unless you specifically enshrine a buff class role in the expected math, which makes the parties without buffers suffer. Game balance is not basic math, especially with fungible resources like sharable items and bonus applications.

What's to stop the party from shopping around to over-gear the Fighter ridiculously by pooling their wealth? What's stopping a party of three Bards and a Fighter from running over the game with enormously overstacked buffs? Notably, both actually have answers in 3.5, in the form of item slots and unstackable bonuses respectively, but these are additional mechanical complexity that has to be added to reduce game breakage, and it very much was unsuccessful.

OK, as far as I can see, I think you're a bit too far into the D&D implementation of things to get what I was saying. Because most of that - i think - isn't actually a problem.

For example, buffs. M&M buffs have (by default) the same power level limit the buffing character has. So, of you can solve… huh. Looks like I forgot to post one of my posts. Anyway, if you can solve "level 7" problems, then your buffs simply allow people to solve "level 7" problems.

So, by this logic, Flight, Invisibility (2e), and Divine Power are good buffs; Wield Skill, Divine Favor, and True Strike are not.

But what *is* going to be really hard to balance is mind control. And, to a lesser extent, abilities that have prerequisites for use (like time or resources) that could be negated.

As for "allies as a class feature"… I've always felt that this discussion was a little odd, but… this is over and above what everyone (including the guy with "free" allies) can get - so 3+X vs 0+X allies. Also, if one of the "3" is "lost" (killed, imprisoned, unfriended, whatever), it is automatically replaced. Unlike the X NPCs each PC otherwise collects during the adventure.


And this circles back to the central problem of modifying D&D. D&D has a lot of major mechanical problems, with balance and otherwise, baked into the fluff that are essentially impossible to fix as a result, because if you actually do it you get a 4e-style rebellion.

Can you list a few of these "unsolvable" "fluff causes imbalance" problems?

I ask because Illithids are *supposed to* be afraid of Undead, as they are both immune to their mental powers *and* invisible to their infravision. 3e did away with infravision, slaughtering that fluffy cow in the process.

I3igAl
2020-08-21, 05:16 AM
Personally I would like for narrower Specialisations. Wizards could mostly get spells from their chosen school and said school would be way more specialized. Maybe instead of the bonus spell from their school, they get one bonus spell from a school of their choice.
If the schools are hyperspezialized they can actually be good at one thing. The Evocation school would be 99% blasting and not much else. Such a wizard could actually be allowed to match or even slightly outdamage a fighter without ending up overpowered.
Maybe limiting the amount of spells each school gets, would be finishing step. Splatbooks could than add new spell school or archetyped ones to not break said system and make the spell lists to versatile.

This would also be quite flavourful IMO and lead to many totally different wizards.


Well, there is an easy fix for the "math" and it's the 0E/1E/2E/BECMI way: Wizards do NOT get automatic free access to every published spell on a whim. Spells are treasure. This also needs the 0E/1E/2E/BECMI way that making magic items...any items, but more so scrolls and wands...is hard and difficult and expensive. So again: magic items are treasure. Not something a character can just make on a whim.

This alone puts fighters and wizards on the same starting base: they must both adventure for things to get more powerful. Also, you might as well throw in feats/class abilities too....make it so a character must either find a trainer or a special location or such. Maybe even add a mechanic, like an experience upgrade that can be earned and then used to get an ability. So the player has to have the character do something in the game to get the experience upgrade, based on the character and the game world.

While this a flavorful idea, you are basically just reducing the number of known spells and equating it to the amount of magic items the wizard gains. He has now worse equipment and less spells. It also includes a sneaky ban of spells the DM deems too powerful, since he is the one selecting the spells found.

It could work though, if done well. In 3.PF one could even go as far as baking known spells into the Wealth Per Level guidelines. One could treat their price as an item (1/day spell effect?) maybe giving some small discount on the cost(10-25%?) to the wizard to protect his niche.

PhoenixPhyre
2020-08-21, 09:53 AM
Personally I would like for narrower Specialisations. Wizards could mostly get spells from their chosen school and said school would be way more specialized. Maybe instead of the bonus spell from their school, they get one bonus spell from a school of their choice.
If the schools are hyperspezialized they can actually be good at one thing. The Evocation school would be 99% blasting and not much else. Such a wizard could actually be allowed to match or even slightly outdamage a fighter without ending up overpowered.
Maybe limiting the amount of spells each school gets, would be finishing step. Splatbooks could than add new spell school or archetyped ones to not break said system and make the spell lists to versatile.

This would also be quite flavourful IMO and lead to many totally different wizards.


I like the idea of enforcing specializations and would go a few steps further.

First, not just on wizards. Every spell-caster should have to specialize.

Second, not by spell school. They're too horribly balanced and...oddly defined for this.

I wrote up an idea once where I took the (5e) spell lists and tagged every spell with one or more "themes" (such as Pyromancer, Animal Friend, Gardener (plant specialist), conjurer, witch, etc). Then each spell-casting class (including the 4 element monks, which sort of cast spells) got access to their choice (from a class-based restricted list) at least one and sometimes a couple of these themes. So wizards had basically a free choice (except for a couple out-of-theme ones like Healer and Holy Warrior) for their primary theme, where their two free spells per level had to come from. But could scribe discovered spells from other themes. Bards were locked down on their primary theme (either Illusionist or Mentalist, IIRC), but had an ability to add some spells that they saw being cast, even entirely from other themes. Classes with themed sub-classes had a primary theme set by the class (or chosen) and then secondary access to other themes came from the sub-class. For operational reasons, every cleric got access to the Healer theme, but then their other themes were set by their chosen domain. Etc.

Tons of work, and probably impossible in a 3e context (simply due to the explosion of spells), but it's an interesting idea.

Morphic tide
2020-08-21, 09:58 AM
OK, as far as I can see, I think you're a bit too far into the D&D implementation of things to get what I was saying. Because most of that - i think - isn't actually a problem.

For example, buffs. M&M buffs have (by default) the same power level limit the buffing character has. So, of you can solve… huh. Looks like I forgot to post one of my posts. Anyway, if you can solve "level 7" problems, then your buffs simply allow people to solve "level 7" problems.

So, by this logic, Flight, Invisibility (2e), and Divine Power are good buffs; Wield Skill, Divine Favor, and True Strike are not.
The problem is that set-to buffs like that are very narrow design space, and make being applicable to allies utterly superfluous because they usually won't actually do anything. They also face versimilitude issues in that set-to buffs make for extremely pathetic bystanders abruptly turning into comparable combatants to the party. And perhaps more importantly, an enemy with them will be capable of exploiting it to have infinitely disposable "munitions", because any random idiot off the street will have just the same damage output once buffed.

It also doesn't solve the excess versatility problem, in fact it makes it worse because the relevant capability can be completely ignored as opposed to left to smaller investment. If the buffs include staple requirements like survivability, then the rest of the party can promptly ignore that and put everything into actively solving a wider range of problems.


As for "allies as a class feature"… I've always felt that this discussion was a little odd, but… this is over and above what everyone (including the guy with "free" allies) can get - so 3+X vs 0+X allies. Also, if one of the "3" is "lost" (killed, imprisoned, unfriended, whatever), it is automatically replaced. Unlike the X NPCs each PC otherwise collects during the adventure.
The issue that you seem to have difficulty grasping is that they are other goddamn people. Them being trivially replaced as a class feature means the world is factually bending itself in pretzels for the sake of your character concept working, because of that concept hinging so utterly on treating other in-world people as tools. This board is overwhelmingly D&D slanted, and people focusing there generally look for simulationist mechanics. This goes double for those concerned with "feel" rather than raw numeric balance, as they care they can do a thing without browbeating the DM far more than if that thing is strictly useful to do.

For roleplay, treating other people as disposable in a mechanical assumption doesn't work. At some point, what you have suggested leads to a player abusing it, and then the DM has to either let the world's sensibilities be utterly violated, or strip someone's class features. Or at least partially usurp control of that player's character. Or punish the player for bothering to use part of their class's text. In other words, the mechanic forces a failure of design in a roleplaying game because it's so utterly thematically broken that it's inherently open to abuse to get downright disposable meatshields, because it doesn't actually properly work otherwise. Which is what the Summoner and Necromancer are for, not the point of the guy who leads other actual people.

Kyutaru
2020-08-21, 06:43 PM
Speaking of narrow design space, what of the class descriptions? Should the system promote narrow definitions the way D&D does to allow for splatbooks on top of splatbooks of option bloat? Or should the system encourage broad definitions such that a fireball wizard, an alien stormtrooper, a telekinetic psychic, and a western gunslinger are all the same class?

Kyutaru
2020-08-21, 07:26 PM
And until 3E D&D was all about the improve too.

In olden days, or just with that type of DM, my martial character could do things like shoot and arrow and cause the tapestry on the wall to fall on top of the evil cleric, trapping them under it for three rounds.

Of course, in modern 5E with a modern DM I just get told "your character can't do that" because they don't have the specific abilities of 'cut tapestry off wall' and 'entangle foe in tapestry'. The even worse DMs will let me do that action, but then just laugh and say "nothing happens you wasted your turn".

That's a terrible DM. A gamist DM who denies anything but the letter of the abilities. Such a DM probably denies spells imposing a condition they don't otherwise state despite a change in the environment that would cause them. It's also completely untrue of 5E or of 3E as both have rules for adjudicating such actions in the DMG, primarily centered around ability checks (and skills checks when applicable). Yet too many DMs forget such things exist or view the game as a board game with a fixed set of actions when their handbook literally says the opposite.

I'm sorry you had that experience but YMMV is a fact of life with tabletop games.

NigelWalmsley
2020-08-21, 07:30 PM
And until 3E D&D was all about the improve too.

Please, tell me where 3e says "no improvising". All the "3e ruined AD&D's balance/variety/whatever" complaining is just grognard nonsense. What 3e did was add coherent rules for things, which allows you to push back when your DM says "no you can't do that" by saying "I have an ability that says I can do that".

Mechalich
2020-08-21, 07:37 PM
Speaking of narrow design space, what of the class descriptions? Should the system promote narrow definitions the way D&D does to allow for splatbooks on top of splatbooks of option bloat? Or should the system encourage broad definitions such that a fireball wizard, an alien stormtrooper, a telekinetic psychic, and a western gunslinger are all the same class?

There are pros and cons, but arguably, if you're going to have classes at all, you want those classes to have tightly defined ability suites, because the entire advantage of classes is that you can utilize them to conglomerate whole groups of abilities for things like balance, niche protection, generalized party role, and overall character concept. Overly generic classes don't really do anything and provide extremely limited utility because they don't produce any recognizable meaning either mechanically or in the fluff.

Many of D&D best balanced and most robustly functional classes are the most narrowly defined, such as the half-caster classes produced late in the run of 3.5e like Dread Necromancer. Or to go into Core, classes like Bard, Druid, and Monk are very weird, but their abilities are well-understood and their roles well-defined (the druid's abilities tend to be over-powered and the monk's under-powered, but that's mostly a matter of specific mechanical choices). Meanwhile, highly generic classes like 'Fighter' and 'Wizard' are all over the place.

Having narrowly designed classes is also a way of saying 'these are the PC concepts our game supports, anything outside those concepts is not a PC.' It's perfectly reasonable for a game to have all sorts of other types of characters in a game world, but at the same time to declare that you aren't playing one of them. This is very obvious in terms of a game like VtM, which begins with 'you a re a vampire, here are certain kinds of vampires you can play,' but it's important for games like D&D too, where a viable PC is something that interacts with the core principle of going on a certain kind of adventure.

Kyutaru
2020-08-21, 08:02 PM
There are pros and cons, but arguably, if you're going to have classes at all, you want those classes to have tightly defined ability suites, because the entire advantage of classes is that you can utilize them to conglomerate whole groups of abilities for things like balance, niche protection, generalized party role, and overall character concept. Overly generic classes don't really do anything and provide extremely limited utility because they don't produce any recognizable meaning either mechanically or in the fluff.I've seen the opposite function in a few places. In a game like City of Heroes the classes are split up based on role. All the characters I listed are "ranged damage dealers", aka Blasters. There's a class for supports, a class for tanks, a class for brawlers, a class for controllers. D&D originally went this route too with classes like Barbarian, Monk, and Sorcerer being subclasses of Fighter or Wizard. You could have Ranger and Paladin be their own unique class or you could make them Fighter variants centered around the same basic Role.

The pros to this system is that every role is preserved uniquely. No one steps on another's toes because no one can do what another class does. You might dabble in healing as a Paladin but you are NOT a Cleric or Druid by any means. Druids were once merely alternate priests, Warlocks alternate mages. A bit less griping about magic vs martial happened because they had distinct advantages and disadvantages, especially given the plethora of casting penalties 2E mages faced that 3E erased from existence.

The con to this system is that things are a little more homogenized. When every class stems from the same core class you have a lot of ability overlap between the subtypes. Naturally that means it's a little less special and flavorful compared to super unique classes but it's also easier to balance or produce a niche because you're not having to compare it to every class in the game, only to the ones that match the same role. D&D makes things very weird with classes that can perform every role and min-max to be better at one of them or with classes like the Hexblade that get way too much for their role and begin to overshadow other classes in terms of viability.

Mechalich
2020-08-21, 09:29 PM
I've seen the opposite function in a few places. In a game like City of Heroes the classes are split up based on role. All the characters I listed are "ranged damage dealers", aka Blasters. There's a class for supports, a class for tanks, a class for brawlers, a class for controllers.

I would consider that to be fairly tightly defined. If a class is structured such that it permits only a specific functional role, then it has a tightly defined ability set, mechanically, even if you allow the cosmetics to vary widely. The four character archetypes you listed would all be different classes in other systems. For instance, in Star Wars Saga a 'fireball wizard' could be a Noble (with the Force Sensitive Feat), an 'Alien Stormtrooper' could be a Soldier, a 'Telekinetic Psychic' could be a Jedi, and a 'Western Gunslinger' could be a Scout. Or not, because Saga's classes are so broad that you could build each of those concepts using pretty much any of the Five classes if you wanted to (some builds would be less efficient that others of course).


The con to this system is that things are a little more homogenized. When every class stems from the same core class you have a lot of ability overlap between the subtypes. Naturally that means it's a little less special and flavorful compared to super unique classes but it's also easier to balance or produce a niche because you're not having to compare it to every class in the game, only to the ones that match the same role. D&D makes things very weird with classes that can perform every role and min-max to be better at one of them or with classes like the Hexblade that get way too much for their role and begin to overshadow other classes in terms of viability.

The big thing about classes that inherently define a mechanical role is that they tend to rend character concept as merely aesthetic gloss on top of the mechanical structure. MMOs are often explicit about this, where the shape and type of your weapon and armor is totally irrelevant to what your character does with it, and things like reach, or even the fact that one character might be literally one third the height of another character (ex. Lalafels in FFXIV), are mechanically meaningless.

Part of the problem D&D has is that there are a large number of fiddly effects like base speed and spears vs. swords vs. bows and the like that absolutely do matter at the lower end of its functional power scale, but become almost totally pointless at the upper end.

PhoenixPhyre
2020-08-21, 10:40 PM
The big thing about classes that inherently define a mechanical role is that they tend to rend character concept as merely aesthetic gloss on top of the mechanical structure. MMOs are often explicit about this, where the shape and type of your weapon and armor is totally irrelevant to what your character does with it, and things like reach, or even the fact that one character might be literally one third the height of another character (ex. Lalafels in FFXIV),

Two things--some break that convention (ie FFXIV classifies people exactly by their weapon). And second, #PopatoLivesMatter.

Quertus
2020-08-22, 07:50 PM
The problem is that set-to buffs like that are very narrow design space, and make being applicable to allies utterly superfluous because they usually won't actually do anything. They also face versimilitude issues in that set-to buffs make for extremely pathetic bystanders abruptly turning into comparable combatants to the party. And perhaps more importantly, an enemy with them will be capable of exploiting it to have infinitely disposable "munitions", because any random idiot off the street will have just the same damage output once buffed.

The point is simply that buffs (and the rest of the things you mentioned) do not *have* to have such flaws.

Break away from one specific implementation, and discuss the concepts for themselves, not for just that one implementation.


It also doesn't solve the excess versatility problem, in fact it makes it worse because the relevant capability can be completely ignored as opposed to left to smaller investment. If the buffs include staple requirements like survivability, then the rest of the party can promptly ignore that and put everything into actively solving a wider range of problems.

Yeah, I'm not following you.

Let's suppose we have 2 parties, both with 4 characters. In each party, each character can solve/participate X amount, with no overlap between PCs, so each party can solve 4X.

For the challenge of "get from point A to point B", it just so happens that both parties have a level-appropriate answer. For the first party, one party member has the ability to teleport everyone. For the second party, one party member has the ability to buff everyone to teleport themselves.

Now, there's lots of variables to manipulate to make those abilities even. Or they might not be even - one might be a larger share of its character's X than the other.

My question is, why is one worse for versatility than the other?


The issue that you seem to have difficulty grasping is that they are other goddamn people. Them being trivially replaced as a class feature means the world is factually bending itself in pretzels for the sake of your character concept working, because of that concept hinging so utterly on treating other in-world people as tools. This board is overwhelmingly D&D slanted, and people focusing there generally look for simulationist mechanics. This goes double for those concerned with "feel" rather than raw numeric balance, as they care they can do a thing without browbeating the DM far more than if that thing is strictly useful to do.

I'll not deny that the "feel" of some of the abilities we can discuss in this thread might well irk me, as well. But whether a participation implementation is *desirable* (to either of us) is beside the point of whether or not it is *possible* to create a particular type of mechanical balance. If it *is* possible (and I'm not certain either way yet), *then* we can talk about optimizing the play experience (or abandoning the notion of a "balanced" game if it's either mathematically impossible, or undesirable).

However, this particular ability doesn't *have* to be as nonsensical as you make it sound. After all, if the US President lost his secret service guards and his vice president, don't you think that those would get replaced? So this "has allies" ability could represent something where we say, "well, of course those would get replaced".

And I think that covers your last paragraph, as well.

Morphic tide
2020-08-22, 09:10 PM
The point is simply that buffs (and the rest of the things you mentioned) do not *have* to have such flaws.

Break away from one specific implementation, and discuss the concepts for themselves, not for just that one implementation.
The initial statement I made was that buffs have balance traps, common strains of issues that are inherent risks of design, with two listed categories of either permitting over-specializing or permitting over-broadening. I have been discussing the concepts themselves because the issues I'm talking about are how the concepts are difficult to balance. Not impossible, but something you have to actually put in additional effort to accomplish because the concept itself so easily lends itself to those failure states.


My question is, why is one worse for versatility than the other?
If you'd pay attention to my example cases, the relevant thing is when you can give a buff that's a universal need. If one character can give two others automatic set-to level X defenses, then those two party members can ignore their own defense investment and instead invest in some additional ability or double down on offenses, getting to have the output of a glass cannon without the fragility. It's not saying that it must become a problem, but that it's a serious risk that needs deliberate design compensating for it.

Basic structural properties turn into increasingly convoluted design processes, and as such the more options there are, the harder balance becomes, which is exaggerated with more differences between options. If you have one class using Tome of Battle, one using Magic of Incarnum, and one using Shadowcasting, balancing them against eachother requires a wide array of play assumptions worked out, because they each have different resource schemes that result in different tolerable combats and different sustainable adventuring days.

And so you have to actually mandate encounter schedules for your math to work out, because shifting how many fights per day there are massively swings the Shadowcaster's power level, while differing duration of individual fights swings the Initiator's use, and yet these are almost entirely irrelevant to the Meldshaper. If the DM steps outside your schedule, the game breaks down, and there's nothing that can be done to fix this if you have differing resource structures because the entire point of pen and paper is that the rules aren't hard.

Thus do we run into 4e, because the only way to be sure the game is mathematically balanced is to make it have minimal variance. Everyone has to have the same resource scheme, or else the DM might push the party through a wringer and the Crusader comes out smelling like roses while the Artificer now needs a solid month of downtime to fix and recharge his gear.


I'll not deny that the "feel" of some of the abilities we can discuss in this thread might well irk me, as well. But whether a participation implementation is *desirable* (to either of us) is beside the point of whether or not it is *possible* to create a particular type of mechanical balance. If it *is* possible (and I'm not certain either way yet), *then* we can talk about optimizing the play experience (or abandoning the notion of a "balanced" game if it's either mathematically impossible, or undesirable).
Okay, you seem to be stubbornly missing the point I'm making because you keep talking about Non-Specific Possibility Space and I'm talking about what comes up when you finally sit down and make a game, particularly a swords-and-sorcery one due to the slant of the forum. One specific game, that has to have all these parts line up, and function for roleplay rather than just raw numeric balance. Over and over we see enduring products shine on the back of fluff, not mechanics. Over and over we see astonishing messes of mechanical absurdity become quite popular, d20 being a wondrous example of this exact thing, because the mechanics hold a basic functional framework for a highly evocative experience.

The actual math on blunt combat D&D Necromancy gets insane, but it's very rarely used because those numbers don't do much else, have huge swaths of limitations, and most importantly roleplaying around having a giant undead horde or massive rotting behemoths becomes very nasty because they grind anything where they need actions enumerated to a crawl and have a huge host of complications with the world interactions.

When you're making a roleplaying game, the first priority by the precedent of what's been commercially successful is pinning down flavor, not having good math, because the math needs to support the flavor to be a good system. Ludonarrative resonance is the lifeblood of an RPG, much more so for pen and paper that can throw any part of the rulebook out the window, and so you need to figure out what you want the math to be doing before you actually get started on what the math is.

PhoenixPhyre
2020-08-22, 10:48 PM
And to add to Morphic Tide's great response (and to the last sentence there):

The more tightly interconnected the math is, the more fragile it is. It's like curve fitting--sure, you can exactly fit that curve with enough free parameters. But in doing so, you make it unable to predict anything outside the training set--it's become fragile.

More interacting, different subsystems means more points where things can go wrong. Either by breaking assumptions (which are a necessary part of design) or by someone changing one little thing that ripples through the system, or by overlooking one of the combinatorial explosion of interacting parts.

So you really have to have a hard idea of what you want to support and what's outside the scope of the system. And then lock down some really basic "facts" for the system's math. 5e's Bounded Accuracy is a (partially successful, at a cost) attempt to do this--they assume that certain numbers just won't grow very much from 1-20. In turn, this makes action economy king (and means that summons and summoners have to be squashed heavily to avoid breakage). But you have to start with these core assumptions and build everything from there. And those assumptions have to rest on what kind of game you want to build.

Generic isn't always better--focused is often easier to balance. You can (sort of) balance OWoD Mages against each other. You can't effectively balance OWoD Mages vs OWoD vampires or werewolves. The fundamental assumptions about gameplay and thematics are too different. Same goes for a D&D-like--if you want godlike mages, you can't also have totally mundane characters. Etc. Theme comes first, then basic power level. Math grows out of all of this.

Quertus
2020-08-24, 07:56 AM
So, *if* I'm reading things correctly (which, apparently, I've recently failed at doing), these last two posts are very much on topic, and attempting to answer the topic with "no, because" and "yes, but" answers.

So, we cannot allow everyone to participate most of the time, because most noncombat actions typically involve a single character solving them, rather than the group all participating in the solution. So my original idea seems to have been answered "no".

Giving everyone an equal sized piece of the pie is impossible, because it requires the GM to very carefully tailor the encounters to everyone's specialities, else the balance breaks.

And Vancian casting (and other variations to timing on abilities) means that the game balance is fragile, and the game must be run at exactly the prescribed pacing, else the balance breaks.

So, we have our answer: balance is impossible, outside very strict requirements for samey pacing on contrived encounter design.

So, therefore, people complaining about balance should come to realize that asking for balance requires asking for samey encounter pacing with contrived encounter design, and either accept that, or accept imbalance. :smallfrown:

Unless the Playground has anything further to add.

PhoenixPhyre
2020-08-24, 09:06 AM
@Quertus

It's not a hard no, but my position is "it's theoretically possible, but not likely to work well due to the compromises you'd need to make." And that's inherent in an open system. You can balance a board game using math, because you completely control all the possibilities. It's closed. Hard (mathematical) balance in a TTRPG requires removing a lot of agency, especially in character creation.

For example, let's consider MMOs.

FFXIV is (for an MMO) very balanced. The differences in output and utility, despite lots of people whining, are pretty minimal. Any job can participate at the highest levels and the "meta" compositions are strategy dependent. This comes at a very high cost. There's almost literally no character customization (mechanically). Every single Samurai will have the exact same rotation, exact same gear, because anything else is highly suboptimal. There's no selectable talents, no options at level up. Everyone gets the same things at the same times. And even more, the healers and tanks have been heavily homogenized--all healers have 2 main dps buttons and a similar selection of healing stuff and play pretty similarly.

On the other hand, old-school WoW was highly imbalanced, but with lots of customization. And over time, they had to chop a lot of out the customization because it became clear that only one set of talents was actually getting chosen--the rest were just phantoms, there to trick the newbies.

So hard balance and customization are in tension. And then when you move away from scripted battles (like MMOs have) and let the players actually affect the world...hard balance becomes extremely difficult. You can do it if you focus your product down to a tiny sphere of action and basically remove any ability to act freely. But that's a cost I'm not willing to pay.

Now that doesn't mean that balance isn't important at all. Getting the math right so that anyone who wants to (and doesn't optimize away those abilities) can have some chance of success at most things, can "contribute" to most situations is important and doable. Encouraging scenario design that can't be solved by one action of one person, that requires a team working together means everyone must contribute and is great. I've found that in 5e, the balance is such that with the effort on my part to not put single-action-solution challenges in as anything other than speedbumps, it's good enough. Helps that I don't generally play with hardcore optimizers, so they're not really testing the limits of the system.

Morgaln
2020-08-24, 09:36 AM
The aim of balance is not to have everyone participating equally all the time. It's to have everyone be able to contribute in a way that levels out to roughly equal spotlight over several scenes. D&D fails in that regard, because its classes are inherently imbalanced. You have classes whose features only contribute to combat (e.g. fighter); you have classes who contribute to combat just as well as fighters but also contribute to non-combat (e. g. rogue); and then you have the classes that can contribute to combat just as well as the other classes, contribute to non-combat and have the ability to emulate and overshadow the features of other classes (e. g. wizard). That is where balancing needs to come in.

Kyutaru
2020-08-24, 09:53 AM
It's not a hard no, but my position is "it's theoretically possible, but not likely to work well due to the compromises you'd need to make." And that's inherent in an open system. You can balance a board game using math, because you completely control all the possibilities. It's closed. Hard (mathematical) balance in a TTRPG requires removing a lot of agency, especially in character creation.
Heck, even rule-strict tabletop games centered around the math can be beyond the capacity for control.

Warhammer 40k is one of the longest standing tactics games in modern history. It attempts to be balanced with a codified set of rules that are uniform across tabletops with different armies having varying levels of customization and role. You can see each army as a class, that set of abilities you mentioned a while back, and they vary as much as D&D classes do. Yet it's still imbalanced and frequently lends to specific meta compositions despite the clear attempts at curbing old abuse and coming up with more streamlined systems. Past editions had the same problems as 3e D&D, full of stacking exploits. They went with 5e's method recently of narrowing the field of possibilities to keep the game balancing easier while still offering a wealth of options to choose from, slightly more homogenized as they are. Editions before that even had the same problem as 1e/2e D&D where some units were flat out immune to other units and it led to this tactical arms race meta of who can invalidate the most enemy options while still being tactically relevant. Dice rolling isn't even the problem in that game because you roll so many dice that values are much more averaged out than D&D.

With D&D offering player agency (40k is a permissive ruleset and you can't do anything that isn't explicitly defined), limitless customization (40k enforces point limits to curb picking strong options vs weak ones), few cross-class limits (40k severely limits inter-faction cooperation), DM interpretation (40k participants have to follow identical official interpretations), and subjective mechanics (40k establishes exact rules for every element unlike skill checks), it's even harder to attempt to balance all sides without hand-waving the imbalance as intentional and up to the subjective whims of the DM to fix if desired.

Kyutaru
2020-08-24, 10:14 AM
The aim of balance is not to have everyone participating equally all the time. It's to have everyone be able to contribute in a way that levels out to roughly equal spotlight over several scenes. D&D fails in that regard, because its classes are inherently imbalanced. You have classes whose features only contribute to combat (e.g. fighter); you have classes who contribute to combat just as well as fighters but also contribute to non-combat (e. g. rogue); and then you have the classes that can contribute to combat just as well as the other classes, contribute to non-combat and have the ability to emulate and overshadow the features of other classes (e. g. wizard). That is where balancing needs to come in.
So this is a touchy subject for me because it reflects the path D&D has gone down has deviated from the roots that actually did attempt to have this sort of balance.

Fighters were THE combat class. There was simply no equal and they made a terrifying show of it. Rogues were NOT good in combat. Back then they could backstab for a multiplier which was weak while putting themselves in harm's way with a significantly lower AC (we didn't have dex abuse, Str was better). Wizards meanwhile were potent as generalists if you allowed them access to everything in the book, which by default they could not obtain due to the necessity for scroll learning. The spells in the player's handbook represented only the index of possibilities you could include in your world. You still had to actually give casters the scrolls you wanted them to be able to learn and withhold any you didn't want them having access to. Since not everyone understood this, they moved towards encouraging specialist wizards with about two banned schools each and extra spell slots only for their specialty. This was meant to limit casters and focus them on a particular role instead of being "I can do everything" generalists. If you can't cast fireball AND haste AND mirror image AND knock then you're much less in danger of overshadowing other classes. This did nothing to stop divine casters, who had access to every spell under the sun by default (and grew more powerful with splatbooks) but they were weak in other ways and their spells were worse. Being primarily defensive in nature meant they weren't treading on other class roles by buffing and healing (it was using those buffs selfishly that did that). All of this plus the much more penalized spellcasting system of older days kept the roles in check and removing much of these distinguishing differences led to the situation you're referring to.

There definitely was a time when everyone having their own unique flair and time to shine was the goal of the system and they all got their roughly equal time in the spotlight. Fighters hacked their way through monsters, rogues solved obstacles and hazards, wizards offered rule-bending support to the party's attempts, and priests kept everyone alive.

Hytheter
2020-08-24, 10:29 AM
Dice rolling isn't even the problem in that game because you roll so many dice that values are much more averaged out than D&D.

You say that, but I'm still salty about a match I had years ago. All I needed to win was a single 2+, but alas, seven ones...

Ignimortis
2020-08-24, 10:34 AM
The aim of balance is not to have everyone participating equally all the time. It's to have everyone be able to contribute in a way that levels out to roughly equal spotlight over several scenes. D&D fails in that regard, because its classes are inherently imbalanced. You have classes whose features only contribute to combat (e.g. fighter); you have classes who contribute to combat just as well as fighters but also contribute to non-combat (e. g. rogue); and then you have the classes that can contribute to combat just as well as the other classes, contribute to non-combat and have the ability to emulate and overshadow the features of other classes (e. g. wizard). That is where balancing needs to come in.

I would agree, but for that a few more minigames like combat need to exist. As it is now, D&D is a combat simulator with everything outside of combat being treated very poorly by the rules. See Shadowrun, where there are at least three minigames, possibly four (combat, matrix, astral, driving/chase scenes).

P.S. I tend to zone out of threads for a few days when I go to work, and then I go back and see that the thread has evolved a few more pages further.

Kyutaru
2020-08-24, 10:43 AM
You say that, but I'm still salty about a match I had years ago. All I needed to win was a single 2+, but alas, seven ones...

I use examples like that every time someone gripes about probability in a game. The odds of something like that happening are immense, almost unthinkable. But they have physically happened. They are just one possibility out of sometimes millions of possibilities and one of those millions is guaranteed to happen every time. An individual roll may have a low chance... but combined with every other roll that also has a low chance you have a pretty high chance of getting a roll with a low chance.

The dice hate me too. I need to switch to Chessex.

Man_Over_Game
2020-08-24, 12:21 PM
So this is a touchy subject for me because it reflects the path D&D has gone down has deviated from the roots that actually did attempt to have this sort of balance.

Fighters were THE combat class. There was simply no equal and they made a terrifying show of it. Rogues were NOT good in combat. Back then they could backstab for a multiplier which was weak while putting themselves in harm's way with a significantly lower AC (we didn't have dex abuse, Str was better). Wizards meanwhile were potent as generalists if you allowed them access to everything in the book, which by default they could not obtain due to the necessity for scroll learning. The spells in the player's handbook represented only the index of possibilities you could include in your world. You still had to actually give casters the scrolls you wanted them to be able to learn and withhold any you didn't want them having access to. Since not everyone understood this, they moved towards encouraging specialist wizards with about two banned schools each and extra spell slots only for their specialty. This was meant to limit casters and focus them on a particular role instead of being "I can do everything" generalists. If you can't cast fireball AND haste AND mirror image AND knock then you're much less in danger of overshadowing other classes. This did nothing to stop divine casters, who had access to every spell under the sun by default (and grew more powerful with splatbooks) but they were weak in other ways and their spells were worse. Being primarily defensive in nature meant they weren't treading on other class roles by buffing and healing (it was using those buffs selfishly that did that). All of this plus the much more penalized spellcasting system of older days kept the roles in check and removing much of these distinguishing differences led to the situation you're referring to.

There definitely was a time when everyone having their own unique flair and time to shine was the goal of the system and they all got their roughly equal time in the spotlight. Fighters hacked their way through monsters, rogues solved obstacles and hazards, wizards offered rule-bending support to the party's attempts, and priests kept everyone alive.

But we're transitioning to a culture where players are playing their characters, rather than a group of friends hanging out. Part of this is because technology is making people feel more emotionally distant, since you don't need to physically hang out with people as the only means of spending time anymore.

And on top of that, we've had the chance to play good games, not just what everyone was playing. Turns out, people don't like being useless 70% of the time to own the spotlight the other 30%. They like consistency, not explosiveness, partially because consistency encourages player expectation and strategy. You can plan around boring, you can't plan around chaos.

Lastly, tables are learning to use the system to suit their needs, rather than adapting/leaning towards that system.

I think the ideal of having a "balanced" asymmetrical system (Fighters fight, Rogues solve dungeons, Wizard is a flex) doesn't work anymore, as the value of each "pillar" (such as Combat and Noncombat) of a TTRPG are no longer being decided by the TTRPG developer anymore. One table wants more politics, another wants the monsters to kill the players, while another may want monsters that act realistic to the world. Heck, the players might have different expectations from the same table!


So I propose two solutions:
Have a rigid structure, where the value of each pillar (such as "Exploration", "Socialization" and "Combat") are explicitly laid out, along with expected costs/gains of each, and each character option is budgeted against each pillar after accounting for these balance decisions. Effectively, the devs predefined the goals.
Each character option addresses each pillar equally (so a Fighter has as many/as powerful noncombat features as the Wizard, and vice-versa), as this ensures that each character option is balanced regardless of the relative value of each pillar at a table. Effectively, it doesn't matter what your goals are since everyone can reach any of the goals equally.With option #2 being the clear winner, since it involves not telling the DM what his priorities should be.

That's why I think the real challenge should be "Balancing the Fighter's noncombat features to the Wizard", since combat aspects of most games just comes down to numbers that can be tweaked as-needed for that system. But designing a game where a soldier's Soldier Powers lets him manipulate the world as much as someone who can create a literal portal to another world is a really difficult thing to implement, which is exactly why you'd want to do it first.

I think that's what should happen for a truly balanced system, but I'm hoping someone could explain where I'm off.

Kyutaru
2020-08-24, 01:37 PM
But we're transitioning to a culture where players are playing their characters, rather than a group of friends hanging out. Part of this is because technology is making people feel more emotionally distant, since you don't need to physically hang out with people as the only means of spending time anymore.This is so true that it depresses me. The meme generation needs it to be all about them.


Each character option addresses each pillar equally (so a Fighter has as many/as powerful noncombat features as the Wizard, and vice-versa), as this ensures that each character option is balanced regardless of the relative value of each pillar at a table.So if you're going to go down this route then just make each pillar a separate aspect of classes. There needs to be a column for combat, a column for social, and a column for world. Choose abilities from each, not just from Combat. I'm already doing this in my own game because Body Mind and Soul reflect the three pillars quite well.

The issue with D&D is that they treat social and exploration tools as separate from how they treat combat. This is partly because they are very different things and it lets roleplaying be more free while combat can be primarily about math. But when their relation to classes as a whole is barely noticeable and it's more of a systemic feature then it can't receive the level of balance you're expecting. You can't balance Fighter noncombat options by saying "Look, here's Athletics, it uses Strength but ANYONE CAN TAKE IT" and expect min-maxers not to see the obvious flaw.


But designing a game where a soldier's Soldier Powers lets him manipulate the world as much as someone who can create a literal portal to another world is a really difficult thing to implement, which is exactly why you'd want to do it first.
No need for them to be identical, just affecting different aspects. Take the four elements: Fire, Air, Water, Earth. These are NOT equal. Some of these come into play way more than others or have more widespread use. This is especially noticeable in Shadowrun where it's almost impossible to find a source to summon a fire elemental. But you can still make a game where each class focuses on one because they have equal shares of their own domains. It's not the game's fault the domains are imbalanced in your campaign.

Asmotherion
2020-08-24, 06:19 PM
My perspective:

-Single target damage spells should have a duration where they can be cast again. They should always deal the same damage as a nonmagical character of the same level would, or substitute part of the damage for a seccondary effect.

-An AoE should never cause more damage than half that of a single target Damage Spell.

-An effect spell should always have a non-magical way to counter it, with very few exceptions.

-An utility spell should only be able to accomplish faster something a character of that level could otherwise accomplish. For example, a Fighter that knows a magical diagram that calls creatures, should, given the time, be able to draw it manually, and in this case, the spell would only be able to draw it in one turn rather than, say, 1 hour.

-Not exactly a balancing factor, but more emphasis should be given to the preparation of the spells. Perhaps some penalty or bonus depending on components used?

-A more general approach would be, distribute abilities among all classes equally, or even don't use classes as a core leveling mechanic; I tend to value classless systems more that class restricted ones, because they offer more character customisation. Or use class features as feats.

-Finally, attempt to make all powers, abilities and spells have a similar magnitude of impact. My favorite approach to this, is using leveling up as a customisation source, and never as a way to gain more power, were min/maxing would be pointless. Every character does a specific amount of damage depending on their level, and what changes is how they deal it. This is just an example.

NigelWalmsley
2020-08-24, 06:56 PM
So, we cannot allow everyone to participate most of the time, because most noncombat actions typically involve a single character solving them, rather than the group all participating in the solution. So my original idea seems to have been answered "no".

I mean, that's not written in stone. If you had a version of Skill Challenges that encouraged player participation rather than discouraging it, you could do this easily. Also, I'm still not really convinced this is an accurate model of non-combat encounters. Not only is deciding on the appropriate approach a meaningful decision point, but no one thinks it's an issue that only one guy makes any particular attack role. If non-combat challenges have multiple parts, multiple people can contribute to them.


Giving everyone an equal sized piece of the pie is impossible, because it requires the GM to very carefully tailor the encounters to everyone's specialities, else the balance breaks.

That seems like a strawman definition of "balanced". People who want the game to be balanced don't want it to be perfectly balanced, they want it to be more balanced. To use an analogy, just because every piece of software in the world has bugs in it doesn't mean trying to develop bug-free software is a bad goal. It's just hard. You should still try to do it, because trying makes for better software than not trying, but no one expects you to be perfect.


And Vancian casting (and other variations to timing on abilities) means that the game balance is fragile, and the game must be run at exactly the prescribed pacing, else the balance breaks.

No, daily abilities do that. It's important to be precise in your terminology here. You get the same dynamic with the Sorcerer (who casts spells spontaneously), the Psion (who has a daily pool of power points), or the Spirit Shaman (who has a hybrid system). Whereas if the Wizard prepared spells then cast them at will or per-encounter, that would be fine while still being recognizably Vancian.


This is so true that it depresses me. The meme generation needs it to be all about them.

"Young people are ruining X" was a bad take when applied to all the other subjects it's been applied to. It's not a better take when applied to gaming.

Man_Over_Game
2020-08-24, 07:13 PM
So if you're going to go down this route then just make each pillar a separate aspect of classes. There needs to be a column for combat, a column for social, and a column for world. Choose abilities from each, not just from Combat. I'm already doing this in my own game because Body Mind and Soul reflect the three pillars quite well.

The issue with D&D is that they treat social and exploration tools as separate from how they treat combat. This is partly because they are very different things and it lets roleplaying be more free while combat can be primarily about math. But when their relation to classes as a whole is barely noticeable and it's more of a systemic feature then it can't receive the level of balance you're expecting. You can't balance Fighter noncombat options by saying "Look, here's Athletics, it uses Strength but ANYONE CAN TAKE IT" and expect min-maxers not to see the obvious flaw.

[...]

No need for them to be identical, just affecting different aspects. Take the four elements: Fire, Air, Water, Earth. These are NOT equal. Some of these come into play way more than others or have more widespread use. This is especially noticeable in Shadowrun where it's almost impossible to find a source to summon a fire elemental. But you can still make a game where each class focuses on one because they have equal shares of their own domains. It's not the game's fault the domains are imbalanced in your campaign.

I agree with your first bullet. I don't think you necessarily need to do it that way in such an organized, tight-knit manner, but it'd be good to do that for a draft and then remove the dividers to make it appear seamless and organic.

For example, the "Beastmaster" suite lets you talk to animals, gives you an animal to control in combat, and makes friendly animals willing to accompany you to support you with non-threatening tasks. Despite it granting very specifically an element of gameplay in each of the 3 pillars, it could easily be rewritten in a way where it comes off as a singular "Beastmaster" power.



I'm not sure what you mean by the second point, though. In the Beastmaster example above, it might not see as easily used in a civilized area, but it is still something that can be regularly relied on. Talking to rats, having a monkey-thief as your companion, using crows as scouts and messengers, these are all ways a Beastmaster could utilize his powers.

Something like a Barbarian's Super-Strength sounds like it'd work the same way, but there's actually not much you could consistently do with it outside of random chores or working hard labor. Or maybe it could, as long as the game is designed around it being used as such (for example, allowing someone to bend metal to create a tool).

Thinking about it, it's not necessarily that power levels aren't allowed to fluctuate, but how regularly used those powers can be used should not. You should always be relevant, even if you can't always be at 100%.

Kyutaru
2020-08-24, 07:44 PM
I'm not sure what you mean by the second point, though. In the Beastmaster example above, it might not see as easily used in a civilized area, but it is still something that can be regularly relied on. Talking to rats, having a monkey-thief as your companion, using crows as scouts and messengers, these are all ways a Beastmaster could utilize his powers.

Something like a Barbarian's Super-Strength sounds like it'd work the same way, but there's actually not much you could consistently do with it outside of random chores or working hard labor. Or maybe it could, as long as the game is designed around it being used as such (for example, allowing someone to bend metal to create a tool).

Thinking about it, it's not necessarily that power levels aren't allowed to fluctuate, but how regularly used those powers can be used should not. You should always be relevant, even if you can't always be at 100%.So the example before was that wizards could open portals to another dimension while the fighter has servants. In a sense, the wizard's domain is the planes while the fighter opens doors in a figurative sense to more mundane organizations. They do different things that may handle differently or be useful at different times but you can still strive as a DM to be inclusive of both by allowing for alternate routes to the same destination. The best RPGs are the ones with multiple paths leading to the same conclusion. What's important is not true player agency but the illusion of choice even when all roads lead to Rome.

Beastmasters and Super-strength Barbarians to me sound like superheroes I know with the exact same powers. They can be found fighting alongside each other often and by some miracle the episode always has something both parties can lend their talents towards. Even if it seems like lifting things might not come into play very often, the strong hero has lifted no less than 7 things by the end of 22 minutes. The DM sometimes even chucks pieces of building in their path just so the strong hero has something to lift. Because the strong hero built his hero to lift things and he enjoys games where he gets to lift a lot of things. Despite me being able to list hundreds of Batman and Superman episodes where talking to animals would NOT have mattered or even been useful, every episode involving a hero capable of doing so inevitably has animal-talking be of central importance to the plot.

In a free-form RPG where settings can vary wildly, you can't ever create mechanics that accommodate all players equally. Your adventure may take place on the moon. Good luck finding a use for Knowledge (History) up there. The DM is always the first line of defense against player boredom and needs to know his group and how to engage each member. The best we can do through design is give him easy tools to understand how to do that.

RedMage125
2020-08-24, 09:24 PM
Please, tell me where 3e says "no improvising". All the "3e ruined AD&D's balance/variety/whatever" complaining is just grognard nonsense. What 3e did was add coherent rules for things, which allows you to push back when your DM says "no you can't do that" by saying "I have an ability that says I can do that".

Nigel and I don't see eye to eye on a lot, but here I agree wholeheartedly. Hard yes.

IMO, hard-coded mechanics PROTECT players from fickle DM fiat. In 2e, if you wanted to jump a 6 foot gap, but rolled a 4 on the dice, your DM may just decide you fell in. In 3e, you could add your ranks in Jump and your STR modifier, and if you could prove, conclusively, the number of feet you were able to jump.

That's just one example, but the spirit of that is in so many other facets of the RAW.

Pex
2020-08-24, 09:45 PM
Nigel and I don't see eye to eye on a lot, but here I agree wholeheartedly. Hard yes.

IMO, hard-coded mechanics PROTECT players from fickle DM fiat. In 2e, if you wanted to jump a 6 foot gap, but rolled a 4 on the dice, your DM may just decide you fell in. In 3e, you could add your ranks in Jump and your STR modifier, and if you could prove, conclusively, the number of feet you were able to jump.

That's just one example, but the spirit of that is in so many other facets of the RAW.

True, but you have to be careful in both directions. Lack of rules has you worry about fickle DMing, such as my infamous 5E complaint about DM fiat and climbing trees. However, too many rules can lead to stifling game play options. 3E/Pathfinder suffer this problem with feats. If you don't have the feat you can't do it. Rather, you can but there are so many obstacles in your way it's not worth trying. The purpose of having the feat is to be able to ignore those obstacles.

NigelWalmsley
2020-08-24, 10:11 PM
Something like a Barbarian's Super-Strength sounds like it'd work the same way, but there's actually not much you could consistently do with it outside of random chores or working hard labor. Or maybe it could, as long as the game is designed around it being used as such (for example, allowing someone to bend metal to create a tool).

Sure there is. Hercules diverts a river to clear out the Augean Stables. There's all kinds of crazy crap you could do with super-strength, you just need to let people do crazy crap with super-strength. There's no reason your super-strength can't let you carve roads through mountains, or log entire forests for lumber, or build fortresses overnight (any of which are easily the equivalent of spells like Fabricate or Major Creation). It just doesn't let you do that, because martials don't get to have nice things.


So the example before was that wizards could open portals to another dimension while the fighter has servants.

As I've said, that's the wrong way of looking at things. If you start by saying "Wizards do portals, Fighters do armies", inevitably one of those things ends up being better than the other. Usually dramatically. In D&D, that's typically portals, because "the adventure is on another plane" tends to be more common than "the bad guy has an army you need to punch to death". But in other stories, the reverse could easily be true (e.g. in A Practical Guide to Evil most of the challenges are of the form "there's an army the protagonists need to defeat"). You've got to start with the challenges. What problems are the PCs expected to be able to solve? Once you've done that, you can set about dividing them up among whatever character concepts you'd like to support.


Despite me being able to list hundreds of Batman and Superman episodes where talking to animals would NOT have mattered or even been useful, every episode involving a hero capable of doing so inevitably has animal-talking be of central importance to the plot.

That's true, but there is a limit to this (the Simpsons Kinightboat gag springs to mind). Having one episode where Squirrel Girl's ability to talk to squirrels lets her solve the mystery is fine. But if every episode has Batman's detective work hit a dead end where the only witness is a squirrel, that gets stupid really quickly. DMs can definitely do a lot to make players feel useful, but the game has to provide a certain level of groundwork for that to be feasible.


3E/Pathfinder suffer this problem with feats. If you don't have the feat you can't do it. Rather, you can but there are so many obstacles in your way it's not worth trying. The purpose of having the feat is to be able to ignore those obstacles.

"Make it a feat" was a stupid design paradigm. A lot of things that should have just been skill uses were made into feats. That said, I still think D&D is past the point where trying to appeal to "ask your DM" works. If you want to rely on that as your system for "doing stuff", you need to do what things like Fate do, and allow players some measure of direct authorial control.

Kyutaru
2020-08-24, 10:36 PM
Nigel and I don't see eye to eye on a lot, but here I agree wholeheartedly. Hard yes.

IMO, hard-coded mechanics PROTECT players from fickle DM fiat.
They also serve to tarnish the player's experience. In the post mortem Mike Mearls goes through the reasons for 5e's design choices and uses player feedback graphs depicting often contrary to common sense information that led to them. Strict mechanics very much served to get in the way of player enjoyment and their conclusion was that rules don't need to tell the group how to do something in many cases but serve as a tool to expedite it when appropriate.

Combat is where the game starts to bog down and simplicity had high combat satisfaction, with Fighters and Barbarians being at the top of the graph while Druids and Mages were at the bottom. The reason was that during combat your turn cycles are hamstrung by the time it takes each person to execute their actions and book referencing is thoroughly discouraged. This made simple classes with ready-to-go abilities they could fire off without much hassle high on the polls while classes that had mechanical complexity and depth to them polled lower. Players didn't have the time to open the books or consider all their options and playing a complicated class could even lead to selecting a less optimal choice which resulted in negative feelings when others pointed out decisions they would have made instead.

Out-of-combat the polls were flipped with Fighters and Barbarians being the least interesting according to player feedback owing to their limited available options while Bards and Rogues polled the highest with Mages and other casters slightly beneath them. The team discovered that when you have ample time to consult the book and consider creative solutions that complex classes were better received as they had more depth. Both this and the combat polls were the reverse of what they originally believed as well as the reverse of what 3e combat enthusiasts hold dear to. Most players do not want tons of crazy little tactical options and minutiae for their battles, that's a misconception propagated by tactical grognards. They want clear cut and easy to understand packaged options that speed them through the round and on to the next turn. Similarly, outside of combat they don't want rules limiting their creativity but gravitate towards classes that feature room for interpretation and ingenuity with the two skill monkeys in a very loosely defined system being the highest polling options.

There was also a neutral poll purely looking at class complexity and despite spells being fairly simple to understand, select and fire for the most part, casters were seen as the most complex classes. This in spite of Monks who have oodles of abilities to understand and sort through, a class that ranked only modestly in complexity. The bottom had the Fighter. What's important to note here is that having all those spell options was being viewed as a paralytic to players who found having clear cut and concise complex packages to be easier to digest and understand than simple one-dimensional abilities with a large assortment to choose from.

In short, personal opinion is what colors these views and the official feedback did not share yours. What some players fancy and believe to be essential to the game is NOT uniform across the playerbase and only serves to better create the game you personally want instead of the game that more financially viable and inclusive of the most potential players.

Mechalich
2020-08-24, 10:38 PM
Beastmasters and Super-strength Barbarians to me sound like superheroes I know with the exact same powers. They can be found fighting alongside each other often and by some miracle the episode always has something both parties can lend their talents towards. Even if it seems like lifting things might not come into play very often, the strong hero has lifted no less than 7 things by the end of 22 minutes. The DM sometimes even chucks pieces of building in their path just so the strong hero has something to lift. Because the strong hero built his hero to lift things and he enjoys games where he gets to lift a lot of things. Despite me being able to list hundreds of Batman and Superman episodes where talking to animals would NOT have mattered or even been useful, every episode involving a hero capable of doing so inevitably has animal-talking be of central importance to the plot.

Any ability that simply expands the boundaries of things people already do constantly is inherently going to be used all the time. Super strength clearly falls into this category. Even people in fairly sedate office jobs utilize 'strength' on a regular basis, whether it's something as simple as lifting a box of printer paper or relocations a chair. Likewise people use all kinds of mechanical devices designed to augment their physical strength all the time, ranging from absurdly simple items like wheelbarrows to complex ones like forklifts, and can easily slot 'super strength' in to replace the use of those aids. Super-strength, super-speed, super-agility, these abilities all directly mediate a character's interaction with the environment, allowing them to be used literally all the time.

By contrast, abilities that provide some capability that humans do not normally possess is almost always situational (the big exception being forms of motion, but that essentially simply gives the character an entirely new environment to interact with), and this is doubly true is the ability requires some other subject's presence in order to function. 'Talk to animals' requires animals, 'Cyberkinesis' requires computers, and both animal and computer free environments are possible. Heck, even a character whose power is something like 'Earth manipulation' can end up in an environment without any ground and suddenly have access to no powers.

Morphic tide
2020-08-25, 01:17 AM
The summation of my perspective on it is that "ground up" math doesn't function for starting from multiple mechanics, hard balance rapidly approaches the impractical as the functional difference between characters (and enemies) grows, and the general structure of solutions to the difficulties have proven highly undesirable in a roleplaying product context. In other words, if you're designing a game with multiple usage schedules, you can't do ground-up math because you have to decide on the relation between schedules arbitrarily, and the more schedules and areas of function there are, the more complex this math becomes. And trying to minimize the difficulties leads to either closed-in "skirmishing" games like 4e because there's a bundle of concepts shoehorned into a single mechanical framework, or you're stuck making highly focused products that aren't particularly usable outside their niche as seen with White Wolf games.

For a "ground up" design process, you require some arbitrary starting points, otherwise you have nothing to apply math to. Starting with a resource schedule like Vancian casting is actually a really good idea for this, because it means you can work on ratios between effects, action economy, challenge frequencies and magnitudes, and efficiency mechanics before touching even something as basic as character scores or monster durability, because the resources are non-fungible. And as a very high-level schedule of a full day, it's a pretty major framework for campaign module design because you literally have flat-out problems-per-day guidelines baked into the thing you started from.

And you can actually start with a single mechanical pillar here, such as just combat, then add-on any other pillar as a set of ratios and solve for a mechanically balanced play experience, though admittedly needing to arbitrarily define what the numbers mean as output and what those ratios are. Of course, this pattern of design is fundamentally fitting into the gaps of the previous work, so it inherently means stark limits on how much input pillars can have on eachother, especially in total, no matter how many pillars get added. Vancian's stark limit of Things Per Day helps here, as well.

But, as previously mentioned, it's extremely tedious and complicated because you have to first make a well-balanced system around the resource schedule with all of your desired breadth of effect, to the point of entire campaign modules, before you can even start to crunch out balancing a completely different resource schedule/subsystem/whatever for those modules that demonstrate the "expected" campaign.

johnbragg
2020-08-25, 07:16 AM
But we're transitioning to a culture where players are playing their characters, rather than a group of friends hanging out. Part of this is because technology is making people feel more emotionally distant, since you don't need to physically hang out with people as the only means of spending time anymore.


This is so true that it depresses me. The meme generation needs it to be all about them.

We're talking about tabletop RPGs. So you'd better be talking about "playing your character", or TTRPGs are over. If you just want to hang out with your buds (in-person or virtually) and kill some doods, there is a plethora of shoot-em-up games that lets you do that much more effectively than TTRPGs.

Kyutaru
2020-08-25, 07:39 AM
We're talking about tabletop RPGs. So you'd better be talking about "playing your character", or TTRPGs are over. If you just want to hang out with your buds (in-person or virtually) and kill some doods, there is a plethora of shoot-em-up games that lets you do that much more effectively than TTRPGs.
Nay, the sentiment we were sharing is the concept of the team-based effort. In an MMORPG for example, success is not singularly focused. The tank needs to tank, the healer needs to heal, the DPS needs to kill. Without all three doing their jobs the entire dungeon is hopeless. Modern RPG play is more like everyone is their own island and merely working alongside the nearest three humanoids, which some MMOs have started to do (allowing certain characters to even solo dungeons). The shift is off the teamwork and onto personal empowerment. No longer might you do what's best for the group but what's best for yourself.

PhoenixPhyre
2020-08-25, 09:54 AM
Nay, the sentiment we were sharing is the concept of the team-based effort. In an MMORPG for example, success is not singularly focused. The tank needs to tank, the healer needs to heal, the DPS needs to kill. Without all three doing their jobs the entire dungeon is hopeless. Modern RPG play is more like everyone is their own island and merely working alongside the nearest three humanoids, which some MMOs have started to do (allowing certain characters to even solo dungeons). The shift is off the teamwork and onto personal empowerment. No longer might you do what's best for the group but what's best for yourself.

I was reading the 5e D&D style-guide (written for adventure and fiction writers). One thing it stressed was that the core of D&D is the team. That it's not a focus on a hero, working alone. Or even a protagonist with a group of followers. The core of D&D (according to WotC) is that a small group, working together, can do things that no individual can.

That idea has come to be the core of what I try to do and encourage. The basic unit of D&D is the party. Not the character, no more than the proton is the basic unit of matter. Atoms are, which are made of smaller units. The test of a good character is what it brings to the party. And challenges should be designed around parties, not around individuals. My strong belief is that challenges that can be "won" by a single action or even a single character aren't appropriate challenges. They can exist, but only as speed-bumps that aren't really important. All the important stuff, the stuff designed to challenge the party and push the narrative onward, should be designed around requiring at least a significant subset of the party to work together. And characters should[0] be designed to be able to participate (not solve alone) in most of the challenges.

[0] Yes, I know specialization is optimal. But that's only in the context of single-player challenges. Once the challenges start requiring the whole team to do different things, you can specialize (to some degree) and still contribute. Or a little bit of flexibility and generalization won't hurt either. So things like proficiency and expertise can be used to cover weaknesses, not raise strengths to absurd and useless levels.

Man_Over_Game
2020-08-25, 11:39 AM
We're talking about tabletop RPGs. So you'd better be talking about "playing your character", or TTRPGs are over.

I was reading the 5e D&D style-guide (written for adventure and fiction writers). One thing it stressed was that the core of D&D is the team. That it's not a focus on a hero, working alone. Or even a protagonist with a group of followers. The core of D&D (according to WotC) is that a small group, working together, can do things that no individual can.

Nay, the sentiment we were sharing is the concept of the team-based effort. In an MMORPG for example, success is not singularly focused. The tank needs to tank, the healer needs to heal, the DPS needs to kill. Without all three doing their jobs the entire dungeon is hopeless. Modern RPG play is more like everyone is their own island and merely working alongside the nearest three humanoids, which some MMOs have started to do (allowing certain characters to even solo dungeons). The shift is off the teamwork and onto personal empowerment. No longer might you do what's best for the group but what's best for yourself.


Kyutaru gets at what I mean. I'm not necessarily saying it's right, but players aren't looking for the same metrics of success. It's no longer good enough if the party succeeds, but it's rather about what that player did to help the party succeed. That means allowing the player to do things that he's looking forward to do. The game should be designed around encouraging the players' desires, not creating a rigid system that the players are forced to adapt towards.

That doesn't mean that the Wizard shouldn't rely on the Fighter to do Fighter-specialized things, but I think there needs to be a shift away from "This is something only the Wizard can solve" and instead transition into "This is a solution only the Wizard could come up with".

Any time a Wizard could debuff an enemy into uselessness, so could the Fighter.
Any time the Fighter could take a hit, so could the Wizard.

There should be varying levels of efficiency, to emphasize on specialties, but nothing should be strictly impossible for anyone.

Actually, thinking about it, the Arkham Horror Card Game does this really well, as it plays like a class-based RPG system with powers and features. Guardians (Fighters) gain ways of solving other problems through defeating enemies, while Seekers (Noncombat Rogues) have ways of working around enemies through stacking their attack rolls with card draw and evasive powers, and Mystics (Wizards) utilize cunning resource management to specialize towards whatever problem they're temporarily equipped to deal with. Point is, you can be bad at your specialty and still perform at an expense. Despite each character having a specialty, they're all capable of working solo, adapting, and using each other. Similarly, a problem solved with a Wizard's Teleport should also be solved with a Fighter's Physical Superiority (or something), even if one is more expensive than another.


Players will always specialize, and they'll rely on each others' specializations to cover each others' weaknesses, we just need to change the sentence of "You are useless when you are out of your element" to have the word "useless" be replaced with "inefficient", as those who are in their element will already take charge. Having options for when you're at your worst makes it a harder game, rather than less of one.

But, truth be told, that's pretty friggin' hard to figure out, which is why I think it makes for an excellent starting place:
How can a Fighter solve a Wizard problem, and how can a Wizard solve a Fighter problem, and how do you make both those situations equally painful?