Minimally invasive caster fix [Archive] - Giant in the Playground Forums

Anthrowhale

2020-09-13, 12:48 PM

it's simple, but arbitrary
I disagree here---it's well recognized that the classes are not particularly balanced, so a house rule creating more balance isn't arbitrary.

and nonsensical.
You can make up some fluff to go with it. Something like: "Learning the discipline to channel magic into a spell makes your body and soul reject spells."

not to mention very invasive.

I was using 'invasive' here in the sense of 'invasive to the rules'. Other fixes of similar level of comprehensiveness that I've seen involve much more complex houserules.

I mean, you are forbidding any form of self-buffing,

Yep.

and effectively banning all spells with a personal range.

A ring of spell storing (https://www.d20srd.org/srd/magicItems/rings.htm#spellStoringMinor) is a core item, so I'm sure such spells would still see use.

plus, you are also arbitrarily giving casters an immunity to most status conditions.

This doesn't seem correct. Spells causing status condition exist, but there are plenty of other ways to achieve status conditions. Immunity to negative spells with a duration is a real plus for the casters.

unless spells with a duration don't work only when cast on themselves, in which case a caster pair where each one buffs the other is as fine as ever.

Nope.

and there's no reason to forbid casters from buffing themselves.

I disagree here. The reason why spellcasters are so dominant is because they can use spells to do the job of other classes. Clerics get full BAB as a spell and can easily get +35 on skill checks via Guidance of the Avatar and Divine Insight. Wizards can Draconic Polymorph into a War Troll and clobber things while picking up fighter feats on the fly via Heroics. Any balancing must by definition leave nonspellcasters capable of things that spellcasters cannot do as long as spellcasters can do things that nonspellcastsers cannot.

and you'd lose all the nonbroken buffs.

The problem with buffs is not really the few broken ones. Instead, it's the accumulation of buffs which is broken. This rules change makes accumulation more difficult.

plus, it does nothing to limit offensive power. a mailman would be more squishy for lack of protective buffs, but he'd still be able to explode anything remotely close to level appropriate as an immediate action.

A mailman certainly remains very potent. My general thought here is that the perfect should not be the enemy of the good. Applied here, perfect balance amongst classes should not be the enemy of better balance.

a minionmancer would still be able to summon a planar army, or an army of clones, or of simulacri.

There is a quantity vs. quality tradeoff with minionmancy. Many summons are weak or stupid. Others are expensive or subject to DM interpretation.

this is no different from banning a bunch of spells, except you only restrict your banning to some, and you remove a lot of legitimate stuff with it.
This doesn't seem legit, in the sense that no spells are banned, just some applications of them.

In the proposed form, spellcasters also ignore any non-instantaneous debuffs placed on them through spells. Just thought you'd want to know.
Yep.

Wait so you can see thought your magical magical darkness and use stinking cloud centered on yourself with no downside? Amazing
I was imagining 'no', in the sense that the effects that these create do not target "you" (they are SR: No).

5th edition sort of did this with the whole "can only concentrate at maintaining one buff at a time" rule. Perhaps try adopting that instead of trying to ban buffing
Interesting---I haven't read 5th much. This seems like it devalues buffs much more. If you have 4 combats/day, that means at most 4 buffs. I'm a bit hesitant here, because many of the mundane classes can really benefit from more than one buff to keep up with 3.5 monsters.

(also rangers and paladins count as spellcasters, and they REALLY don't need to be nerfed)
Rangers and Paladins would be something like fighters until they get spells (or if the spell-less variant is used). After they get spells, offensive spells would still be pretty useful and they could occasionally provide a buff to more vanilla fighters. I guess the question is: would a Ranger/Paladin with spells really fall behind a fighter? I expect not. A fighter under heavy buffing support would eclipse them but also be inherently more vulnerable to dispel/dominate.

Trandir

2020-09-13, 12:51 PM

Sure, but that's a different mechanic and very few spells use it. 5th edition is a free action, if I recall correctly, that applies to most spells with a duration and is needed to maintain it.

So in effect, you can't have more than one thing with a duration going at the same time (buff OR debuff)

Close it's no action at all and hits lot of spells. Not every spell with duration tho. And yes mostly buffs have it but almost no debuff has it.

Anthrowhale

2020-09-13, 01:40 PM

Suddenly there's no such thing as Detect Magic or Read Magic, or See Invisibility or True Seeing, as those only affect the caster.
Of these, 'Read Magic' seems particularly important to address for Wizards/Wu Jen, thanks.

Detect magic is partly covered by spellcraft, which spellcasters have access to. See Invisibility has various work-arounds with flour, glitterdust, etc... True Seeing can be partially compensated with Spellcraft. All of these abilities can be acquired via a ring of spell storing or an item with a continuous version of them.

A Pixie spellcaster can't be seen by any magic that would reveal invisible creatures, and is immune to Glitterdust and Faerie Fire and Invisibility Purge and anything else that could reveal them.

Glitterdust is SR:No, so it would reveal the pixie. Invisibility Purge could be cast through a ring of spell storing and would work because it offers no spell resistance to the pixie. Faerie Fire would indeed not work. Mundane approaches using flour would work. Potentially, spellcraft would work.

This ruins Paladin and Ranger and Spellthief and Hexblade and any other underpowered partial casters. It also obliterates the entire gish archetype as they don't really use any instantaneous spells at all.

Well, let's check. Hexblade has the smallest list and Spellthief the largest. Looking at Hexblade because it's more tractable, they can use as normal:
1. Armor Lock, Augment Familiar, Bloodletting, Catsfeet, Death's Call, Distract Assailant, Mage Burr, Peace Bond, Phantom Threat, Reaving Aura.
2. Animate Weapon, Arcane Turmoil, Bothersome Babble, Crisis of Confidence, Divest Essentia, Magical Backlash, Shadow Double, Soul Blight, Suppress magic, Swift Ready
3. Fracturing Weapon, Hood of the Cobra, Hound of Doom, Nightmare Terrain, Phantasmal Strangler, Rend Essentia, Trance of the Verdant Domain, Unbind Chakra
4. Cursed Blade, Early Twilight, Fear, Finger of Agony, Horrid Sickness, Phantasmal Killer, Spell Theft (partially), Suppress Legacy

You lose direct use of (but can still buff an ally with):
1. Detect Weaponry, Karmic Aura
2. Adoration of the Frightful, Karmic Backlash
3. <none>
4. Karmic Retribution, Spell Theft (partially), Unseen Strike

Based on this, I disagree. The immunity to enemy spells and SLAs substantially compensates for the spells that aren't directly usable.

Clerics can still use Magic Vestment on their armor and shield and Greater Magic Weapon on their weapon every day. Druids will say screw you guys and use up all their buffs on their animal companion.

These remain solid classes, but I don't think they eclipse a cleric using magic vestment on the fighter (for example).

This makes every spellcaster 100% immune to all forms of crowd control and spells that affect the environment, save a select few instantaneous ones (Wall of Stone, Call Avalanche, etc.).

Not what I had in mind---there are many SR:No crowd control spells.

Walk around with Obscuring Snow cast and be able to see through it.

Snowsight does not work on you if you are a spellcaster.

Or just cast Antimagic Field and the entire game becomes spellcasters vs spellcasters since they're the only ones immune to it and the nonspellcasters are too nerfed to matter.

I'm quite skeptical here. Generally mundanes do better in an Antimagic Field. Can you explain what you have in mind?

Imbue with Spell Ability becomes an offensive spell to nerf buffed enemies, or a defensive spell to completely negate any debuffs or crowd controls hindering an ally. But wait, gaining its effect makes them immune to its effect, but becoming immune to its effect makes them benefit from its effect, so you make a loop that crashes the universe.

This does need to be handled, thanks.

Dragons and enemy spellcasters won't have buffable minions, because they'll just get targeted by all the crowd controls.

I'm not following this.

All this really does is force everyone to play two characters. Every mid to high level PC will be a spellcaster with an animal companion or wild cohort or leadership cohort that they buff, or a nonspellcaster with a leadership cohort spellcaster who buffs them. Or find some kind of shenanigans to bypass the limitation and be able to buff yourself without being a spellcaster.
Effectively playing two characters may be important for solo play, but it seems far from required for group play.

DeAnno

2020-09-13, 05:05 PM

I have a more elegant version of this rule for you to consider:

Whenever a creature casts a spell, all ongoing spell effects on that creature are automatically dispelled.

I think this handles the edge cases a lot better. It lets a caster buff themselves (with for example, fly) if they're willing to stop casting after, and prevents layering self-buffs. It means that gishes and partial casters don't end up in a weird spot in the rules. It means that spellcasters aren't automatically immune to SR: Yes debuffs, especially those that incapacitate them. It lets Read Magic work properly. Basically, a lot of incoherency goes away when you don't have two varieties of creature, but instead one rule that applies to all creatures who cast spells.

Orthogonal to this point, I think most Target: Self spells should be touch in this system, and the effect should also apply to psionics.

The main issue is that it makes a tiny amount of partial casting (especially swift action casting) very useful to non-casters, to the point that debuffs which don't incapacitate become a little toothless. But let's be honest with ourselves: single target debuffs that don't incapacitate were already a bit useless.

NigelWalmsley

2020-09-13, 05:37 PM

I don't really understand why you'd want to attack self-buffing. For the most part, self-buffing is fine. It's genuinely not a problem that the Wizard can cast Overland Flight on himself at 9th level. It seems like this is mostly intended to provide role protection for martials, not to address the real balance issues in the game.

Blasting-based spellcasters are fine.

Blasting-based spellcasters aren't nerfed. That doesn't make them fine, because they weren't fine to begin with.

This creates a more cooperative form of play, because a good party will consist of buff targets and buffers.

I don't think that's actually true. The self-buff routines casters apply typically involve a large number of Personal spells. If you tell the Cleric he can't walk around with Divine Power up 24/7, he's not going to cast it on the Fighter. He can't do that, and it wouldn't do much for the Fighter if he could. "Buff the Fighter" isn't dominated by "buff yourself", it's dominated by "cast combat spells on the enemies directly".

Noninstantaneous SLAs, because they create spell effects, do not apply to spellcasters.

This seems like mostly a buff to casters. I personally would love to have Mind Flayers be unable to use their Charm Monster SLA on me. Arguably this makes you immune to Mind Blast too (it's unclear if it is an effect with a duration, or an instantaneous effect that imposes a condition with a duration like Orb of Fire).

Thunder999

2020-09-13, 06:08 PM

If you want to kill self buffing builds this would certainly do that, but what's the point?

Self buffs aren't really a problem (not in general at least, there's certainly problematic buffs, like shapechange), this gives martials a bit of role protection in the same way that trapfinding does for rogues, but doesn't change the fact that casters are the only ones with meaningful non-combat abilities, and doesn't stop casters rendering the martials superfluous in combat (you can't buff yourself and pretend to be a fighter, you can still summon one, fire off some save or lose, nuke everything as a mailman etc.).

Biffoniacus_Furiou

2020-09-13, 07:35 PM

Of these, 'Read Magic' seems particularly important to address for Wizards/Wu Jen, thanks.

Detect magic is partly covered by spellcraft, which spellcasters have access to. See Invisibility has various work-arounds with flour, glitterdust, etc... True Seeing can be partially compensated with Spellcraft. All of these abilities can be acquired via a ring of spell storing or an item with a continuous version of them.

Glitterdust is SR:No, so it would reveal the pixie. Invisibility Purge could be cast through a ring of spell storing and would work because it offers no spell resistance to the pixie. Faerie Fire would indeed not work. Mundane approaches using flour would work. Potentially, spellcraft would work.

RAW, there's absolutely zero chance of Spellcraft (https://www.d20srd.org/srd/skills/spellcraft.htm) working the way you've described unless the person using the skill is also using Detect Magic.

Well, let's check. Hexblade has the smallest list and Spellthief the largest. Looking at Hexblade because it's more tractable, they can use as normal:
1. Armor Lock, Augment Familiar, Bloodletting, Catsfeet, Death's Call, Distract Assailant, Mage Burr, Peace Bond, Phantom Threat, Reaving Aura.
2. Animate Weapon, Arcane Turmoil, Bothersome Babble, Crisis of Confidence, Divest Essentia, Magical Backlash, Shadow Double, Soul Blight, Suppress magic, Swift Ready
3. Fracturing Weapon, Hood of the Cobra, Hound of Doom, Nightmare Terrain, Phantasmal Strangler, Rend Essentia, Trance of the Verdant Domain, Unbind Chakra
4. Cursed Blade, Early Twilight, Fear, Finger of Agony, Horrid Sickness, Phantasmal Killer, Spell Theft (partially), Suppress Legacy

You lose direct use of (but can still buff an ally with):
1. Detect Weaponry, Karmic Aura
2. Adoration of the Frightful, Karmic Backlash
3. <none>
4. Karmic Retribution, Spell Theft (partially), Unseen Strike

Based on this, I disagree. The immunity to enemy spells and SLAs substantially compensates for the spells that aren't directly usable.

These remain solid classes, but I don't think they eclipse a cleric using magic vestment on the fighter (for example).

You've split the game into two types of characters: Spellcasters who can't receive buffs because they've got awesome spells, and nonspellcasters who don't have spells but can receive buffs. The Ranger, Paladin, Spellthief, Hexblade, and any other partial casters are neither of those. They aren't powerful spellslingers, and they can't get buffed by the party's spellcasters. They're effectively not worth playing since they get hit by the spellcaster nerf without receiving the collateral buff to nonspellcasters.

Not what I had in mind---there are many SR:No crowd control spells.

EVERY PERSONAL RANGE SPELL IS SR: NO, due to its lack of an entry showing SR: Yes, and due to the RAW of spell resistance (https://www.d20srd.org/srd/specialAbilities.htm#spellResistance): "A creature’s spell resistance never interferes with its own spells, items, or abilities."

Spellcasters will ignore every noninstantaneous spell, or only the ones that allow for SR, not a mix of the two. If the former, no crowd control will ever work on them. If the latter, they can still buff themselves completely unhindered, but can't buff each other.

Snowsight does not work on you if you are a spellcaster.

You don't need Snowsight because as a spellcaster you're immune to the effect of Obscuring Snow, and can see through it unhindered because of the rule you've proposed. See above for SR: yes/no issues.

I'm quite skeptical here. Generally mundanes do better in an Antimagic Field. Can you explain what you have in mind?

Spellcasters get to ignore the AMFs because they're noninstantaneous, which means their magic items stay active and their spells continue working unhindered. Nonspellcasters get their magic items turned off as well as their buffs, so they're nerfed by it while it doesn't bother the spellcasters one bit.

I'm not following this.

You've created a game in which nonspellcasters who are inevitably going to be buffed are the only ones targetable by crowd controls, so they'll be crowd controlled by the other team's spellcasters. Whereas spellcasters can just walk through the crowd controls like they don't exist, so careful targeting to not hinder one's own party is at least partially out the window. Powerful monsters would only have spellcaster minions in order for their enemies to not be able to use a good portion of their arsenal, or even waste actions trying to crowd control immune creatures. The dragon and his minions will fill the area with crowd control effects that they all ignore, severely hindering around half of the attackers if the party has characters who can receive buffs.

NigelWalmsley

2020-09-13, 08:10 PM

Self buffs aren't really a problem (not in general at least, there's certainly problematic buffs, like shapechange)

I would also draw a distinction between the Wizard who walks around two or three buffs (like Greater Mirror Image + some flight spell) and the Incantatrix stacking a dozen spells for total invulnerability. The former is totally fine, the latter is a problem. This nerf is just the latest in the endless march of "what if <sweeping change>", and it turns out that, as always, the answer is "that probably wouldn't solve the problems that exist, and would almost certainly create a bunch of other problems".

I think on some level fixing imbalance by poking at casters is simply the wrong way of going about things. Most of the ways in which casters differ from non-casters are ways in which they are better for the game. Having a variety of abilities is better than not doing that. Having utility options that effect the plot is better than not doing that. Getting new abilities on a regular schedule is better than not doing that. So if you want a quick fix, it seems like the simplest one would be "non-casters get Sorcerer/Favored Soul casting at level-N" where N is something between 2 and 4.

King of Nowhere

2020-09-13, 08:25 PM

This creates a more cooperative form of play, because a good party will consist of buff targets and buffers.

ok, i know this forum is all up talking about how the figther should not get buffs because he is not entitled to use another class resources, and how the cleric should cast all the buffs on himself because they are HIS spells, and screw you, how do you dare to play a fighter and expect a cooperative game!
but seriously, how often does it happen in practice?

If you are trying to obviate that situation by forbidding the cleric from buffing himself, then it won't work. because if that situation happens, it means at least one player at the table is being a jerk. possibly more than one. and you'd be trying to solve an ooc problem with an in-game solution

I have a more elegant version of this rule for you to consider:

Whenever a creature casts a spell, all ongoing spell effects on that creature are automatically dispelled.

on the other hand, the casters still can cancel all their debuffs with a feather fall. and i can envision martials also taking one level in a caster class to gain this "remove debuff" ability. or getting it from imbue magical ability or something similar.

Blasting-based spellcasters aren't nerfed. That doesn't make them fine, because they weren't fine to begin with.

it looks like you are arguing that a mailman is weak, which is... well, if you consider a mailman build weak, i would not want to play at your table. it's certainly stronger than anything my group would allow, and people among us who play in other groups report that we already maximize more than they do.
or i am misreading you and you are saying that you can still break the game with a blaster. in which case i fully agree, i made the same point myself.

Anthrowhale

2020-09-13, 08:37 PM

I have a more elegant version of this rule for you to consider:

That's certainly a simpler rule. I'm a little bit worried: Is it to effective? Can a reasonably-but-not-well-optimized party handle level-appropriate challenges?

"Buff the Fighter" isn't dominated by "buff yourself", it's dominated by "cast combat spells on the enemies directly".
I don't believe this is correct, particularly if you are going after something like a dragon which would be immune to direct spell application.

Self buffs aren't really a problem (not in general at least, there's certainly problematic buffs, like shapechange),

I disagree. Persistomancy is really buffomancy. Using it, you can make an ECL 1 creature able to take on a CR20 encounter. Even just a party making good use of core-only buffs can turn most level-appropriate encounters into cake walks.

but doesn't change the fact that casters are the only ones with meaningful non-combat abilities,

I disagree here---diplomancy and other social skills are actually pretty useful. Casters would certainly maintain a monopoly on many things (teleport, heal, etc...)

...you can still summon one...

Summons are actually pretty lame compared to a fighter with level-appropriate equipment. You can go for quantity over quality, but that's not always particularly effective.

...fire off some save or lose...

...which would now not work on enemy spellcasters.

...nuke everything as a mailman etc...
Agreed here. The mailman approach does still work and is broken-good at higher levels. That would require a separate treatment.

RAW, there's absolutely zero chance of Spellcraft (https://www.d20srd.org/srd/skills/spellcraft.htm) working the way you've described unless the person using the skill is also using Detect Magic.
You're right here.

You've split the game into two types of characters: Spellcasters who can't receive buffs because they've got awesome spells, and nonspellcasters who don't have spells but can receive buffs. The Ranger, Paladin, Spellthief, Hexblade, and any other partial casters are neither of those. They aren't powerful spellslingers, and they can't get buffed by the party's spellcasters. They're effectively not worth playing since they get hit by the spellcaster nerf without receiving the collateral buff to nonspellcasters.

Gishes are spellcasters, implying that they effectively have SR infinity vs. enemy spells as well. That has some significant benefits which noncasters like Fighters or Barbarians do not enjoy.

EVERY PERSONAL RANGE SPELL IS SR: NO

Do you have some rules quote for this? As far as I know, there is only your quote, which doesn't say that personal spells are SR:No. I'll make this more explicit.

Spellcasters will ignore every noninstantaneous spell, or only the ones that allow for SR, not a mix of the two. If the former, no crowd control will ever work on them. If the latter, they can still buff themselves completely unhindered, but can't buff each other.

The semantics here is: spellcasters ignore every spell that is noninstantaneous and not explicitly SR:No. Personally spells are not explicitly SR:No.

Stated the other way, all instantaneous spells apply to casters and all explicitly SR:No spells apply to spellcasters. So, no ignoring walls of stone, for example.

Is that semantics clear?

... you're immune to the effect of Obscuring Snow...

Not under the proposed semantics, because Obscuring Snow is an explicit SR:No.

Spellcasters get to ignore the AMFs because they're noninstantaneous, which means their magic items stay active and their spells continue working unhindered.

AMF has independent effect on spells, items, and creatures. Nothing in the proposed houserule alters the interaction of AMF with spells or items.

... spellcasters can just walk through the crowd controls like they don't exist...

I believe there is a miscommunication about the semantics here. Under the proposed semantics, this isn't correct. Is it clear enough given the above? Let me see if I can figure out how to state it more clearly...

NigelWalmsley

2020-09-13, 08:39 PM

it looks like you are arguing that a mailman is weak, which is... well, if you consider a mailman build weak, i would not want to play at your table.

The Mailman is not really a central example of what people mean by "blaster caster". Can you put a bunch of metamagic in a pile and use it to turn anything you happen to encounter into a fine red paste? Sure. But you can also do way less complicated things to get way more power as a caster. However powerful a Mailman is, a comparably optimized caster who optimized in a better tactic will be more powerful still. That doesn't mean the Mailman isn't powerful, but it's like pointing to weird Pugilist cheese as a reason the Fighter is competitive.

I don't believe this is correct, particularly if you are going after something like a dragon which would be immune to direct spell application.

The Dragon isn't immune to direct spell application. It just has some spell resistance. Dragons are a tough nut to crack, but buffing isn't really an optimal strategy, because the dragon has spellcasting of its own, a giant pile of magic items, and is very likely substantially more powerful unbuffed than whoever your party's melee combatant is.

...which would now not work on enemy spellcasters.

Some of them would. Finger of Death, for example, is instantaneous. This change would result in different death spells being used, and would make determining whether your opponent technically counts as a spellcaster or not an important bit of tactical information, but it doesn't make death spells any less desirable of a tactic.

I believe there is a miscommunication about the semantics here. Under the proposed semantics, this isn't correct. Is it clear enough given the above? Let me see if I can figure out how to state it more clearly...

The problem is you're never going to be able to define the semantics in a satisfying way. The game does not have a category that matches up to what you're trying to communicate.

Crichton

2020-09-13, 09:39 PM

I disagree. Persistomancy is really buffomancy. Using it, you can make an ECL 1 creature able to take on a CR20 encounter. Even just a party making good use of core-only buffs can turn most level-appropriate encounters into cake walks.

Seems to me what you're trying to address is your personal problem with persistomancy, but for some reason instead of targeting the abilities that allow large numbers of Persists, you're just nuking all of self-buffing and some other things. I don't understand why.

More importantly, you posted this asking what the community thinks, and every single respondent so far has said it's not a good idea and/or they don't understand why you'd want to do this. So there's your answer. The community thus far thinks it's not a great idea. Rather than continue to respond to every single reply that comes in with variations of "but that's not what I meant" or "no, I disagree" perhaps you could take the feedback you explicitly requested, and have thus received, and either scrap or refine your idea.

As for my personal assessment? This proposal is neither 'minimally invasive' nor a 'caster fix' and the 'problem' it seems to be intended for isn't really that big an issue, outside of tangentially related exploits of Persistent Spell. Players spend their character's daily resources on the things they deem important, and if they want to use their limited spell slots to buff themselves, then that's the playstyle they enjoy, and nuking that entire option from orbit is the only way to be sure they can't have their badwrongfun. On the other hand, if you have a problem with a player at your table overshadowing all the other players, that's an OOC issue that doesn't really need IC intervention. As many here like to use as a mantra: balance to the table.

Anthrowhale

2020-09-13, 11:01 PM

If you are trying to obviate that situation by forbidding the cleric from buffing himself, then it won't work. because if that situation happens, it means at least one player at the table is being a jerk. possibly more than one. and you'd be trying to solve an ooc problem with an in-game solution

I've certainly seen games where one player's character was ineffectual and unfun. I'm not sure it's fair to call the other player's jerks though.

The Dragon isn't immune to direct spell application. It just has some spell resistance.

Under this house rule "some" is effectively infinite, unless the spell has instantaneous duration.

Some of them would. Finger of Death, for example, is instantaneous.

In my experience, "Save or Lose" is used to describe status effects short of dead. Usually, people use "Save or Die" for those. I agree that death effects would remain effective for spellcasters.

... either scrap or refine your idea.

Actually, it has been refined---see the edits.

Biffoniacus_Furiou

2020-09-14, 12:05 AM

Do you have some rules quote for this? As far as I know, there is only your quote, which doesn't say that personal spells are SR:No. I'll make this more explicit.

The semantics here is: spellcasters ignore every spell that is noninstantaneous and not explicitly SR:No. Personally spells are not explicitly SR:No.

Stated the other way, all instantaneous spells apply to casters and all explicitly SR:No spells apply to spellcasters. So, no ignoring walls of stone, for example.

Is that semantics clear?

Not under the proposed semantics, because Obscuring Snow is an explicit SR:No.

AMF has independent effect on spells, items, and creatures. Nothing in the proposed houserule alters the interaction of AMF with spells or items.

I believe there is a miscommunication about the semantics here. Under the proposed semantics, this isn't correct. Is it clear enough given the above? Let me see if I can figure out how to state it more clearly...

RAW, spell resistance never applies to spells you're casting on yourself. RAW, personal range spells can only be cast on yourself. Thus, RAW SR will never apply to personal range spells, because they're always cast on yourself. They don't need an entry for it, adding another line to every personal range spell would have added more pages to every book that contains spells, but if they did include it, it would say SR: No.

Regarding Antimagic Field, your attended items are an extension of your character, as are your spells. If your character is immune, that carries over to your items and spells as well.

King of Nowhere

2020-09-14, 07:39 AM

Regarding Antimagic Field, your attended items are an extension of your character, as are your spells. If your character is immune, that carries over to your items and spells as well.

going offtopic here, but is that so?
if somebody is trying to sunder an item i'm wearing, having cast stoneskin on myself does not protect the item with it. Seems a strange interpretation.

Anthrowhale

2020-09-14, 08:00 AM

RAW, spell resistance never applies to spells you're casting on yourself. RAW, personal range spells can only be cast on yourself. Thus, RAW SR will never apply to personal range spells, because they're always cast on yourself. They don't need an entry for it, adding another line to every personal range spell would have added more pages to every book that contains spells, but if they did include it, it would say SR: No.
I agree with this. Pesonal spells are not explicitly SR:No though, right? Perhaps it's clearer if I just say spellcasters are subject to nonpersonal SR:No spells.

Regarding Antimagic Field, your attended items are an extension of your character, as are your spells. If your character is immune, that carries over to your items and spells as well.

Do you have a rules quote for this? I'm aware of none, and it would dramatically change my understanding. My understanding comes from reading AMF, which says:
...it prevents the functioning of any magic items or spells within its confines. implying that it directly affects items and spells. Hence, a Selective Spell[You] Antimagic Field keeps you from winking out if you are an incorporeal undead, but your spells and items are suppressed.

Separately, I've been debating divination spells. Maybe it's better to extend an exception to all of them, rather than just Read Magic? It does seem awkward for See Invisibility to become available after Invisibility.

Crichton

2020-09-14, 09:36 AM

Actually, it has been refined---see the edits.

THAT's all you took away from my response? Perhaps you should read it again.

You asked what the community thinks of this alteration, with the stated intent that it 'fix' the 'problem' of caster dominance. But as many others have said, it doesn't fix or prevent that at all. Honestly, if self-buffs are what you perceive to be the root cause of casters being stronger than martials, maybe you need to take a closer look at magic in 3.5. As I said before, if your problem is really a problem with overuse of Persist, then perhaps you should address that more specifically, instead of telling players that a huge swath of spells and classes are the 'wrong' way to play D&D. But what it really sounds like is that you have OOC problems with *players*, not with characters.

Either way, you asked what we all thought of the proposed alteration, and the overwhelming response was that it's not a very good idea, and that it doesn't accomplish what it was intended to do. No amount of tweaking the wording to clarify your intent is going to change that.

Thunder999

2020-09-14, 09:41 AM

Since it seems the real problem is stacking loads of persistent spell, may I suggest just putting a limit on how many persistent spells you can have or banning it outright (though personally I think allowing a single persistent spell is more fun, if a cleric wants to blow most or all of their turn undead uses and three feats to have a buff up all day then that's honestly fine if you ask me)

Buufreak

2020-09-14, 11:05 AM

Whenever a creature casts a spell, all ongoing spell effects on that creature are automatically dispelled.

I think the more elegant thing would be any caster can have only 1 active duration spell at a time. Really cleans up the "BuFf EvErYtGiNg" mentality.

Doctor Despair

2020-09-14, 11:09 AM

I think the more elegant thing would be any caster can have only 1 active duration spell at a time. Really cleans up the "BuFf EvErYtGiNg" mentality.

Hopefully including crafted contingent spells in some way

Piggy Knowles

2020-09-14, 11:41 AM

Alternately, make the maximum non-instantaneous duration 1 rd/level and eliminate any way to persist or quicken buff spells. The spells aren't banned, can still be used on themselves or their allies, but they can't be stacked and pretty much always have an opportunity cost (namely the action required to cast them in combat). This is going to mean that spells with dramatic effects like haste or polymorph will likely still see play, retaining the role of the iconic role of the buffer mage/transmuter, and leave most blasters and utility mages largely untouched, but keep mages from becoming unkillable or completely outclassing every other role via the use of several self-buffs.

Kayblis

2020-09-14, 12:10 PM

If you call this "minimally invasive", you don't know what the word 'invasive' means. Your fix may be 3 lines long or something like that, but it pretty much changes the whole game. It's like saying "magic doesn't exist" is a minimally invasive fix because it is 3 words long and doesn't explicitly overrule other rules text.

So, you got rid of what, one fifth of all spells in the game? More than half of the good ones? Made a lot of the best tactics either impossible or seriously worse? And you think that's "minimally invasive".

To me it's pretty clear that it's not a fix for power, or versatility, or balance. It's a rules rewrite because of a personal dislike for a tactic that other people like. If your problem was with people having tons and tons of buffs, just limit the amount of buffs. If you really want to create castes of "better, buffable people" and "worse, unbuffable people" you could still have it by setting different limits to the total buffs based on spellcasting, like "If you cast spells, you're limited to 2 active buffs. If you're not, you can have up to 5." Change the numbers to your liking. Hell, do as everyone else and just ban Polymorph/Shapechange, as they're the big offenders. You still limit the tactic you don't personally like, and people can still play D&D without having to re-learn the system because of poorly thought out homebrew.

The fact you think it's all miscommunication, even when no one thinks this is a good idea in principle, makes me question if this is a honest attempt at improving. You can't make an idea better if all you do is find fault in your critics.

liquidformat

2020-09-14, 12:18 PM

I have actually found just not allowing any Level 7+ spells pre epic does a pretty good job balancing. I still let full casters have level 7,8, & 9 slots so they can be used for metamagic they just don't have access to those spells. For times when level 7+ spells are needed for some reason I leverage Incantation (https://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/magic/incantations.htm) rules which allows me to insert backlashes and so forth for using these spells.

This is a very simple and straight forward fix and in using it I have found a lot of people are now willing to use PRCs that before they ignored because they reduced caster level. Though I haven't played with it in epic levels I think it would also make level 21-30 more interesting because that is when you start getting access to level 7-9 spells by leveraging a modified version of epic spell casting/spell research.

For the fluff aspect of utilizing the rule I go with the world being less magical than in other settings, or a lot of the spells have been lost to a previous age.

lylsyly

2020-09-14, 01:01 PM

snip ...

This, except I limit spells to 5th level and no metamagic.

liquidformat

2020-09-14, 01:30 PM

This, except I limit spells to 5th level and no metamagic.

Why do you go with 5th level out of curiosity?

Killing off metamagic seems pretty rough that in effect makes going wizard/cleric and most other full casters (except druid) pretty much useless...

lylsyly

2020-09-14, 01:39 PM

Same reason I killed wildshape, alter self, any polymorph and any summoning except nature's ally. Just a general lowering of the power level of the game. I've been using this for a few years now (when it's my turn to DM) and we are good with it.

Anthrowhale

2020-09-14, 01:40 PM

Since it seems the real problem is stacking loads of persistent spell...
This is not the real problem in my understanding. Spellcasters can be quite dominant even without the use of persistent spell. Persistent spell just makes one of the primary dominating aspects much more so.

I think the more elegant thing would be any caster can have only 1 active duration spell at a time. Really cleans up the "BuFf EvErYtGiNg" mentality.
Same question as for DeAnno---Is the game balanced around this? I'm a bit worried that 3.5 implicitly assumes that there are multiple buffs in play. For example, Magic Vestment and Greater Magic Weapon, possibly cast multiple times across the party.

Alternately, make the maximum non-instantaneous duration 1 rd/level and eliminate any way to persist or quicken buff spells.
So, 1 rd/level independent of the target vs. instantaneous for spellcaster and unchanged for mundanes? Wizards could still War-Troll their way through encounters, although it certainly would cut into buff stacks. I'm still concerned a bit about things like magic vestment / greater magic weapon. I think the game is assuming that you have access to these?

I have actually found just not allowing any Level 7+ spells pre epic does a pretty good job balancing.
This seems like a simpler version of Grod's solution. If I recall correctly, he basically gave all the strong casters Bard spell slots, or something to that effect.

...
To participate in this thread constructively, you need to be able to perceive serious power imbalances in the game, be comfortable with thinking about what would happen under alterations of the rules, and be comfortable with thinking about solving parts of a larger problem.

If you call this "minimally invasive", you don't know what the word 'invasive' means.
I'm not interested in debating the meaning of "invasive".

Thunder999

2020-09-14, 03:10 PM

Persist is when buffs are a problem, spellcaster dominance is largely not due to buffs but because spells let you do more than just damage stuff until it dies and make a few skill checks (though they're also quite capable of doing damage, directly killing, boosting skill checks and replacing skill checks).

King of Nowhere

2020-09-14, 04:53 PM

buff spells are a problem only when the caster has dozens of them and the others don't, because the casters does not want to share. which, again, would be a problem with players. last few high level fights we were in, the wizard had some 10 spells on him, but everyone else also was above 10; we were breaking balance all together.

one thing about buffs, though, is that you can raise your caster level to make them almost impossible to dispel. i strongly limit how much you can raise your caster level by giving diminishing returns for it, and it already solves some of the problems.
I also limited the ability to spam spells for free with summoned creatures or polymorph, and i limited the chance to use spells in place of skill checks. this mostly solved caster dominance at my table.

and that was actually "minimally invasive", in that even if i have 4 pages written of stuff that's banned or nerfed or changed, the gameplay stays the same; if you're not trying to get overpowered, you're probably not ever going to conflict with my list. i don't have people taking one level of spellcaster to gain debuff immunity

NigelWalmsley

2020-09-14, 05:08 PM

In my experience, "Save or Lose" is used to describe status effects short of dead. Usually, people use "Save or Die" for those. I agree that death effects would remain effective for spellcasters.

Color Spray is a save-or-lose that's both instantaneous and not a death effect. There's stuff out there. It might not be optimal right now, but people will go to the effort of finding it if those are the only effects you can use consistently.

I think the more elegant thing would be any caster can have only 1 active duration spell at a time. Really cleans up the "BuFf EvErYtGiNg" mentality.

Pretty much. Though one might be too low. It's really not a problem if a caster has Overland Flight and Mirror Image or something. Also, the specific buff matters a lot. Persistent Wraithstrike is busted in a way that Improved Invisibility is not.

Alternately, make the maximum non-instantaneous duration 1 rd/level and eliminate any way to persist or quicken buff spells.

That seems like overkill. It also really pushes you towards the most powerful buff effects, because it's no longer possible to have a weaker buff that lasts through multiple fights.

This is not the real problem in my understanding. Spellcasters can be quite dominant even without the use of persistent spell. Persistent spell just makes one of the primary dominating aspects much more so.

Buffing yourself is not the primary reason spellcasters are dominant unless Persistent Spell is in play.

I'm not interested in debating the meaning of "invasive".

I don't think that's the point the other poster is really trying to make.

Kayblis

2020-09-14, 05:52 PM

I'm not interested in debating the meaning of "invasive".

Thanks for confirming the idea. If that's your only response, this isn't a honest attempt at change or even at getting feedback. No matter what people say, you're not willing to understand it.

Epic Legand

2020-09-16, 03:50 AM

There are a lot of issues here. 1st, the clear overwhelming response to your proposed fix looks to be negative. That is OK, you can still run it at your own tale with or without anyone else's approval.

2ed, if your goal is to make game play more balanced, its been shown that spell casters would still dominate.

3ed, If your goal is to erase some styles of gameplay and to promote others, then just say THAT, and do not hide it as "better", "fair" or "Balanced"....Just say you hate self buffing, and you do not want them at your table. Your proposed houserule would make ALL the characters I ever play useless. I never want to play the buffer, I never want to be buffed by someone else. I like an independent character. This in no way prevents me from cooperative game play, so please do not misread my intent.

4th, your proposed houserule would require massive rebuilding of fully 50% of any character build from 6th level on, and how many 1st level wizards could cast mage armor? What level would they START being able to afford a magic item to allow them to side step your house rule and start gaining access to to a basic spell that is used by almost every single wizard ? The real question here would be what level do your players expect to play at? If its 10-15th, then I would just be buying items to allow me to dodge your houserule, if its 1st -6th, then I would just run a martial.

Your houserule does not fix anything. You should rethink what it is you want to do, state it clearly, and try to make rules that help you achieve your goals. Part of the issue seams to be you are saying one thing is your goal, while your actaul goal seams to be different. Is your goal to make casters the party buffers? Is your goal to stop self buffing ? Because nether of there is about balance or fair game play. Are you the DM at your table? Who are you trying to convince here? Your table or the community?

Blazeteck

2020-09-16, 07:21 AM

If the problem isnt that buffs exist and its just the fact that you can stack buffs then id think the solution that would work better would simply be having a limit to the number of buffs that can come the the source "self" to some reasonable number. This way buffs would still stack on others and self only buff spells can still be used. This would keep from nerfing the paladin, ranger, spellthief and hexblade as someone mentioned. with this casters could still buff themselves in relevant situations like a need for detect magic, energy immunity, mage armor or something of the sort. You said yourself that the issue wasnt any one broken buff so with this change you dont simply rob every caster of being able to cast any self buffs ever.

Anthrowhale

2020-09-16, 09:05 AM

2ed, if your goal is to make game play more balanced, its been shown that spell casters would still dominate.

This isn't clear to me. People talk about a mailman turning things into a red paste, but a highly buffed mundane could also do the same thing.

I think the more serious question here is "what is balance?" There is both a player-vs-player notion of balance and a player-vs-monster notion of balance. The proposed rule change does approximately nothing for PvM balance. It actually does quite a bit for PvP balance. The core issue with PvP balance in my view is that mundanes are basically gimped-spellcasters as far as capabilities. Can you name a mundane capability that spellcasters do not have access to? (Something that matters?)

Let's consider the Fighter: Full BaB & feats. That's just some buffs (Divine Power, Divine Favor, Tenser's Transformation, Draconic Polymorph, Heroics).

Let's consider the Rogue: Sneak Attack, Skills, Evasion, Traps. That's the Kobold Domain, Sacred Outlaw, Cloistered Cleric, Ruin Delver's Fortune (via the spell domain), Able Learning, Guidance of the Avatar, and Divine Insight.

A party literally could replace all mundanes with spellcasters and simply be a more capable party. Now, obviously this is not required---the standard monsters and adventures are setup so that a cooperating party of mundanes and spellcasters can overcome the challenges. Particularly with higher level adventures, there are some where a mundane-only party cannot hope to succeed.

To counter this, you can ban lots of material (all dragon magazine, all setting specific books. all books but core and complete. Core-only, etc...) to avoid the outcome above. Does that really help? Maybe some, but the vast amount of material available to 3.5 is a big part of why it's interesting.

You can soft-ban buffs as per various proposals (only one active per spellcaster, only one active per recipient, at most one round/level duration, etc...). That helps modestly, although spellcasters are still overwhelming in combat (i.e. mailman) and at least competitive with mundanes in all other mundane things while retaining many more options.

You can ban L7+ or L6+ spells. But, no observations above relied on L6+ spells so this doesn't fundamentally change the PvP balance. You can go further and ban almost everything by playing an E6 game. That sort-of works, although it's still the case that spellcasters trample on mundane ground fairly effectively.

Or, of course, you could go with something like this house rule. It gives mundanes a new capability ('buff-monkey') which spellcasters inherently do not have. As such, mundanes can do something now that spellcasters cannot. An optimized buff-monkey would be an absolute terror on the battlefield and nigh-unstoppable in social challenges.

Some have suggested that summons could be an alternate buff-monkey, but I'm quite skeptical. There are no summons better worth buffing than a mundane party member, partly because no one sane would risk giving items to summons, and partly because summons are typically a weaker platform than a party's mundanes. The same is true for conjuration(calling) effects, undead, or thralls. ACs are at least a reasonable choice for buff-monkey, but I don't think people are taking into account the critical need for items by spellcasters under this house rule (as that's the only way that spellcasters enjoy buffs) so sharing wealth by level with an AC is a pretty significant tradeoff. Furthermore, ACs have some significant limitations compared to mundane classes.

Your proposed houserule would make ALL the characters I ever play useless. I never want to play the buffer, I never want to be buffed by someone else. I like an independent character. This in no way prevents me from cooperative game play, so please do not misread my intent.

I'm not following. Is the claim that independent characters must be able to self-buff? I don't think that's true, at least w.r.t. game expectations. Items can go a long ways towards providing reasonable-according-to-game-expectation buffs. Are you saying that you only play characters that self-buff and never use magic items? Then I agree that all your characters would be useless under this houserule. The initiate of mystra persistomancer is definitely nerfed here.

4th, your proposed houserule would require massive rebuilding of fully 50% of any character build from 6th level on,

I'm skeptical about this. Mundanes would work unchanged. Spellcasters and gishes might want to emphasize the items they buy a bit more. None of this seems like "massive rebuilding" to me.

and how many 1st level wizards could cast mage armor? What level would they START being able to afford a magic item to allow them to side step your house rule and start gaining access to to a basic spell that is used by almost every single wizard ? The real question here would be what level do your players expect to play at? If its 10-15th, then I would just be buying items to allow me to dodge your houserule, if its 1st -6th, then I would just run a martial.

I think it's completely fine to run a martial, but maybe you should have a conversation with the people up-thread who think that a martial remains useless because the wizard can still cast color spray?

There is a general incoherency to the comments which I expect simply has to do with not quite following through all the implications of the house rule.

Another incoherency is that some people believe gishes would be useless while others think that all mundanes would take a level of spellcaster so they get immunity to enemy debuff spells. Where is the truth? Somewhere in the middle---gishes can still do things that mundanes can't, but mundanes can now do things that gishes can not.

NigelWalmsley

2020-09-16, 11:32 AM

There are no summons better worth buffing than a mundane party member, partly because no one sane would risk giving items to summons, and partly because summons are typically a weaker platform than a party's mundanes.

So what? You don't need the summons to be as good as the Fighter. You need them to be good enough that you are coming out ahead by having a Cleric instead of a Fighter. Which in turn means that you're not comparing point-to-point. Maybe whatever you're popping out of Summon Monster or Animate Dead or Planar Binding isn't as good as a Fighter, baseline. But you're not doing a baseline comparison. If that summon takes half the Cleric's spell slots to catch up to the Fighter, that's fine, because you're still ahead by half a Cleric's worth of spell slots.

In many ways, summons are simply better than mundanes, because even under this proposal mundanes aren't going to be the primary killers. Having meatshields that are expendable and numerous is better than having a single meatshield who is slightly harder core that you have to spend money and castings of Raise Dead on. And that's what using conjured minions delivers.

Thunder999

2020-09-16, 11:48 AM

NigelWalmsley

2020-09-16, 03:05 PM

furthermore they're just one of your prepared/known spells, you have all the utility of a druid/wizard/cleric etc. on top. Why have beatstick as your only mechanical contribution when you can conjure an adequate one and play a character with lots of other fun stuff to do.

This point makes me skeptical of the fix as a whole even if it "works" in some technical sense. On a fundamental level, this fix is a subsidy for Fighters and other martials at the expense of self-buffing casters. But is that actually desirable? If self-buffing lets you do the work of a beatstick while still providing the utility of a caster, that seems totally fine. What this proposal does, then, is shift the party frontliner from being able to see the future, summon angels, and travel between worlds to not be able to do any of that. Why is that desirable? It seems like it's essentially insisting that "character who doesn't contribute to anything but combat" is a role we need to protect, when it seems to me that locking yourself out of other minigames is a problem to be avoided.

Blazeteck

2020-09-16, 05:28 PM

For summons they might not be as good as a decently built martial, but they can certainly be good enough to handle the beatstick role in combat, and whereas the martial is probably not great at much outside of combat, there's quite a few summonable creatures with excellent utility spell like abilities, furthermore they're just one of your prepared/known spells, you have all the utility of a druid/wizard/cleric etc. on top. Why have beatstick as your only mechanical contribution when you can conjure an adequate one and play a character with lots of other fun stuff to do.

Oh and for the mailman it's simple, an ubercharger can murder one guy a round, maybe a couple more if they're all within reach, a mailman can reliably kill every foe in most encounters, even if they're fairly spread out. THe mailman even has some spells known left over to do other stuff with, many more if you include stuff like runestaves.

Is it not enough that someone might just want to roleplay as a fighter or barbarian? its not like these characters are just not fun to play or something and if you're fantasy is to be a martial badass then you're probably not gonna get that playing a summoner. a lot of those classes do have skills too its not like being a "beatstick" is literally their only contribution. A pure fighter may be a the closest thing to an exception to this but what does that matter if they're enjoying themselves? Also, im gonna go ahead and say that if you have a player in your game thats playing a martial class and they only get to feel like they're contributing to the game when there is combat or that they're useless or redundant then they either dont have much of an imagination, you have players who are glory hogs, or you have a poor DM that doesnt know how to create a narrative/scenario that will allow him to shine in some aspects.

its a role play game man. sometimes its not always about having an immediate answer for every problem.

Anthrowhale

2020-09-16, 05:32 PM

You don't need the summons to be as good as the Fighter. You need them to be good enough that you are coming out ahead by having a Cleric instead of a Fighter.
This is a change in argument from "mundanes drag because spellcasters can do everything they can and more" to "mundanes drag because although they can do some things better than spellcasters, spellcasters are more adaptable overall. On one hand, there are several OOC skill-based things that a mundane could still excel at. On the other hand, the change in argument seems like success.

Having meatshields that are expendable and numerous is better than having a single meatshield who is slightly harder core that you have to spend money and castings of Raise Dead on.
I'm sure there are settings where mook-minions are useful, but there's something to be said for a deluxe buff-monkey when you are using your greater teleport's transport capacity.

Also, I think you are underrating the value of buffing. Typically, well-chosen buffing gives increasing returns, not decreasing returns. For example Persistent Wraithstrike + Greater Might Wallop is more than 2x better than either of these alone. Similarly, stacking save-enhancing buffs until the probability of failure is <5% is much better than leaving saves at a 25% of failure. Altogether, a good buff-monkey is far better than a 'slightly harder core' after buffing.

Why have beatstick as your only mechanical contribution when you can conjure an adequate one and play a character with lots of other fun stuff to do.
The same shift in argument here. Sounds like success.

Oh and for the mailman it's simple, an ubercharger can murder one guy a round, maybe a couple more if they're all within reach, a mailman can reliably kill every foe in most encounters, even if they're fairly spread out. THe mailman even has some spells known left over to do other stuff with, many more if you include stuff like runestaves.
I think you are overrating a Mailman build a little bit. It's a bit of a late bloomer in terms of damage potential and a dedicated Mailman really requires some serious investment in feats. it's a bit weak at levels 1-9, reasonable at levels 10-15, and starts really stomping in level 16-20. I actually don't like an ubercharger much because of the glass-cannon nature of them, but a buff-monkey comes online maybe 5 levels earlier than a Mailman and is far less delicate than an ubercharger.

What this proposal does, then, is shift the party frontliner from being able to see the future, summon angels, and travel between worlds to not be able to do any of that. Why is that desirable? It seems like it's essentially insisting that "character who doesn't contribute to anything but combat" is a role we need to protect, when it seems to me that locking yourself out of other minigames is a problem to be avoided.
I'd say it's desirable because it means the game naturally supports a wider variety of character archetypes which might match the inclinations of a wider variety of players. Restated, a game where mundane characters have at least some points of strength will appeal to more people.

NigelWalmsley

2020-09-16, 06:11 PM

Is it not enough that someone might just want to roleplay as a fighter or barbarian?

Is it not enough that someone might just want to roleplay as a Cleric who buffs themselves? Implicit in arguments like this is the notion that mundane characters have a greater right to be party frontliners than casters do. But that's not really fair. Some people want to play Fighters. Other people want to play Clerics. Once we've accepted that those options are incompatible because of their power levels, "I just like X" becomes a zero-sum argument.

if you're fantasy is to be a martial badass then you're probably not gonna get that playing a summoner.

Sure. But we're not talking about summoners. This change essentially only effects characters who are trying to be martial badasses. The summoner Cleric or the Dread Necromancer don't care about this change at all. What it does is swap one set of martials (self-buffing casters) for a different set (mundanes who need buffs from the rest of the party). And what that does, mechanically, is replace a character who provides a net surplus of spell slots with a character who provides a net deficit of them. By making this change, not only do you stop providing the healing and divine wisdom a Cleric would provide, you actually require that the Wizard who wanted to spend his time casting BFC spells now instead prepare some buffs so you can do your job.

you have a poor DM that doesnt know how to create a narrative/scenario that will allow him to shine in some aspects.

How? What is the DM supposed to be doing that allows a Barbarian to shine? The Barbarian has three or four skills, and they're all either outclassed by spells, or also available to casters who will likely have bigger bonuses at them. How is the DM supposed to allow the Barbarian to shine without writing in challenges that specifically exclude everyone else? And if the reason you "shine" is because no one else was allowed to do anything, how is that supposed to be satisfying for everyone?

its a role play game man. sometimes its not always about having an immediate answer for every problem.

That doesn't make it okay to play a character whose contribution is that the rest of the party is less able to solve problems. It's like your "contribution" to your social circle being that when your friends go out for lunch, you leave your wallet at home and make Greg buy your meal. How is that fun for anyone?

This is a change in argument from "mundanes drag because spellcasters can do everything they can and more" to "mundanes drag because although they can do some things better than spellcasters, spellcasters are more adaptable overall."

Casters are better at combat than mundanes. It doesn't matter if they use different tactics, because those tactics are more effective. Yes, standing behind a line of expendable chaff and throwing death spells at your enemies isn't getting up in your enemies' faces and exchanging full attacks. But guess what? It's better than getting up in your enemies' faces and exchanging full attacks. This whole thread people have been explaining to you that "buff yourself" has never been the optimal strategy for casters, people are not changing their argument when they claim that something other than "buff yourself" is the optimal caster strategy.

On one hand, there are several OOC skill-based things that a mundane could still excel at.

The fact that the Fighter could be played by the guy who is good at tactics or really understands how to manage party-level resources is a weak argument. Obviously, it is equally true that the Wizard could have those skills, and IME players with those skills are typically attracted to characters that have abilities that are relevant to them.

I'm sure there are settings where mook-minions are useful, but there's something to be said for a deluxe buff-monkey when you are using your greater teleport's transport capacity.

If I have a Wizard + minions instead of a Fighter, I can cast Greater Teleport an additional time or three and still come out ahead, because I've gained more in spell slots from not having a Fighter than I've lost from having extra minions. Not to mention that many spells create minions that can cast Greater Teleport themselves (Planar Binding) or are used in-combat (Summon Monster).

Also, I think you are underrating the value of buffing. Typically, well-chosen buffing gives increasing returns, not decreasing returns. For example Persistent Wraithstrike + Greater Might Wallop is more than 2x better than either of these alone.

Persistent Wraithstrike + Greater Mighty Wallop is not a legal combo for your buff-monkey, because Wraithstrike is a Personal spell. And, yes, buffs can multiply in effectiveness. You know what else multiplies the effectiveness of your buffs? Having them hit multiple mooks. The Bard's Inspire Courage hits every ally who can hear him, so the party gets far better value combining him with a summoner than a Fighter.

I'd say it's desirable because it means the game naturally supports a wider variety of character archetypes which might match the inclinations of a wider variety of players.

Except it doesn't. You've added "buff receptacle mundane", but you've lost "self-buffing caster". The number of supported archetypes is the same, it's just that now some of them don't have abilities that help the party solve non-combat problems and don't have buffs to share with the rest of the party. Why is making the average character contribute less to the rest of the party supposed to be a good thing?

Anthrowhale

2020-09-16, 07:44 PM

Casters are better at combat than mundanes...
You aren't addressing the variation in the two arguments that I wrote down.

Persistent Wraithstrike + Greater Mighty Wallop is not a legal combo for your buff-monkey, because Wraithstrike is a Personal spell.

A ring of spell storing (https://www.d20srd.org/srd/magicItems/rings.htm#spellStoringMinor) says otherwise.

Except it doesn't. You've added "buff receptacle mundane", but you've lost "self-buffing caster".
I believe that many more people come to the game with the concept of a mundane (who is, by the house rule, a buff monkey), than the other concept.

NigelWalmsley

2020-09-16, 08:06 PM

You aren't addressing the variation in the two arguments that I wrote down.

No, I explained that. People have been repeatedly telling you that self buffing is not why casters are good. You are now treating those same people proffering a caster strategy that isn't "buff yourself" as some kind of victory for you. It very obviously is not.

A ring of spell storing (https://www.d20srd.org/srd/magicItems/rings.htm#spellStoringMinor) says otherwise.

Persistent Wraithstrike is an 8th level spell, and therefore cannot be put into anything short of a Major Ring of Spell Storing. That eats our buff monkey's entire WBL at 15th level. I suppose you could propose that we're going to be using DMM: Persist here or something, but I feel that only underscores my point. We're still getting a character that is functionally CoDzilla, it's just that instead of providing a bunch of utility magic, they are causing the rest of the party to have less utility magic. That's just making the game worse for everyone else because you're not willing to write "Cleric" on your sheet instead of "Fighter", and it makes you the problem.

I believe that many more people come to the game with the concept of a mundane (who is, by the house rule, a buff monkey), than the other concept.

Many people come to the game with a character concept of martial. Almost no one comes to the game with a character concept of "mundane", because pretty much the only people who think "doesn't use magic" is a meaningful or desirable character concept are heavily enfranchised D&D players. And the people who want to play a martial are imagining a character who is personally badass, not a character who is a buff monkey. Having the sword-wielders be Gishes and Clerics is not ideal, but it is substantially more faithful to people's desires than having them be Fighters who can only contribute because of a giant pile of spells they didn't cast.

Anthrowhale

2020-09-16, 09:31 PM

Persistent Wraithstrike is an 8th level spell...
It's a second level spell by RAW. Reading here (https://www.d20srd.org/srd/feats.htm#metamagicFeats)

In all ways, a metamagic spell operates at its original spell level...

It's reasonable enough for a DM to houserule otherwise of course.

Kelb_Panthera

2020-09-16, 09:45 PM

It's a second level spell by RAW. Reading here (https://www.d20srd.org/srd/feats.htm#metamagicFeats)

It's reasonable enough for a DM to houserule otherwise of course.

I hate to bolster an argument I strongly disagree with but Nigel's right this time. In the link to the ring of spell storing you posted, it explicitly says to count the spell level adjustment from metamagic against the ring's storage capacity. Persistent wratihstrike is an 8th level spell. In fact, the way it's phrased may even prevent metamagic mitigation from making any difference although that is subject to interpretation.

I'd normally suggest the bracers of spell sharing from DMG2 for sharing personal buffs but that doesn't work under your proposed houserule.

NigelWalmsley

2020-09-16, 09:49 PM

It's a second level spell by RAW. Reading here (https://www.d20srd.org/srd/feats.htm#metamagicFeats)

It's reasonable enough for a DM to houserule otherwise of course.

Metamagic versions of spells take up storage space equal to their spell level modified by the metamagic feat.

If you are going to make arguments based on rules citations, please do me the courtesy of assuming I can read the rules myself.

Anthrowhale

2020-09-17, 07:29 AM

I hate to bolster an argument I strongly disagree with but Nigel's right this time. In the link to the ring of spell storing you posted, it explicitly says to count the spell level adjustment from metamagic against the ring's storage capacity. Persistent wratihstrike is an 8th level spell. In fact, the way it's phrased may even prevent metamagic mitigation from making any difference although that is subject to interpretation.

I'd normally suggest the bracers of spell sharing from DMG2 for sharing personal buffs but that doesn't work under your proposed houserule.
Oh, good, that's saner. I believe the correct phrasing is that persistent wraithstrike is a 2nd level spell which requires an 8 level capacity from a ring of spell storing.

There are a few other ways to pass around Persistent Wraithstrike spells.

Incantatrix 2 can pass Wraithstrike via a Ring of Spell Storing and then make it Persistent as a buff-monkey casts it at ECL 7. The DC 42 skillcheck required however is pretty steep if you can't self-buff. An Item Familiar (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/magic/itemFamiliars.htm) is the only approach I can think of off-hand and you won't succeed reliably until later levels.

Spellguard 4 with the Magic of the Land feat can use personal spells as touch spells.

W.r.t. cost of a ring of spell storing, it's an expensive item for good reason. I'd expect parties to often purchase it as a group rather than as individuals.

I've also been thinking about the gish role, and I think I have a partial solution. If we phrase things differently so that the caster level of noninstantaneous spells is upper-bounded by the character level minus the caster level of the recipient then half-caster level gishes seem good, a Sorcadin can function as long as it avoids practiced spellcaster, and a dragon is typically unrestricted.

NigelWalmsley

2020-09-17, 07:50 AM

Incantatrix 2 can pass Wraithstrike via a Ring of Spell Storing and then make it Persistent as a buff-monkey casts it at ECL 7.

Again, what the hell? If you're okay with people playing Incantatrix and getting free Persistent Spell, why are you trying to set things up to shoehorn the Fighter into every party? You're not actually doing anything to curb power levels, you're just demanding that the guy who benefits from all those buff spells is a drain on party resources instead of a benefit to them. That's stupid. We should not under any circumstances do that, because it is stupid.

W.r.t. cost of a ring of spell storing, it's an expensive item for good reason. I'd expect parties to often purchase it as a group rather than as individuals.

Oh, so now in addition to costing me some of my spell slots, this fix costs me some of my WBL? Again, that's stupid. Your whole "fix" is demanding that the rest of the party get to do less of the things they want to do because you are unwilling to play characters that pull their weight. Stop it. It's perfectly reasonable to claim that the Persist-stacking cheese that Incantatrixes do is cheese. Demanding that they only be allowed to do it on the Fighters behalf is not. If that kind of play is reasonable, just play a damn caster and be done with it.

Quertus

2020-09-17, 09:42 AM

Initial reaction: I hate it.

-----

Slightly more detailed reaction: you've utterly killed the concept of the self-buffer, and crippled Gish ( / Paladin / Ranger) concepts.

Further, this

This creates a more cooperative form of play, because a good party will consist of buff targets and buffers.

(Despite being not completely unlike something I've suggested before) seems to me to produce the opposite of a good party - it will produce "producers" and "consumers", and should lead to some very… unstable… and likely toxic relationships.

*If* this were coupled with giving muggles buff powers, which only casters could benefit from, it would produce a healthy, symbiotic relationship.

Also, I'm not sure how gameable immunity to which AoE effects is, but it *sounds* potentially half-baked here.

And "share spell" abilities - how would those work?

-----

Taking a step back: it really does a number on world-building.

2e had 3 common ways to Detect Magic. 2 of those transitioned into 3e - the two which, under your change, would require an ally to function; the 3rd was the one that was left behind. This would make no sense for these worlds.

Similarly, one would expect spell development to have advanced along different lines than "must cast into spell Storing object to use". And divine buffs not being able to buff divine champions is a bit… odd.

Speaking of spell Storing, one would expect advancements there - like a Ring of Spell Storing & Chain Spell.

But at least we've addressed the main balance concerns & primary source of complaints… oh, wait, no we haven't. SoD, fight-ending BFC, scry and die - those are all unaffected by this change.

Oh, and now casters cannot adventure under water (no water breathing), on other planes (no protection from fire or other planar effects), anywhere inaccessible (no flight / spider climb), anywhere requiring stealth (no disguise self / invisibility).

-----

Allow me to propose an alternate simple fix.

All spells are now "at will".

Buff spells are automatically added to all Muggle "spells known" at level appropriate times; all are granted range, and only affect squishy casters.

Casters cannot cast buff spells.

Casters gain class feature, "no, you". When the caster would suffer an ill effect (including death), if they can point out buffs that the muggles *could* have cast on them in the time that they had, that would have prevented this effect, then the muggle suffers the effect instead.

Now you have your "good party… of buff targets and buffers", with muggle players being trained to appreciate the time casters spend buffing them.

Win-win?

NigelWalmsley

2020-09-17, 09:58 AM

If you just want "buff the muggle" to be a reasonable strategy, you can totally achieve that. Just give every prospective buff-monkey an ability like this:

Any harmless spell targeting you effects a number of additional targets equal to your Strength/Dexterity/Constitution score (your choice), and has its duration improved by one step (rounds/level -> minutes/level -> ten minutes/level -> hours/level). You may also be the target of Personal spells as if you were their caster, and they may be shared in this way. Spells effected in this way receive a bonus equal to your base attack bonus for the purposes of resisting dispelling.

That gives the party an actual reason to cart around the Fighter by making him a massive force multiplier on their buffs (it's almost certainly overkill, but apparently "Persistent Wraithstrike at 7th level" is the targeted balance point). Now, instead of casting Fly on the Fighter being a lost spell slot, it's a net win for the casters, and it's just better than casting Fly on themselves. And this fix doesn't screw with in-combat dynamics in a way that has clearly not been fully thought out, so it's actually less invasive.

Anthrowhale

2020-09-17, 12:07 PM

Initial reaction: I hate it.
Take a look at v4 in the OP---it's addressing some of your concerns.

Slightly more detailed reaction: you've utterly killed the concept of the self-buffer, and crippled Gish ( / Paladin / Ranger) concepts.

The 'crippled gish' aspect seems iffy to me. At least one person upthread claimed that everyone would take a level of spellcasting so as to get the implied immunities, and I looked through the entire hexblade list to see that it had almost no effect. Nevertheless, v4 makes it so that half-casters are explicitly not crippled.

(Despite being not completely unlike something I've suggested before) seems to me to produce the opposite of a good party - it will produce "producers" and "consumers", and should lead to some very… unstable… and likely toxic relationships.

Why? I'm not following this psychology here.

Also, I'm not sure how gameable immunity to which AoE effects is, but it *sounds* potentially half-baked here.

If you have examples, that would be great.

And "share spell" abilities - how would those work?

Normally. A wizard could cast personal-only spells on a familiar which would not take effect on the wizard.

...detect magic...
v4 makes all divination spells work for spellcasters.

...And divine buffs not being able to buff divine champions is a bit… odd...

Under v4 Ranger/Paladin/Divine Crusader are fine. Clerics and Druids definitely get a nerf as far as self-buffing, although they are more robust against enemy spells.

SoD, fight-ending BFC, scry and die - those are all unaffected by this change.

Agreed here.

Oh, and now casters cannot adventure under water (no water breathing),

There are at least 5 different core items that enable breathing underwater, starting at 7.2K gp. Using an item instead makes such adventures less casual, but it's certainly doable. (Deep underwater with just spell support seems a tad scary since spells are so fragile.)

on other planes (no protection from fire or other planar effects),

Resistance to elemental damage is common amongst items. Other planar effects require more effort. The planar handbook has a ring of positive protection (72Kgp), a ring of negative protection (72K gp), and "Vestments of Steadfast Spellcasting" (25Kgp) which eliminates the effects of planar traits on spellcasting.

anywhere inaccessible (no flight / spider climb),

There are many alternatives for flight---some races have wings, there are flying mounts, and there are many items, including core items, that grant flight.

anywhere requiring stealth (no disguise self / invisibility).

A hat of disguise is a cheap core item.

All spells are now "at will".

I'm afraid of the 'grade inflation' that this implies. As you look over the various versions of D&D, until 3.5 there is a general increase in power with level. When you are creating an entirely new version, you can take the time to buff the monsters as well in compensation. My feeling at the moment is that PvM balance already favors P quite a bit, with this worsening that imbalance.

Quertus

2020-09-17, 01:10 PM

Take a look at v4 in the OP---it's addressing some of your concerns.

Perhaps I will at some point. For now, I'm speaking from what I've read.

The 'crippled gish' aspect seems iffy to me. At least one person upthread claimed that everyone would take a level of spellcasting so as to get the implied immunities, and I looked through the entire hexblade list to see that it had almost no effect. Nevertheless, v4 makes it so that half-casters are explicitly not crippled.

… OK. A perfectly mundane build would, in your system, be improved with a level in a caster class, to make them immune to certain negative effects. Or so the theory goes. This has no bearing on how much the proposal just murdered most gishes (and all self-buffer concepts).

Why? I'm not following this psychology here.

If you can't get the psychology, then you do all the work & earn all the money, and I'll do all the spending. And we'll both be happy.

Or read… the Time Machine. I believe that has an example of those who produce & those who only consume.

If you have examples, that would be great.

I don't, and that's my point. This area deserves further investigation.

Normally. A wizard could cast personal-only spells on a familiar which would not take effect on the wizard.

I suppose that's not useless…

v4 makes all divination spells work for spellcasters.

Although this would have been the best use :smalltongue:

Under v4 Ranger/Paladin/Divine Crusader are fine. Clerics and Druids definitely get a nerf as far as self-buffing, although they are more robust against enemy spells.

I'm guessing v4 is better, then. Cool.

Agreed here.

So then… *why* make this "fix"? Other than to point out and drive home just how helpless muggles are?

There are at least 5 different core items that enable breathing underwater, starting at 7.2K gp. Using an item instead makes such adventures less casual, but it's certainly doable. (Deep underwater with just spell support seems a tad scary since spells are so fragile.)

Actually, items have set caster levels, making items much more fragile.

And we've gone from "Wanda Witch and Charlie Cleric can rest overnight to let the party have this cool adventure" to "Wanda Witch and Charlie Cleric could let the muggles try to solo this cool adventure… or they trek several days/weeks back to town, only to find that this town doesn't even sell this particular item, then have the party grind for 3 levels to pick up the necessary crafting feats, then wait several days/weeks while they craft themselves the item, then trek several days/weeks back to the adventure".

And, in bringing up items, you've just moved the "can't" from "ever" to "in campaigns where the GM doesn't do shops / downtime.

Resistance to elemental damage is common amongst items. Other planar effects require more effort. The planar handbook has a ring of positive protection (72Kgp), a ring of negative protection (72K gp), and "Vestments of Steadfast Spellcasting" (25Kgp) which eliminates the effects of planar traits on spellcasting.

There are many alternatives for flight---some races have wings, there are flying mounts, and there are many items, including core items, that grant flight.

A hat of disguise is a cheap core item.

You're taking effects that used to be "the caster can give the whole party", and moving them to, "the caster can buff muggles with them, but has to buy items to get these effects for themselves". Which might be fair if you switched their chassis, and gave Wizards d10 HP, armor use, full BAB, and relegated Fighters to d4 HP in the nude. But probably not even then.

I'm afraid of the 'grade inflation' that this implies. As you look over the various versions of D&D, until 3.5 there is a general increase in power with level. When you are creating an entirely new version, you can take the time to buff the monsters as well in compensation. My feeling at the moment is that PvM balance already favors P quite a bit, with this worsening that imbalance.

1) Fighters get to swing their sword at will; this allows the offense casters to mirror the muggles in your example.

2) it's not fair for the caster to get to use "no, you" just because the Fighter is out of buffs, so the buff Fighters need to be at will, too.

3) besides, all too often I hear, "Wizards never run out of spells anyway", so, if they're right, this shouldn't impact (PvM) balance one bit.

However, the real point wasn't the math, it was the dysfunction of the *feel* of your "good group of producers and consumers", of the dystopia that you were ostensibly aiming for.

NigelWalmsley

2020-09-17, 01:28 PM

And we've gone from "Wanda Witch and Charlie Cleric can rest overnight to let the party have this cool adventure" to "Wanda Witch and Charlie Cleric could let the muggles try to solo this cool adventure… or they trek several days/weeks back to town, only to find that this town doesn't even sell this particular item, then have the party grind for 3 levels to pick up the necessary crafting feats, then wait several days/weeks while they craft themselves the item, then trek several days/weeks back to the adventure".

Yeah. Once again, I am baffled by the insistence that instead of just letting people go on high level adventures by casting spells, which is how the game is designed and works well, they have to burn their WBL on expensive "you get to go on the adventure now" items. Anthrowhale seems to basically be throwing an extended temper tantrum where he demands that everyone else's character be less good and less in line with the players vision for it to preserve his ability to not provide relevant resources to the party. And he does not seem to understand that this makes him the bad guy.

Kelb_Panthera

2020-09-17, 02:18 PM

And, in bringing up items, you've just moved the "can't" from "ever" to "in campaigns where the GM doesn't do shops / downtime.

The latter is not the game default, quite the opposite in fact, and the GM put the problem in front of you in the first place. If he then also forbids the obvious solution, that's just bad GMing.

I'm trying not to get too involved in this whole discussion because I don't think this is a problem that actually needs fixing in most games and I haven't thought all the way through all the implications of the proposed houserule (which keeps changing). That said, I'm really getting a tickle out of all the salt from the "only casters matter, non-casters are wasted pages" crowd. :smallamused:

Oh noes... my wizard will have to go shopping like all the muggles that are so beneath him now. Waaaah.

Hysterical.

In seriousness though; for years upon years non-caster players have had to deal with "mundane can't have nice things" rulings from GMs restricting items, enforcing the guy at the gym fallacy, and arbitrary source restrictons while those who brag about only ever playing casters have shrugged and given it a "sucks to be you." When a proposed houserule goes toward evening out some aspects of that playing field, however flawed and incomplete the attempt, -now- you have a problem with it?

WBL was always part of this edition of the game and casters were never completely item independent, either by intentional design or even by accident without it warping gameplay (15 min day) or requiring serious cheese (night stick fueled DMM persist).

To be 100% clear, this little rant is not directed at Quertus or anyone else in particular. It's been an increasingly prevalent attitude on this forum since 5e dropped and has been around to a lesser degree for well over a decade and always rankled just a bit. If it feels like it applies to you, well I suppose a hit dog hollers.

AvatarVecna

2020-09-17, 02:34 PM

This wouldn't fix theorycrafting potential, but that's fine because houserules aren't intended for affecting theorycrafting anyway - they're about solving a problem you're having at the table. The fact that this doesn't necessarily impact wish abuse, or demiplane creation, or time travel, or Dark Chaos Shuffle, matters less because you probably don't have those things happening at the table anyway. It doesn't matter that "caster buffing themself to have big numbers" isn't what makes casters dominate, because at the table "big numbers" tends to break things more than "I created an alternate timeline where the BBEG doesn't exist", because the DM has different tools to mitigate that particular nonsense.

So, looking at more practical issues of implementing this rule at a table with optimizers:

1) A lot of buffs casters put on themselves would go better on fighter types in the first place, but can't because they're personal range only. This doesn't make it so Righteous Might can be slapped on a barbarian, or Divine Power can be slapped on a Monk, or Wraithstrike can be slapped on a rogue, it just adds what amounts to an expensive spellcasting focus to use on yourself now. There's a lot of buffs that now have noncasters as the best targets, sure, but there's still a lot that now just have no good targets at all.

2) A lot of common buffs don't necessarily have an effect that is dependent on the spell's CL. Divine Power gives you BAB equal to an outsider of your character level, for example, and Righteous Might has a flat effect no matter if you're lvl 9 or lvl 20 when you cast it. CL just affects the duration. That's a problem for casters who were playing fairly normally and just tossing a couple buffs on themselves before each fight, but it's very much not a problem for persistomancers who cast a bunch of buff spells on themselves each morning and arbitrarily change the duration to 24 hours. Incantatrix or DMM Persist will be impacted by this change for sure - but only in that a selection of their potential buffs are no longer available (Divine Favor, for example). They'll still be pretty powerful, while casters who were trying to hog the spotlight less are being hurt more.

3) Casters have built-in resistance to debuffs and DoT. Acid Arrow is fine because it's SR: No, but casters can now shrug off Black Tentacles, Bestow Curse, and a half dozen Summon-Fog-With-Rider-Effect spells in core, across several spell levels. I'd maybe argue that they can't see through it, because that's a nonmagical effect of the magical fog, but even that could be debated.

4) Summoning is a lot more straightforward now. Summon Monster/Nature's Ally, Planar Ally/Binding, and Gate will all run into issues summoning anything capable of casting. This doesn't mean they're useless - Dire, Fiendish, and Celestial templates don't give SLAs - but it does mean that a lot of their more powerful uses will have extremely short or maybe even nonexistent durations. This also goes for necromancy: I'd probably implement this rule in such a way that "undead capable of spellcasting" can't really be made anymore, and that cuts down on a lot of nonsense that players could conjure up, leaving them with undead beatsticks. Either method of minionmancy is now primarily about creating beefy frontliners.

I'm actually not sure if this is in keeping with your intentions or not: on the one hand, summoning creatures with the ability to cast is easily one of the more busted uses of the summoning spells, and taking that option off the table levels the playing field; on the other hand, summoning beatsticks (who, themselves, can be buffed further) is a way that casters can get by without the need for a beatstick in the party (they can summon their own beatstick!), and it seemed like one of your goals in crafting this houserule was to avoid letting casters fill roles meant for other partymembers.

One could perhaps argue that for the Planar spells in particular, this makes it so they can't even really perform their basic function at all: most all outsiders have some form of SLA, so Planar Binding basically can't summon any kind of demon/devil? It's understandable why even summoning a low-power demon/devil can be problematic for how it gives access to certain spells or maybe even Pact Certains, but it also means that an iconic style of magic is no longer available to anybody. Unless I'm severely misunderstood how this rule is supposed to work? I mean, if I have (like idk SLAs dont count maybe?), then that means Planar Binding nonsense is still on the table and allows for some very powerful options.

In general: this won't solve theorycrafting, and it'll still run into some issues at the table, but it's probably going to solve a lot of big and obvious problems that make casting a bigger issue at-the-table.

If I were trying to make a small change to fix the balance between casters and noncasters, I'd make two changes:

1) Personal spells are now touch-range. This cuts off a lot of persistomancy nonsense that unbalances things, and allows certain buff spells to be shared.

2) Free metamagic on buff spells if they're not targeting a caster.

This makes noncasters into ideal buff-targets same as your change, but now instead of "I cant make myself better so I guess I have to buff this awful guy", it's "oooo my spells get way cooler if I throw them on the barbarian hmm what to do". But then, I'm generally of the opinion that just bringing casters down isn't really how balance should be achieved.

NigelWalmsley

2020-09-17, 03:04 PM

In seriousness though; for years upon years non-caster players have had to deal with "mundane can't have nice things" rulings from GMs restricting items, enforcing the guy at the gym fallacy, and arbitrary source restrictons while those who brag about only ever playing casters have shrugged and given it a "sucks to be you."

I have always been in favor of buffs to non-casters, and so have most people who play casters. The problem is that the non-caster crowd seems to believe that "RAW PHB Fighter" has an absolute moral right to be a viable and valuable member of any party, so their "fixes" are proposals of the form "as a compromise, we'll nerf casters a little bit instead of nerfing them into oblivion".

When a proposed houserule goes toward evening out some aspects of that playing field, however flawed and incomplete the attempt, -now- you have a problem with it?

"Everyone plays Commoners" levels the playing field. I imagine you'd have a problem with that one two. I have a problem with this houserule because it's bad, and the effect it has on the game dynamic is bad.

The paradigm Anthrowhale seems to be imagining currently exists is something like "the party is Cleric/Wizard/Druid/Rogue, the beatstick is a buffed-up Druid". The paradigm he wants instead is "the party is Cleric/Wizard/Fighter/Rogue, the beatstick is a buffed up Fighter". That Fighter is supposed to be getting pretty much the same list of buffs, via Spell-Storing Rings where appropriate. So what this change does is:

1. Every caster in the party gets less spell slots to use for whatever they want their character to be doing, because they are spending some of their spell slots to buff the Fighter.
2. Every character in the party gets less gold to spend on items that are important to their character concept, because they are spending some gold on the Fighter's Spell-Storing Ring.
3. The party loses a Druid's worth of spell slots.
4. Combat is screwed up in ways that no one has wargamed out properly.
5. Anthrowhale gets to write Fighter on his character sheet (but the character plays essentially the same as the Druid would, because the list of buffs overwhelms anything "Fighter" is contributing).

What part of that is good? Everyone else in the party is getting to do less of the things they want to do. And the party has less resources on top of that. And it's all so Anthro can play the class he wants without having to buff that class to be actually useful.

WBL was always part of this edition of the game and casters were never completely item independent, either by intentional design or even by accident without it warping gameplay (15 min day) or requiring serious cheese (night stick fueled DMM persist).

Absolutely. But casters were going to spend their wealth anyway. This change just mandates that instead of spending it on items they think are cool, they spend it on items that allow them to go on adventures, or items that allow the Fighter to do his job. Why is either of those things a positive change?

It doesn't matter that "caster buffing themself to have big numbers" isn't what makes casters dominate, because at the table "big numbers" tends to break things more than "I created an alternate timeline where the BBEG doesn't exist", because the DM has different tools to mitigate that particular nonsense.

Buffing themselves isn't what makes casters dominate even in purely practical optimization. The God Wizards of the world aren't stacking a bunch of defensive buffs on themselves and whacking people to death, they're casting spells that control the battlefield and knock out enemies. And we understand that this is an optimal tactic for them. There's really no level of play at which "buff yourself a bunch" is the best tactic for casters (except maybe Druids, but they can buff their AC even with this change to pretty much the same effect).

1) Personal spells are now touch-range. This cuts off a lot of persistomancy nonsense that unbalances things, and allows certain buff spells to be shared.

2) Free metamagic on buff spells if they're not targeting a caster.

This makes noncasters into ideal buff-targets same as your change, but now instead of "I cant make myself better so I guess I have to buff this awful guy", it's "oooo my spells get way cooler if I throw them on the barbarian hmm what to do". But then, I'm generally of the opinion that just bringing casters down isn't really how balance should be achieved.

This is an example of a good way of solving this problem. It provides a positive incentive for people to use their spells on other people, instead of demanding that everyone be forced to sink resources into making the Fighter useful.

liquidformat

2020-09-17, 03:21 PM

I think my biggest complaint with this proposed fix is extraordinarily complicated to understand the implications of its use and extraordinarily invasive to implement.

If it was an easy noninvasive fix there wouldn't be three pages of people arguing over the basics of what will happen when it is implemented and wouldn't be on version 4 because of all the 'oh wait that is really bad' functionality going on.

A minimally invasive caster fix tends to go along the lines of here is a list of spells that are strictly not allowed and perhaps a second list of if you abuse these expect problems to occur. Or something similar to that.

This is an over arching and complicated 'fix' that isn't clear what will be the ramifications of and in many cases you will have to go spell to spell and make fixes for campaign to function properly past level 10.

Kelb_Panthera

2020-09-17, 05:37 PM

I have always been in favor of buffs to non-casters, and so have most people who play casters. The problem is that the non-caster crowd seems to believe that "RAW PHB Fighter" has an absolute moral right to be a viable and valuable member of any party, so their "fixes" are proposals of the form "as a compromise, we'll nerf casters a little bit instead of nerfing them into oblivion".

That compromise is absolutely necessary. You can't buff non-casters to the point they're as versatile and powerful as casters without fundamentally changing what they are.

Nobody cares about core only fighters. Or core only anything at all anymore, 20 years after the game was launched and more than 10 years and two editions after the last splat was published. If you're still playing 3e, you're playing it -for- the myriad splats and all the wild character concepts they enable.

That said, a fighter doesn't need a "right to be viable." It is viable. What gets argued by the crowd that refuses to play them is that they're not and don't deserve to be if it means their casters "have to" share their spells with other PCs while they outright ignore magic items exist or refuse to acknowledge that the WBL tide does not raise all ships equally.

"Everyone plays Commoners" levels the playing field. I imagine you'd have a problem with that one too.

Not really. I'm game to give it a try as long as there's not an implicit "and you will never have more than 3 silver pieces to rub together even if you ever do make it to a town bigger than a truck-stop -or- with any magic items for sale at all." Race, WBL, and feats can all be used to do pretty wild stuff both independent from and in complement to class.

I have a problem with this houserule because it's bad, and the effect it has on the game dynamic is bad.

You believe the existence of warrior classes is bad and has a bad effect on the game dynamic. You've said as much in other threads. It's implicit in your arguments here, as well.

The paradigm Anthrowhale seems to be imagining currently exists is something like "the party is Cleric/Wizard/Druid/Rogue, the beatstick is a buffed-up Druid".

That seems a bit presumptuous. I've seen a number of folks around here argue in all seriousness that an all caster party is the only thing that's -viable- never mind optimal. I've also seen, in this very thread if I'm not mistaken, that an all non-caster party is flatly non-viable. Neither of these is true.

The paradigm he wants instead is "the party is Cleric/Wizard/Fighter/Rogue, the beatstick is a buffed up Fighter". That Fighter is supposed to be getting pretty much the same list of buffs, via Spell-Storing Rings where appropriate.

Warrior, skill user, arcanist, and gods' pawn is the default assumption for party composition. Has been to some degree or other basically from the game's creation and still largely is in later editions as well, if I'm not mistaken.

As for optimization concerns, the party -does- need somebody to actually stand in front of the enemies and do HP damage. It takes fewer buffs to get a fighter to crazy than a druid or cleric since he's already going to have covered several bases with his WBL and class features. You don't wack a magic sword with GMW unless its a major fight and the wielder's not expecting to hit most of the time anyway, for example. He doesn't need divine power at all. When you do go all the way with buffing a warrior, it goes further than it does with a caster. Not that you will most of the time since it's overkill, freeing up spell slots for other uses.

A full-tilt, maximally optimized for all circumstances warrior isn't gonna need buffing the vast majority of the time anyway. He's not a single-class character but neither are most casters, never mind optimized ones.

So what this change does is:

Let's see.

1. Every caster in the party gets less spell slots to use for whatever they want their character to be doing, because they are spending some of their spell slots to buff the Fighter.

Funny. Buffs + summons and transferable buffs + personals both seem like -more- slots than just buffs for the warrior, particularly when some of those buffs would be redundant with a fighter's equipment and don't need to be cast either.

2. Every character in the party gets less gold to spend on items that are important to their character concept, because they are spending some gold on the Fighter's Spell-Storing Ring.

Only if every character in the party is a caster. Warriors and skill users always needed gear to get their numbers up as a base assumption of the system. Why shouldn't casters be in the same boat with having to cover their utility effects since they didn't need their numbers to do stuff anyway?

3. The party loses a Druid's worth of spell slots.

And gain back the portion of slots allotted for buffs that are no longer needed. That's probably not -quite- even but it's not the druid's whole complement either.

4. Combat is screwed up in ways that no one has wargamed out properly.

The effect on caster enemies needs to be explored in detail but on most enemies this is probably no change.

There's fundamentally no difference to the foe being cut down whether he's cut down by a buffed up cleric, a buffed up fighter, either of them without buffs, or a summon or called creature of any stripe, except in maybe how many rounds it takes. BFC doesn't change, SoL doesn't change, and SoD doesn't change. Combat is only "screwed up" if you liked to play a self-buffing gishy type.

5. Anthrowhale gets to write Fighter on his character sheet (but the character plays essentially the same as the Druid would, because the list of buffs overwhelms anything "Fighter" is contributing).

This is just not true. Fewer buffs necessary means the prebuffing happens faster if the fighter is the one "casting" the buffs at all. He's already starting at a more combat-capable position from class and feat based combat options and so may not need buffing in most combats anyway and when he does, catching them from an allied caster doesn't cost him any actions and the caster giving him that buff, or debuffing the enemy, or altering the field to the fighter's advantage, are all the presumably a better option than lobbing a save or die that may or may not have any effect at all.

In short; when you're looking at force multipliers, a larger base value to multiply means you can either go further with them or need fewer of them to reach a target value.

What part of that is good? Everyone else in the party is getting to do less of the things they want to do. And the party has less resources on top of that. And it's all so Anthro can play the class he wants without having to buff that class to be actually useful.

I'm sorry but as long as you're of a mind that non-casters are useless, you're not ever going to see where Anthro was trying to go with this.

That said, how many -hundreds- of fighter fixes have been written over the years and how many have actually hit the sweet spot where somebody like you will say they're "actually useful" without crossing into "that's a caster with the serial numbers filed off" for a whole host of other players? ToB was incredibly divisive for ostensibly making the attempt (although that's not at all what was intended by the devs).

And how many hundreds of the attempts that have been made to bring casters down to a level of "can't do absolutely everything" have you seen that you didn't see as going too far, if any at all?

I mean, honestly, why is asking a GM to buff -every- warrior class to a fundamentally arbitrary degree, absolutely necessitating either reams of homebrew or that most such classes be cut, more reasonable than asking him to make a simple change like this, that brings the casters down and creates a strong incentive to play a non-caster, as a means of bringing interclass balance?

I don't think it is. I don't see how asking a GM to also be a game dev or ban an entire playstyle is a better option than making a tweak to reduce the power of the universally acknowledged most powerful classes, particularly when the latter is generally considered to be something that's needed anyway by a -large- swathe of the community. Casters are too powerful is -at least- as common a position as non-casters aren't powerful enough. Or at least it was before a -lot- of the former moved on to 5e where both ends of the spectrum were moved closer to the middle.

Absolutely. But casters were going to spend their wealth anyway. This change just mandates that instead of spending it on items they think are cool, they spend it on items that allow them to go on adventures, or items that allow the Fighter to do his job. Why is either of those things a positive change?

The latter isn't a change at all. The fighter always needed to spend a portion of his wealth on being able to do his job. So did the rogue and most everything else that doesn't get 9th level spells. Welcome to being in the same boat the non-casters were already in.

And it's not like covering necessities leaves you with nothing if you're not overspending anyway.

Buffing themselves isn't what makes casters dominate even in purely practical optimization. The God Wizards of the world aren't stacking a bunch of defensive buffs on themselves and whacking people to death, they're casting spells that control the battlefield and knock out enemies.

Do you know why the God wizard was so popular? Because what he's doing is fundamentally team-oriented. Enemies that have been debuffed into the dirt and/ or separated and corralled by BFC are subject to being crushed by God's non-caster and less effective caster allies. Treantmonk's old guide even included a suggestion to, and this is what makes this particular point hilarious to me, BUFF YOUR ALLIES.

And we understand that this is an optimal tactic for them. There's really no level of play at which "buff yourself a bunch" is the best tactic for casters (except maybe Druids, but they can buff their AC even with this change to pretty much the same effect).

If that's genuinely your position, then how is this suggested change not a major boon to casters? Adventures that take place in the deep ocean or out amongst the actively hostile planes are in the distinct minority. The vast majority of adventures are in the wilderness, material plane dungeons, and in big cities where a humanoid wizard is in no immediate environmental danger and is now in very little danger from other casters. Even the vast majority of outer planes environs are dangerous because of the creatures that dwell there rather than from the environment itself.

This is an example of a good way of solving this problem. It provides a positive incentive for people to use their spells on other people, instead of demanding that everyone be forced to sink resources into making the Fighter useful.

So give free mailman powers to any caster that isn't aiming at another caster. Yeah, there's definitely no way that could exacerbate the imbalance. Sharing personal buffs was already an option, it was just an option that costs some cash; spell sharing bracers and a ring of spell storing are pretty straight-forward even before you get into weird stuff like and skull talismans.

NigelWalmsley

2020-09-17, 06:40 PM

That compromise is absolutely necessary. You can't buff non-casters to the point they're as versatile and powerful as casters without fundamentally changing what they are.

And you can't nerf casters to the point that the Fighter is a reasonable character without fundamentally changing what they are. If you really do believe the two sides are irreconcilable (and I don't, because I think the people who care about the Fighter specifically are a tiny but vocal minority), there's no point in arguing. "You and I cannot coexist" is a claim that precedes war, not debate.

You believe the existence of warrior classes is bad and has a bad effect on the game dynamic. You've said as much in other threads. It's implicit in your arguments here, as well.

No. I believe the existence of classes that do not get meaningful non-combat abilities is bad. That doesn't mean warrior classes. The fact that you seem to think it does is another example of the Fighter side of things defining their position in a way that is inherently unhealthy for the game. It doesn't even exclude all caster classes. The Warmage is a problem child for the exact same reasons the Fighter is, though the system does give it an easier time making up for its shortcomings. I have absolutely no problem with warriors in general, and I've made that abundantly clear every time this topic has come up. My problem is with the specific choices D&D -- and largely only D&D -- has made that result in those characters not being able to properly contribute on their own merits.

Other games do not have this problem. Movies do not have this problem. The fantasy genre as a whole does not have this problem. This is a problem that exists entirely because of people like you who insist that having meaningful abilities would destroy the identities of the hammer guys and spear guys of the world, despite the myriad examples we have showing that to not be the case.

It takes fewer buffs to get a fighter to crazy than a druid or cleric since he's already going to have covered several bases with his WBL and class features.

Yes, but you also have fewer buffs. The Fighter doesn't need Divine Power. That's a 4th level spell slot and some turn attempts the party is saving. But since the difference between a 10th level Fighter and a 10th level Cleric is five 4th level spell slots and also all the Cleric's other spell slots, you're still in the red.

You don't wack a magic sword with GMW unless its a major fight and the wielder's not expecting to hit most of the time anyway, for example.

Greater Magic Weapon lasts all day, and last time we danced this dance you were suggesting that the Fighter's weapon was supposed to have a smaller bonus than it gives. You absolutely do whack your weapons with Greater Magic Weapon, because it is functionally free and saves you thousands of gold.

Why shouldn't casters be in the same boat with having to cover their utility effects since they didn't need their numbers to do stuff anyway?

You're missing the point. Why is that a good boat for anyone to be in? Isn't it better if people's magic items are intentional choices to customize their characters, rather than math fixes they need to function? Yes, the Fighter has to spend his money on swords with progressively larger plusses on them while the Wizard can go buy Rings of Elemental Control or whatever. But is the former really a better paradigm? Insisting that the Wizard should have to spend his money like the Fighter does is just crab bucket-ing.

He's already starting at a more combat-capable position from class and feat based combat options

No, he isn't. The DMM Cleric and the Wild Shape Druid are both better than the Fighter walking around, because they cast their buffs at the start of the day. And, yes, you think those things are cheese. But remember that Anthrowhale is explicitly talking about a balance point where Persistent Spell + Incantatrix is an expected part of play, so it seems entirely reasonable to assume that our non-Fighter martials are going all out.

I'm sorry but as long as you're of a mind that non-casters are useless, you're not ever going to see where Anthro was trying to go with this.

On the contrary. Until you understand that other people's characters aren't a pool of resources to fix your problems, you're never going to understand why this is a mistake. When someone rolls a Wizard, they want to be a Wizard. They do not want to be a pile of spell slots to be applied to the Fighter. Telling them the have to use their abilities on his behalf, when he dedicates none of his resources to the Wizard is fundamentally unfair to the people playing Wizards. Either the Fighter needs to start spending some of his wealth by level on Pearls of Power and his feat slots on Martial Study (White Raven Tactics), or you are saying quite explicitly that the Fighter's character is more legitimate than the Wizard's. And once again, that makes you the problem.

And how many hundreds of the attempts that have been made to bring casters down to a level of "can't do absolutely everything" have you seen that you didn't see as going too far, if any at all?

Plenty. It's just that those fixes are assumed, while the problems that require them are used to justify ever-greater nerfs. No one thinks that you should be allowed to do Chain Binding, or unleash The Shadow Over The Sun, or use SLA Wish to make items worth an infinite amount of GP, or be Pun-Pun. Those are nerfs that I find not just acceptable, but actively necessary for the game to function. But once you make them, they fix problems. When you take away the game-destroying cheese, you very quickly reach a point where it becomes clear that the problem is not that the Wizard has abilities, but that the Fighter doesn't.

I mean, honestly, why is asking a GM to buff -every- warrior class to a fundamentally arbitrary degree, absolutely necessitating either reams of homebrew or that most such classes be cut, more reasonable than asking him to make a simple change like this, that brings the casters down and creates a strong incentive to play a non-caster, as a means of bringing interclass balance?

This doesn't create an incentive to play a Fighter. The Fighter isn't bringing anything new to the table with this change. Casters just get worse. I am all for reasons to play a Fighter. This isn't that. This is spitefully lashing out at better-designed, more effective classes because you don't like that your favorites got the short end of the stick. It is fundamentally childish, and absolutely the wrong way to solve problems.

And it's not even hard to solve problems in the right way! In this very thread multiple people have proposed better ways of fixing the problem. Vecna's suggestion of giving free metamagic to spells cast on Fighters is a great example. It doesn't make anything any worse, it just gives you a reason to invite a Fighter along instead of another caster. That's a good change, and I was happy to support it as such. It lifts up the Fighter instead of tearing down casters.

Treantmonk's old guide even included a suggestion to, and this is what makes this particular point hilarious to me, BUFF YOUR ALLIES.

Yes, that's one of the things Wizards can do. Buffing is an option, and I have no problem with that. The issue I have have is with the people who assume that the Wizard should have to provide buffs for the Fighter, while the Fighter should just get to do Fighter stuff. That's a fundamentally selfish attitude. The Fighter side talks a big game about wanting to be more cooperative, but it only ever means "you should give me more of your stuff". It's crab bucketing all the way down.

Asmotherion

2020-09-17, 07:32 PM

I don't know if I can call something that makes casters practically imune to lower caster's spells a fix.

Also, buffing caster level (through non-spell means) is still possible, thus you have a caster who not only can cast buffs of himself (as his caster level will be higher than his HD), but also ignore most lower caster level spells cast at him.

Yeah, it needs more thought to become a true "fix" in the way you intend.

OR you can just ask your players to politely refrain from buffstacking themselves and focus more on being team-players, at least when possible. Not a rules fix, but it's the thing that works the best in my personal experiance.

Anthrowhale

2020-09-17, 09:19 PM

I don't know if I can call something that makes casters practically imune to lower caster's spells a fix.

I believe you've confused target and source here. The caster level of a most spells as applied to the target is capped by target HD - target caster level. That means that a half-caster level class like paladin is "optimal" in the sense that their caster level is not clipped for self-buffs. A wizard on the other hand would have a self-buff applied at 0 caster level, and a paladin with Practiced Spellcaster would end up having self-buffs reduced by 4 levels.

This is an over arching and complicated 'fix' that isn't clear what will be the ramifications of and in many cases you will have to go spell to spell and make fixes for campaign to function properly past level 10.
I agree the ramifications are not fully clear, but that's inevitable with any proposal. I'm skeptical about needing to go spell to spell past level 10, unless you can come up with at least one example.

The smorgasboard approach to house rules seems both (axiomatically) more difficult to describe, and feels much more arbitrary.

1) ...it just adds what amounts to an expensive spellcasting focus to use on yourself now. ...

I'm not quite following this. If you are thinking of the ring of spell storing, that doesn't enable a wizard to buff themselves, since the wizards caster level is the wizard's hit dice.

2) A lot of common buffs don't necessarily have an effect that is dependent on the spell's CL. Divine Power gives you BAB equal to an outsider of your character level, for example, and Righteous Might has a flat effect no matter if you're lvl 9 or lvl 20 when you cast it. CL just affects the duration. That's a problem for casters who were playing fairly normally and just tossing a couple buffs on themselves before each fight, but it's very much not a problem for persistomancers who cast a bunch of buff spells on themselves each morning and arbitrarily change the duration to 24 hours. Incantatrix or DMM Persist will be impacted by this change for sure - but only in that a selection of their potential buffs are no longer available (Divine Favor, for example).

I'm not following this. A Wizard 5/Incantatrix 3 would have the caster level of self-buffs reduced to 0 in application. perhaps, I should specify that caster level 0 = no spell.

A paladin 8 would have self-buffs take effect at caster level 4. Regardless of whether or not they are a persistomancer, this means that their buff stack would be quite delicate w.r.t. dispel magic. This seems like it's not much of an issue for game balance.

3) Casters have built-in resistance to debuffs and DoT. Acid Arrow is fine because it's SR: No, but casters can now shrug off Black Tentacles, Bestow Curse, and a half dozen Summon-Fog-With-Rider-Effect spells in core, across several spell levels. I'd maybe argue that they can't see through it, because that's a nonmagical effect of the magical fog, but even that could be debated.

Black Tentacles, Acid Fog, Fog Cloud, and Solid Fog are all SR:No and hence would affect spellcasters normally. A wizard immunity to Mind Fog and Bestow Curse is certainly a benefit for spellcasters, although this may complicate their targetting a bit on offense.

I'm actually not sure if this is in keeping with your intentions or not: on the one hand, summoning creatures with the ability to cast is easily one of the more busted uses of the summoning spells, and taking that option off the table levels the playing field; on the other hand, summoning beatsticks (who, themselves, can be buffed further) is a way that casters can get by without the need for a beatstick in the party (they can summon their own beatstick!), and it seemed like one of your goals in crafting this houserule was to avoid letting casters fill roles meant for other partymembers.

I hadn't thought about nerfing spellcasting summons, but that seems like an acceptable implication. I also think it's reasonable for spellcasters to still be able to cast summons and buff them. This may be a viable tactic in general although it's typically not as good as buffing a mundane party member.

One could perhaps argue that for the Planar spells in particular, this makes it so they can't even really perform their basic function at all: most all outsiders have some form of SLA, so Planar Binding basically can't summon any kind of demon/devil?

Oh, I see. SLAs don't count as spellcasting here, in the sense of reducing the caster level of spells applied to SLA users. They do count as spells w.r.t. their effects. (Su effects count in neither direction.) Hence Planar Binding is still a thing, and it can be used to create a pretty good buff target. Of course, it comes with some built in DM adjudication, and I expect that a spellcaster would not often want to lend magic items to a planar bound creature which leaves them at a disadvantage compared to a party mundane.

1) Personal spells are now touch-range. This cuts off a lot of persistomancy nonsense that unbalances things, and allows certain buff spells to be shared.

I think the designers generally "balanced" personal range spells by making them stronger than touch range spells so this provides a buff to the players in a PvM situation. In general, I tend to think of players as a little to good against monsters.

2) Free metamagic on buff spells if they're not targeting a caster.

Aside from again making the players more powerful, many metamagics don't apply to buff spells. I expect Extend is widely useful with Reach or Chain being occasionally useful.

But then, I'm generally of the opinion that just bringing casters down isn't really how balance should be achieved.
Do you think that PvM tends to favor P or M? If P, then "bringing casters down" a bit seems unavoidable.

Perhaps I will at some point. For now, I'm speaking from what I've read.
It's 3 sentences. You've read more in getting here.

If you can't get the psychology, then you do all the work & earn all the money, and I'll do all the spending. And we'll both be happy.

It seems like you are assuming that spellcasters must buff mundanes. I don't believe that's true.

So then… *why* make this "fix"?...

I believe it would result in a more interesting game.

Actually, items have set caster levels, making items much more fragile.

Items recover from dispel magic after 1d4 rounds while spells do not.

And, in bringing up items, you've just moved the "can't" from "ever" to "in campaigns where the GM doesn't do shops / downtime.

Kelb's response is good here---if a DM wants to mess with the default setting by making magic items super hard to get, there will be consequences.

...Which might be fair if...

A houserule is not for "fairness". Coming at this from a "Will my wizard like this tradeoff?", point of view doesn't lead anywhere useful.

King of Nowhere

2020-09-17, 09:27 PM

Yes, that's one of the things Wizards can do. Buffing is an option, and I have no problem with that. The issue I have have is with the people who assume that the Wizard should have to provide buffs for the Fighter, while the Fighter should just get to do Fighter stuff. That's a fundamentally selfish attitude. The Fighter side talks a big game about wanting to be more cooperative, but it only ever means "you should give me more of your stuff". It's crab bucketing all the way down.

I do believe casters should have to spare some of their spell slots for their allies.
I also do believe martials should try to protect their squishier allies when needed.
that's teamplay, and that's a fair deal. I spent some fights shielding with my body a caster that was getting in trouble, and i never complained that i didn't get to go doing my cool stuff.

then high level spells arrive, and suddenly your squishy caster friend becomes a planetar with AC 60, SR 34, saving throws inflated by a +8 to all physical stats, immune to most damage and status effects (if something ever managed to pass that SR and saving throws), with strong damage reduction from the few things he's not immune to. His only weakness is being dispelled, but good luck with that between inflated caster level and contingency and spell turning... that's bad game design. nobody complained, but the wizard player himself decided to tone it down.

I also belive casters should be nerfed because, by raw cheese, properly played casters can do everything and have no weaknesses whatsoever and will solve any problem and isn't that BORING? in fact, most caster players spontaneously nerf themselves, i take it to signify that they agree with me.
but i don't believe in universal fixes because every table is aiming for a different power level.

NigelWalmsley

2020-09-17, 09:35 PM

I believe it would result in a more interesting game.

Why? You've nerfed an option while making no other options better. That would seem, to a first approximation, to make the game less interesting. Seeing as the way you've done it also results in parties having less resources, I really don't see where things pick up from there.

I also do believe martials should try to protect their squishier allies when needed.

But what does that actually look like? In practice, it seems to mean "the Fighter should get up in melee with his enemies". But that's what the Fighter wants to do anyway. If the Fighter is just doing his Fighter Stuff, and the Wizard is expected to dedicate tangible resources to buffing the Fighter instead of doing Wizard Stuff, that's not a fair deal. Particularly when you could get all the Fighter Stuff and some additional Cleric Stuff by changing up the party composition.

that's bad game design.

Sure, but is that bad game design because the Wizard got to do something cool and powerful, or because the Fighter didn't? It seems to me that intentionally sandbagging is an indication not that you think your character is too powerful, but that you think the rest of the party is too weak. If the Wizard didn't want to turn into a Planetar, he would just not do that. The fact that he tried it and stopped indicates that it's something external that's making him alter his character concept.

King of Nowhere

2020-09-18, 07:40 AM

But what does that actually look like? In practice, it seems to mean "the Fighter should get up in melee with his enemies". But that's what the Fighter wants to do anyway.

as i mentioned, in some cases i remained behind to stay in front of the casters instead of wading into melee. as i have a tripping build, i could intercept enemies attempting to charge the casters before they could attack. I also provide cover against ranged attacks. at least once i asked if i could make a ref saving throw or similar check to put myself in front of a ray attack that was meant for the caster.
Seems to me like "preparing an action to trip anybody who tries to charge the caster" and "shielding him from a disintegrate with own body" is not what a fighter wants to normally do.
speaking of which, it would be nice for teamplay if there was some rule about shielding allies with your body. Perhaps some build resources dedicated to building a bodyguard type. with all the variety of exhisting concepts, this one is lacking.

Sure, but is that bad game design because the Wizard got to do something cool and powerful, or because the Fighter didn't? It seems to me that intentionally sandbagging is an indication not that you think your character is too powerful, but that you think the rest of the party is too weak. If the Wizard didn't want to turn into a Planetar, he would just not do that. The fact that he tried it and stopped indicates that it's something external that's making him alter his character concept.
This is a narrow perspective. you assume that people would always choose more power. that having the party composed entirely of mary sue would be a good thing. there's a reason a mary sue is considered bad storytelling, and while gaming is not storytelling, still being too competent is boring. having to use limited resources to overcome problems whose solution is not immediate is more rewarding that having the tool to solve any problem. There's a reason most pro players in most games, after they can reliably beat the hardest difficulty level, tend to take up self-imposed challenges (https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/SelfImposedChallenge) where they intentionally sabotage their abilities.
that's or they go playing against equally skilled opponents. which in d&d is often not possible; the closer you have to an "opponent" is the dm, and if you want to play high op you'd need a dm with the time and capacity to make worthy opponents. and you'd need buy-in from the rest of the party*. lacking that, you could just give the opponents higher numbers, but that would be kinda pointless. "the same, with higher numbers" is not a healty power mechanics.

In short, there's plenty of reasons people would spontaneously decide to reduce their power level. that's not even just limited to casters; i myself could have gotten reach for my trip build but decided not to.
Some people say it's different, they mention the gentlemen agreement, the session 0, but ultimately, it always falls to the same thing. some resources are banned. some character concepts are nerfed. they are banned and nerfed by common agreement among a bunch of people who think tackling challenges with limited resources would be more fun than having a variety of "i win" buttons for every circumstance, but they are bans and nerfs nonetheless.
and in the specific example, the wizard player did not realize how powerful that stuff would be before trying it.

* it is, obviously, possible to have fun by playing everyone at those crazy high optimization levels. but it requires for everyone to have the same skill, and to be willing to invest the necessary time for the build. and, of course, to want to play like that. it's especially hard to the dm, who has to be able to provide meaningful challenges.

Anthrowhale

2020-09-18, 08:23 AM

...with all the variety of exhisting concepts, this one is lacking.

There's a rarely discussed version of this in Dragon #310, the "Bodyguard" fighter variant. It's pretty helpful: you get Diplomacy, Search, Sense Motive, and Spot as class skills and the 'Cover' special ability (which replaces a fighter feat) allows you to apply your shield bonus and combat expertise bonus to another character. Furthermore, these explicitly stack. A different approach to a similar effect is the Allied Defense feat from Shining South. That allows you to apply combat expertise to all adjacent allies (including yourself).

King of Nowhere

2020-09-18, 08:56 AM

There's a rarely discussed version of this in Dragon #310, the "Bodyguard" fighter variant. It's pretty helpful: you get Diplomacy, Search, Sense Motive, and Spot as class skills and the 'Cover' special ability (which replaces a fighter feat) allows you to apply your shield bonus and combat expertise bonus to another character. Furthermore, these explicitly stack. A different approach to a similar effect is the Allied Defense feat from Shining South. That allows you to apply combat expertise to all adjacent allies (including yourself).

hey, that's actually nice. i will definitely have a few npcs built that way. but is there anything to protect your allies from magic too?

i'm not surprised they are seldom mentioned. for once, they are very obscure sources, and for another, with all the attitude towards "devoting your build resources to help someone else is bad", i'm not surprised few people look into it.

@NigelWalmsley, maybe you can suggest that to a fighter the next time you are into an argument. investing a feat for a fighter seems roughly comparable to investing a few spell slots for a wizard

NigelWalmsley

2020-09-18, 09:09 AM

as i mentioned, in some cases i remained behind to stay in front of the casters instead of wading into melee. as i have a tripping build, i could intercept enemies attempting to charge the casters before they could attack.

As a tripper, the entire point of your build is to immobilize enemies. If that's an acceptable contribution for the Fighter to make to the Wizard, being a Blaster or BFCer who does not buff should be acceptable for the Wizard.

This is a narrow perspective. you assume that people would always choose more power. that having the party composed entirely of mary sue would be a good thing.

That's a strawman. Casters aren't mary sues, and the player empirically did choose more power. The thing he wanted to do was turn into an angel. If he hadn't wanted to have that power, he would not have turned into an angel. It's not like polymorphing yourself is in any way automatic.

and you'd need buy-in from the rest of the party*.

But isn't that exactly my point? The Wizard wants to play a higher power game, and the Fighter is stopping him. You can't fix that by explicitly removing the high-power Wizard options, you can only fix it by adding high-power Fighter ones.

some resources are banned. some character concepts are nerfed.

And some things are buffed. It's often not as explicit, but the tradition of the Artifact Sword (where the Fighter gets a sword with totally arbitrary magical powers that make him relevant again) is as old as D&D. Taking people's abilities away sucks. Sometimes it's necessary, but no one is actually arguing for allowing Chain Binding or whatever. People want to play completely reasonable builds like "Melee Cleric" and they are being told they can't do that because it means the Fighter will be sad. Well, why not give the Fighter something nice instead? That should make him happy, and if the only thing he'll accept is making other people's characters worse, you probably don't want to play with him. I certainly have no interest in playing with someone who acts like Anthrowhale apparently does and expects me to dedicate a portion of my character to fixing his shortcomings.

King of Nowhere

2020-09-18, 11:20 AM

As a tripper, the entire point of your build is to immobilize enemies. If that's an acceptable contribution for the Fighter to make to the Wizard, being a Blaster or BFCer who does not buff should be acceptable for the Wizard.

...
so, what my build can contribute to make an ally more effective is only my duty and my purpose anyway, while what your build can contribute is badwrongfun?
for that matter, i can trip more if i wade deep in melee than if i stay back. i could decide to tumble across the battlefield and engage the enemy casters, since that was also part of what i was built for. for that matter, i established my character with a strong anti-caster capacity and a backstory of wanting to punish evil casters, what my character would want to do would be to make a beeline towards the enemy caster; if i don't do that but do something else for teamplay, how is that any less worthy than casting a low level spell on an ally, out of combat? how about all the times i am fully up for another fight (partly due to have picked a good defence so i can go through several combats without taking much damage) but i have to rest because the casters are running out of spells? they took a build with limited resources, and this forces me to adapt my play.
really, if we try the "i am sacrificing more to the team than you are" game, we end up going nowhere.

and third, i am trying to offer a reasonable middle way, and you are outright rejecting it. i am using my own actions in combat and my own build resources to try and protect an ally from harm, but since i am not casting spells, that counts for nothing?

That's a strawman. Casters aren't mary sues,

they are if they are played at high optimization by RAW. if they can outstrip the noncastrs in anything relevant, that's practically the definition of the mary sue
unless we are talking about casters played without the broken stuff. which goes back to my argument for limitations.

and the player empirically did choose more power. The thing he wanted to do was turn into an angel. If he hadn't wanted to have that power, he would not have turned into an angel. It's not like polymorphing yourself is in any way automatic.

he was surprised himself by the level of power involved.
look, i've been best buddy with this guy for the last 12 years. and i've been playing d&d with him for the last 6. I believe I know his motivation better than some random guy in the forum can argue

But isn't that exactly my point? The Wizard wants to play a higher power game, and the Fighter is stopping him. You can't fix that by explicitly removing the high-power Wizard options, you can only fix it by adding high-power Fighter ones.

what if it is the opposite? what if the fighter wants to play a low power game, and the wizard is stopping him? what if the fighter does not want to be buffed because he wants to enjoy a struggle?
sometimes people decide to make a whole party of tier 5 classes for that. more often, people have different ideas on what kind of adventure they want to have, and a compromise must be reached.

just consider that while indeed some people want to play demigods that can kill ancient dragons in one round, and the guy with the sword and no special capacity asking them to tone it down and be more limitd is hurting their fun, there are also people who would like to go find and befriend a griffon to be able to reach the flying tower, and the guy with a flying spell making the whole point moot and asking them to power up to go being demigods is hurting their fun, too.
that's part of what has to be decided at session 0. heck, i've seen casual players forced by their more optimizing friends to up their level (which includes putting more effort into builds) or become irrelevant, and i've seen them lose interest for the game as a result.

And some things are buffed. It's often not as explicit, but the tradition of the Artifact Sword (where the Fighter gets a sword with totally arbitrary magical powers that make him relevant again) is as old as D&D. Taking people's abilities away sucks. Sometimes it's necessary, but no one is actually arguing for allowing Chain Binding or whatever. People want to play completely reasonable builds like "Melee Cleric" and they are being told they can't do that because it means the Fighter will be sad.
ok, i see that we are mostly in agreement, if coming from opposite sides of the argument.
I mean, you agree that some broken stuff like chain binding should not be used (unless, of course, the whole table wants to play with that concept). i agree that fighters cannot come in with a bad build and then rely entirely on their casters to keep them relevant (unless, of course, the whole table wants to play with that concept) the problem, then, is figuring out exactly what is the kind of broken stuff that must be taken away. i mean, i consider persistomancy to be too strong for my table and put some strong limitations on it, but perhaps you would consider it ok? how about celerity to play 2 rounds in one? (it's technically balanced by losing the next round, except that combat rarely lasts more than 2 rounds anyway).
that's, again, something that has to be clarified in session zero. and some people will be told that they cannot take certain sources that would make them too powerful, and some people will be told that they can play their character concept with a stronger build and if they are genuinely bad optimizers isn't it great that the rest of the table can help them?

buffing the martials with magic stuff is a very common way. i'm guilty of having done it too much, to the point that the martial was outstripping the casters and i had to invent some toys for the casters too. though that forced me to also up npc powers, and it created a whole host of worldbuilding problems.
And i must make clear that i am ABSOLUTELY NOT objecting to a normal buffed cleric build, like Anthrowale is. i objected to it, before realizing that he would not accept "it's a bad idea" as an answer. though i do object to a persistomancer.
i agree on the "taking stuff away sucks", here i would make a distinction between taking away conceps and nerfing them to a manageable level. for example, you want to play a mailman build dealing damage, i am ok with the general concept, but i'd nerf it so your damage is high, but you don't obliterate every encounter in the first round. you want to make an ubercharger, i nerf it so you won't be able to kill a target every round every time. when i dm i state a goal for power level, and i also worldbuild around that (how powerful is a powerful wizard? can he take over a nation by himself? the answer to this question is important for worldbuilding. if i start by saying no, and then i allow stuff that makes it yes, it would result in inconsistent worldbuilding, and i won't abide it), and then i systematically nerf everything above that power level. and i help those weaker to reach that power level. but i try to not take away build concepts and player freedom.
which, again, is why i disagree with anthrowale wanting to shoehorn players and classes into definite roles.

but i also disagree with concepts like "my build resources are mine alone" and "i am contributing for you more than you are contributing for me".

NigelWalmsley

2020-09-18, 11:41 AM

@NigelWalmsley, maybe you can suggest that to a fighter the next time you are into an argument. investing a feat for a fighter seems roughly comparable to investing a few spell slots for a wizard

That's not really my problem. I don't object to the Fighter on the basis that he is not providing enough buffs, because I don't think it is necessary that every character dedicate some of their resources to providing buffs. The Rogue contributes by stabbing enemies in the kidneys until they die. At most he gives the Fighter +2 to hit from flanking. And you know what? That's fine. The goal of the game is to kill the enemies, and the Rogue is contributing to that. It's okay if you choose to build a War Weaver, or a DFI Bard, or a Marshal, or a Warblade with White Raven Tactics where some or all of your contribution comes in the form of buffing others. But it's also okay if you choose to build an Ubercharger, or a summoner, or a BFC Wizard where your contribution is that you fight the enemies directly and aren't specifically helping anyone else on your team. The problem with the Fighter is that he needs to have a bunch of spells cast on him that he cannot provide. His contribution to the game is that he puts the rest of the party into debt. That sucks.

so, what my build can contribute to make an ally more effective is only my duty and my purpose anyway, while what your build can contribute is badwrongfun?

You build a Tripstar. That's a build that controls the battlefield. That's what it does, in the same way that a BFC Wizard contributes by controlling the battlefield. If all you need to do to contribute is the thing you build to do, that's fine, but it implies that Wizards who never cast any buffs and instead spam death spells are also fine. Because spamming death spells helps the rest of the party win too.

they are if they are played at high optimization by RAW. if they can outstrip the noncastrs in anything relevant, that's practically the definition of the mary sue

No, it isn't. Batman isn't a Mary Sue because he is better at investigation than the average beat cop. The fact that casters are better than non-casters doesn't make them Mary Sues, because you can still have meaningful adventures and challenges with casters.

unless we are talking about casters played without the broken stuff. which goes back to my argument for limitations.

Sure. There are lots of limitations that are reasonable. You should not, for example, use Planar Binding to summon minions that are more numerous, and also individually stronger, than the rest of your party. You should not use Polymorph Any Object to stack the powers of a high level monster on top of your class features. That's totally true. But everyone assumes those things are getting nerfed. And once you nerf them, you end up in a situation where it's pretty clear that the problem is at least as much that the Fighter isn't good enough as that the Wizard is too good. And that means that any change (like this one) that changes the Wizard without changing the Fighter is almost certainly incorrect.

Look at, for example, the points Kelb is making about WBL. He says that Fighters need to spend money on math fixes and Wizards don't, and points out that this is unfair. And you know what? That's totally true. It is unfair that the Fighter needs to spend money on items to let him do his job and the Wizard doesn't. But just because "everyone buys math fix items" is fair doesn't make it right. "No one buys math fix items" is also fair, and creates a much more interesting game. It means that if you find a bunch of Feather Tokens in a dungeon, instead of cashing them out to upgrade whatever item your spreadsheet says you need to upgrade next, you can save them and spend the rest of the campaign finding uses for instant trees or whatever. And there are a lot of things like that, where the paradigm casters have is just better than the one mundanes have, and the clearly correct fix is to make mundanes more like casters.

A lot of caster nerf proposals are basically crab bucketing. People fixate on a way that casters are different from mundanes and insist that casters be brought into line without considering which paradigm is better.

what if the fighter wants to play a low power game, and the wizard is stopping him?

Then he can play E6. There are already ways to play low power games.

what if the fighter does not want to be buffed because he wants to enjoy a struggle?

Then he should go play XCOM: Long War on Impossible or something. Making things harder for everyone else because you want to struggle is being a problem player, and wins no sympathy from me.

Kelb_Panthera

2020-09-18, 02:42 PM

And you can't nerf casters to the point that the Fighter is a reasonable character without fundamentally changing what they are. If you really do believe the two sides are irreconcilable (and I don't, because I think the people who care about the Fighter specifically are a tiny but vocal minority), there's no point in arguing. "You and I cannot coexist" is a claim that precedes war, not debate.

See, this is what I'm talking about. Warrior class characters -are- reasonable characters in the system as-is. I was talking about the fighter specifically in the last thread, I'm talking about the entire archetype here; fighters, barbarians, samurai, warblades, all of them. You can, in fact, deal with high level adventures with no casters -at all- in the party unless the GM rooster-blocks you by arbitrarily limiting availalbe (prestige) classes and/ magic items.

No. I believe the existence of classes that do not get meaningful non-combat abilities is bad. That doesn't mean warrior classes.

Given how you and others define "meaningful," e.g. calling down armies and supplying them "for free," this includes the vast majority of all classes that aren't -dedicated- casters and -all- of the warrior classes.

Even at half-ranks, the social skills are adequate to deal with the vast majority of NPC interactions. Just decent wisdom and charisma scores will give you enough of an edge over most classed humanoid NPCs to make rolling for it reasonable, though rarely guaranteed. It also doesn't come with the drawbacks of an enchantment failing to take hold or wearing off or being blocked by magical defenses.

Extraordinary senses are available from a whole host of non-caster classes, feats, and races even before you start looking at magic items. Same goes for movement modes.

Travel logistics are knocked out by -cheap- magic items.

Teleportation and planar travel are largely relegated to magic items, though not entirely, and splitting their cost across the entire party benefits the entire party; a 1/3 or 1/4 of the cost of a helm of teleportation not only allows the warrior or skill user to activate the ability but also saves the arcanist or priest a mid-level spell slot up to three times a day, for example.

The fact that you seem to think it does is another example of the Fighter side of things defining their position in a way that is inherently unhealthy for the game.

We're talking about proposing changes. As they currently exist, warriors -do- have meaningful out of combat options IF THEY WANT THEM. If you ignore those because they're not default class features, and to say they are default features of casters rather than options they can select isn't entirely accurate either, then it is -your position- that warriors -don't- currently have them. They would have to be added.

It doesn't even exclude all caster classes. The Warmage is a problem child for the exact same reasons the Fighter is, though the system does give it an easier time making up for its shortcomings.

If the advanced/ eclectic learning feature is sufficient to make up for the warmage lack of non combat options then you have -no- valid argument against non-casters picking up a few tricks with gear being sufficient. It's 4 spells accross the entire 20 levels.

Unless you mean the rainbow warsnake?

I have absolutely no problem with warriors in general, and I've made that abundantly clear every time this topic has come up. My problem is with the specific choices D&D -- and largely only D&D -- has made that result in those characters not being able to properly contribute on their own merits.

... We're not talking about other games. We're not talking about idealized warriors. We're talking about what exists in -this- game and what changes to make.

Other games do not have this problem.

No one cares. They aren't the topic at hand.

Movies do not have this problem. The fantasy genre as a whole does not have this problem.

That's just not true at all. Fiction is -rife- with warrior characters that aren't really even good at things outside of fighting, much less as preternaturally or even supernaturally good at them as high level D&D characters.

For relatively recent pop-culture reference, what exactly does Thor or Captain America do outside of combat to anything approaching the same degree of competence with which they fight? Even in the comics, Thor is barely a functional human being when he's not swinging Mjolnir. Cap is a fairly average Joe from the freakin' 30s except when he's throwin' hands. These are only two such examples, there are more than you could count out there.

This is a problem that exists entirely because of people like you who insist that having meaningful abilities would destroy the identities of the hammer guys and spear guys of the world, despite the myriad examples we have showing that to not be the case.

That depends on what you mean by "meaningful." The problem we usually run into is chiefly this absolutely berserk insistence that options are only meaningful if they come from a default class feature when the character is butt naked and a single-class character.

Yes, but you also have fewer buffs. The Fighter doesn't need Divine Power. That's a 4th level spell slot and some turn attempts the party is saving. But since the difference between a 10th level Fighter and a 10th level Cleric is five 4th level spell slots and also all the Cleric's other spell slots, you're still in the red.

Every spell you're spending on getting your numbers up to par is effectively a permanently lost spell slot. The fighter's numbers are up to par by default unless his player screwed up in building him or the GM is pulling a screw job.

The buffs I'm talking about putting on a fighter as part of a team effort are things like enlarge person and polymorph, not magic weapon and barkskin; qualitative changes, not quantitative ones. Those are what pushes the fighter -and- the caster past merely competent. Stuff that the fighter doesn't even need to pull his weight in combat most of the time and can get in item form for emergencies in a lot of cases.

Greater Magic Weapon lasts all day, and last time we danced this dance you were suggesting that the Fighter's weapon was supposed to have a smaller bonus than it gives. You absolutely do whack your weapons with Greater Magic Weapon, because it is functionally free and saves you thousands of gold.

Greater magic weapon lasts all day if you're at CL 12 and you extend it or when you can manage to render it persistent, not before. Even practically speaking, rather than literally, you need to extend it at CL 8 so it's only down while you sleep. That's one of your most powerful slots at that level and stays a major slot until around 12 or so.

That aside, in that thread I was following the guidelines given by the bloody game devs for what constitutes a level appropriate weapon and showed that it was, indeed, adequate.

The bonus from GMW is never more than a single +1 off of the level appropriate weapon's effective enhancement bonus unless you're cheesing your CL to 4 or more higher than your ECL. If you're really that worried about it though, you can pick up a tooth of leraje at level 13 (by the MIC guidelines) and jump straight to +5 ever after. That's a 10% difference for a level or two if the magic weapon is a +1 <special abilities> weapon. There are better uses of a 3rd or 4th level slot. My fighter/ barbarian/ warblade doesn't want you to waste it like that.

As for saving money, how much would you pay for a permanent extra 3rd level slot? It's 9k for a pearl of power 3 or 13500 for a memento magica 3. The level 4 versions are 16k and 24k, respectively. At CL 8 you're wasting the equivalent of at least 1k. At CL 12 you pull ahead but I'm getting that tooth at level 13 and jumping to a place you're not catching up to until the game's nearly over.

You're missing the point. Why is that a good boat for anyone to be in? Isn't it better if people's magic items are intentional choices to customize their characters, rather than math fixes they need to function? Yes, the Fighter has to spend his money on swords with progressively larger plusses on them while the Wizard can go buy Rings of Elemental Control or whatever. But is the former really a better paradigm? Insisting that the Wizard should have to spend his money like the Fighter does is just crab bucket-ing.

Not even casters get out of paying into the numbers game with the system as-is, not ones that live for very long anyway. How much they pay into it depends on how much of their non-WBL resources they're willing to sacrifice to it, same as the non-casters. You're apparently willing to permanently sacrifice what are undeniably important slots for the first half of the level climb. When you compare the value of those slots to the equipment they're offsetting, I'm pretty sure you're -grossly- overpaying. The proposed change in this thread simply takes the option of sac'ing spell slots for those effects off the table.

You want a D&D where wealth is purely optional "look how cool" stuff, this is the wrong edition.

No, he isn't. The DMM Cleric and the Wild Shape Druid are both better than the Fighter walking around, because they cast their buffs at the start of the day.

The all-day buffs only bring them up to the same level as the warrior on the numbers. It does nothing to match his active combat abilities. They have to cast -more- spells for that in the moment to equal or exceed those options that are very frequently at-will abilities for the warrior.

And, yes, you think those things are cheese. But remember that Anthrowhale is explicitly talking about a balance point where Persistent Spell + Incantatrix is an expected part of play, so it seems entirely reasonable to assume that our non-Fighter martials are going all out.

Incantatrix using persistent spell isn't cheese. His ability to do so is limited by a very, very non-trivial skill check on the attempt. Persistent divine power (however he's picked it up) is a dc 48 check. The minimum is dc 36 for a persistent cantrip. It's then further limited by the number of attempts he can even make; 3+int. A the level it becomes available, that can't be more than 10 attempts without either ignoring the WBL guidelines, template stacking, accepting a LA, or similar. Even in that case, you're still looking at rolling an 18 to persist a cantrip unless you're willing to expend more effort on boosting the spellcraft check. You're not getting to the point of hitting it reliably without either further disregarding the WBL guidelines, casting more spells to enable it, or outright cheesing it. By the time you can do it reliably, it's level appropriate.

A cleric with DMM (persist) is dodgy at one persistent spell in a given day (depending on how you get there) and definitely cheese if you're getting several, which is typically the presumption in these discussions.

On the contrary. Until you understand that other people's characters aren't a pool of resources to fix your problems, you're never going to understand why this is a mistake.

Wrong. Every party member is using their resources for the good of the party as a whole. For a warrior, the resources he's contributing are those that are expended by being the primary target of most enemies' attacks; hp, ability points, etc; and the combat prowess that the other party members no longer need to worry about providing the vast majority of the time. That latter is permanent, not daily resources.

When someone rolls a Wizard, they want to be a Wizard. They do not want to be a pile of spell slots to be applied to the Fighter.

Okay, and? Debuff the enemy, manipulate the battlefield, conjure me up a flanking buddy. Buffing is -one- option and it's not the most important or efficient one most of the time. When it -is- the most efficient use of a slot, it's more efficient to use it on a fighter than to use it and 4 others on a cleric or 7 more on yourself.

Telling them the have to use their abilities on his behalf, when he dedicates none of his resources to the Wizard is fundamentally unfair to the people playing Wizards.

This is just plain wrong on every level. Even if you are buffing the fighter, you're doing it on your behalf as much as his since you want the enemy dead too. Most of the time you're better off manipulating the enemy or the battlefield anyway and it doesn't matter who your allies are in that case. Finally, every attack the fighter soaks is an attack you didn't have to soak or mitigate with -still more- spells. Every enemy he kills with that magic sword you keep spitting on is one less damage dealing or boosting spell you need to cast. You don't even need to -know- GMW, much less prepare or cast it, if there's a dedicated warrior with level appropriate gear in the party.

Either the Fighter needs to start spending some of his wealth by level on Pearls of Power and his feat slots on Martial Study (White Raven Tactics), or you are saying quite explicitly that the Fighter's character is more legitimate than the Wizard's. And once again, that makes you the problem.

Those aren't bad ways to spend his gold at all. If I give you that pearl though, I expect that at that point I -do- have a claim to one of your spell slots. If you're really determined to use all of your lower level slots giving me buffs because "screw WBL" or whatever, I'll buy you a ring of wizardry just so I can tell you to STFU if you start whining about "having to" cast them on me.

Plenty. It's just that those fixes are assumed, while the problems that require them are used to justify ever-greater nerfs. No one thinks that you should be allowed to do Chain Binding, or unleash The Shadow Over The Sun, or use SLA Wish to make items worth an infinite amount of GP, or be Pun-Pun. Those are nerfs that I find not just acceptable, but actively necessary for the game to function. But once you make them, they fix problems. When you take away the game-destroying cheese, you very quickly reach a point where it becomes clear that the problem is not that the Wizard has abilities, but that the Fighter doesn't.

So the only acceptable nerfs in your mind are the ones that are literally necessary for the game to function at all. Good to know. Some of those aren't even nerfs. They're just rulings on things that are pretty loose in the rules.

This doesn't create an incentive to play a Fighter. The Fighter isn't bringing anything new to the table with this change. Casters just get worse. I am all for reasons to play a Fighter. This isn't that. This is spitefully lashing out at better-designed, more effective classes because you don't like that your favorites got the short end of the stick. It is fundamentally childish, and absolutely the wrong way to solve problems.

That doesn't answer my question. I agree that this proposed houserule is probably goes a bit further than strictly necessary to close the gap less than some of the other simple fixes I've seen.

I still want to know why it's more reasonable to demand the GM write a few sourcebooks worth of material rather than simply cut some content.

As for the lashing out accusation, that reeks of projection to me. I'm fine with the fighter and most other warrior classes. That's always been the thrust of my arguments in these discussions. When I argue against caster powers I'm either trying to bring people down to reason WRT the fact no character is -just- a class and nothing else or I'm arguing that something taken as a given when it's very GM dependent shouldn't be taken as such; the more extreme "Only casters matter" positions.

And it's not even hard to solve problems in the right way! In this very thread multiple people have proposed better ways of fixing the problem. Vecna's suggestion of giving free metamagic to spells cast on Fighters is a great example. It doesn't make anything any worse, it just gives you a reason to invite a Fighter along instead of another caster. That's a good change, and I was happy to support it as such. It lifts up the Fighter instead of tearing down casters.

Your bias is showing. I already pointed out a flaw in that particular proposal. Seriously, that amounts to a "fix for the warriors" that is a direct increase in the ability of casters.

Yes, that's one of the things Wizards can do. Buffing is an option, and I have no problem with that. The issue I have have is with the people who assume that the Wizard should have to provide buffs for the Fighter, while the Fighter should just get to do Fighter stuff. That's a fundamentally selfish attitude. The Fighter side talks a big game about wanting to be more cooperative, but it only ever means "you should give me more of your stuff". It's crab bucketing all the way down.

I don't and never have argued that the wizard "has to" give buffs to the warriors, including fighters or even monks. I've argued that it's a more optimal use of those buffs than casting them on himself or another caster, because it is, but that debuffing enemies and controlling the battlefield are just as, if not more valid uses of the same slots.

The fighter is gonna do what the fighter does, with or without a wizard around to help. If there is no wizard or cleric around, the whole party will have to spend some of their wealth on buying stuff to cover the bases those classes normally cover but that's not difficult to do with the essentials. If there are casters, all I ask is that they not deliberately step on my fighter's toes by poorly aping the things I'm already doing at the expense making better use of his slots to the whole party's benefit.

If the best thing to do in the situation at hand is to cast polymorph on somebody so they can wreck the enemy's face, I do expect you to cast it on my fighter, not because I'm entitled to your spell slots or to being buffed but because it gives the whole party the best shot of getting out of the situation alive. If resilient sphere gets us out of the fight and we're not going to have to come back this way, do that instead. Save me the trouble of having to undo the damage the critter would've done to me. Just don't cast polymorph on your house cat familiar so that he and I have to work together and one of us has a good shot at dying. I don't want you losing a fifth of a level, me to lose a whole one, or either of us or the party to lose 5k-10k worth of loot to ress' one of us.

As for -my- choice to play a fighter, you don't get to whine about that. It wasn't your choice to make. If I can't keep up (and I can, I assure you) then leave me behind. I can reroll something else when I inevitably get myself killed. You can whine about me being useless -if- it actually happens.

Quertus

2020-09-18, 02:55 PM

I lost a longer post, but… while it's a nice attempt at "see what the other side has to go through", it fails at even that in numerous ways, probably the biggest of which are how related the needful purchases are to the characters' core competencies, how much of a drain on the party as a whole (financially) and the producers (in required buffs to make one Fighter fight as two (since the Cleric isn't joining him)) in particular this "fix" is, and the inability of the party to be as agile.

It also not only doesn't address the likely toxic producer / consumer relationship, it actively makes it worse. Thus, I recommend fixes that involve Fighters spending their time buffing the party, while the Wizard gets to do Wizard stuff as a necessary "see things from the other PoV" to go alongside discussions of things along the lines of this "fix".

-----

On an unrelated note, I dislike non-persistent buffs for entirely Gamist reasons: it slows gameplay down when people have to sit there calculating their bonuses, rather than the simple "d20+ total" that my tables fly through the game with.

For similarly Gamist reasons, it is *extraordinarily* rare that I will ever have enemies use dispel effects (outside shutting down specific items, like Helm of Underwater Bragging or Wings of Flying), give temporary penalties, or otherwise bog the game down in tedious math.

------

Re: casters buffing muggles… I would say that I believe in it, except…

I actually prefer the 2e/PF2 model of "muggles are better". And I quite enjoyed Quertus adventuring with a party of *competent* muggles who actually had accounted for all of their needs (except for a bag of flour). And I don't like the "entitled" attitude I've seen from some muggle players - if buffs aren't persisted, that eats into the caster's actions, not just their resources.

So I want 6e to all but require Fighters to spend their first 2-3 rounds buffing the party, giving everyone 50 temporary "inspirational" HP, giving everyone massive bonuses to hit / damage / saves with their keen observations (not unlike an archivist), etc, while the casters get to chain persist their party buffs ahead of time,

Batcathat

2020-09-18, 03:26 PM

For similarly Gamist reasons, it is *extraordinarily* rare that I will ever have enemies use dispel effects (outside shutting down specific items, like Helm of Underwater Bragging or Wings of Flying), give temporary penalties, or otherwise bog the game down in tedious math.

Ah, yes, the countless heroes who have fallen by not being able to boast about their mighty deeds while underwater. :smallwink:

NigelWalmsley

2020-09-18, 03:32 PM

You can, in fact, deal with high level adventures with no casters -at all- in the party unless the GM rooster-blocks you by arbitrarily limiting availalbe (prestige) classes and/ magic items.

No, you can't. Or rather, to the degree that you can, you can do the same with a party of Warriors that get level-appropriate WBL. Yes, a Warblade can contribute in a level-appropriate combat challenge, and you can buy some number of scrolls. But you can't buy enough to make up for not having casters.

Given how you and others define "meaningful," e.g. calling down armies and supplying them "for free," this includes the vast majority of all classes that aren't -dedicated- casters and -all- of the warrior classes.

It seems to me that a basic standard for "meaningful" would be "something an NPC Expert couldn't do". So let's look at the Warblade (probably the best printed martial, discounting partial casters) and see how it measures up. It gets less skills than the Expert (meaning those aren't a meaningful contribution). So we're left looking at maneuvers. Off the top of my head, the Warblade gets the following for things I would consider non-combat abilities:

1. They have a stance that grants Scent.
2. They have a line of maneuvers that ignore hardness, making it easier for them to solve problems by breaking stuff.
3. They have stance that grants Flight at around 15th level.
4. They can make better use of the Shadow Hand teleports and Devoted Spirit healing maneuvers than most classes if they acquire them somehow.

That does not seem like a very meaningful list of abilities to me, and it is basically the best any martial class does. You can feel free to argue that the casters get too much, but unless you're moving the martials up too I feel comfortable dismissing your concerns.

a 1/3 or 1/4 of the cost of a helm of teleportation not only allows the warrior or skill user to activate the ability but also saves the arcanist or priest a mid-level spell slot up to three times a day, for example.

For a mere 1500 GP more than the Helm of Teleportation, the casters could buy three 5th level Pearls of Power, which would allow them to cast Teleport at a higher level and provide much more flexibility, as they can also be turned into Cloudkills or Raise Deads or Fabricates or Cones of Cold on days when Teleport is not needed. And I feel compelled to point out that a Helm of Teleportation is in no sense "cheap". At the level where casters get Teleport, it is twice the WBL of an individual character. Moreover, it doesn't really have anything to do with the Fighter. A Cleric or Bard or Monk could use it just as effectively. The Helm of Teleportation is an item that lets you very slightly economize on your castings of Teleport in exchange for dramatically reduced flexibility, with the added benefit of working if no one in your party can cast Teleport in the first place. That's it. That's what it does, and none of that is in any way dependent on you being a Fighter. In fact, it's actually worse as a Fighter, because you need to spend more money on your other gear. WBL does not fix the Fighter, it puts him in an even deeper hole.

Unless you mean the rainbow warsnake?

I mean the general category of things like Rainbow Warsnake. Eclectic Learning is, in fact, garbage as written. But Warmages can get Arcane Disciple and Prestige Domains and all kinds of other things that give them utility options that don't cost money to use.

No one cares. They aren't the topic at hand.

Why can't we learn from other people? Are you really so arrogant as to believe there's nothing any game does better than 3e?

For relatively recent pop-culture reference, what exactly does Thor or Captain America do outside of combat to anything approaching the same degree of competence with which they fight?

Thor gets Plane Shift and has super-strength that is big enough to move space stations. Captain America is basically a 6th level character with an artifact shield, it's entirely reasonable that he relies on skills.

Greater magic weapon lasts all day if you're at CL 12 and you extend it or when you can manage to render it persistent, not before.

The spell lasts five hours if you can cast it at all. That's plenty to cover a standard adventuring day, and by ten hours you can cast it out of yesterday's slots and still have it be up.

You want a D&D where wealth is purely optional "look how cool" stuff, this is the wrong edition.

No, Fighter is the wrong class. Just like it is if I want a D&D where characters can do their jobs, or have abilities that matter. The paradigm of items being interesting is better than the paradigm of them being numbers fixes. Stop crab bucketing.

A cleric with DMM (persist) is dodgy at one persistent spell in a given day (depending on how you get there) and definitely cheese if you're getting several, which is typically the presumption in these discussions.

If your obscure magic item from Tome of Magic is fine, so is my obscure magic item from Libris Mortis. If it makes my character better than yours, tough. No one said the game was balanced.

So the only acceptable nerfs in your mind are the ones that are literally necessary for the game to function at all.

Then what are the acceptable buffs to Fighters in your mind? I've moved. If you're not willing to do so as well that, once again, makes you the problem. Either explain to me what we are giving the Fighter to make him more useful, or take your double standard and go.

I still want to know why it's more reasonable to demand the GM write a few sourcebooks worth of material rather than simply cut some content.

That's a great question. Why not just cut the Fighter? The Cleric does his job fine, and also provides additional resources he doesn't. There better be a damn good reason you're not okay with having that as the default melee type.

I already pointed out a flaw in that particular proposal.

No, you nit-picked a one sentence description in bad faith. Obviously the actual change would be more complicated than that, just as Anthro's change is now more complicated than "casters immune to spells with durations".

Anthrowhale

2020-09-18, 09:03 PM

Why? ...
King of Nowhere's response is what I had in mind. Good game design is about having actually challenging challenges. A party full of tier 1 casters with modestly good-not-super choices is typically not that challenged by standard encounters. Asking the DM to adjust by making encounters more difficult is putting quite a bit of load on the DM. In my experience, DMs are typically already doing more work than players.

Incidentally, your "I wanna be an Angel!" player isn't forbidden by v4. They could be a Divine Crusader. Or more generally, any full caster level spellcaster could turn into a gish with self-buffing if they take the Mage Slayer line, which is pretty handy anyways. Their spells would obviously be dispel-fragile, but that seems fine.

...
The focus on fighters getting buffs from the spellcasters seems like a red herring to me. It's not even mentioned in the houserule. If spellcasters want to buff fighters, that's fine, but if they don't the game should still work. There's also nothing wrong with a fighter paying for a pearl of power or a karma bead share.

NigelWalmsley

2020-09-18, 09:44 PM

A party full of tier 1 casters with modestly good-not-super choices is typically not that challenged by standard encounters.

This is not really true. People just overestimate how challenging encounters are supposed to be. If an equal CR monster gets most of the party to pop a top-level spell slot, that's all it really needed to do per the guidelines. And it's not that hard to write encounters that do that even if the party is playing moderately optimized casters.

Asking the DM to adjust by making encounters more difficult is putting quite a bit of load on the DM.

Writing harder encounters isn't any more difficult than writing easy encounters. Monsters come out of the manual, so picking harder ones is exactly as difficult as pick easy ones. Maybe the Cleric/Druid/Beguiler/Wizard party needs to fight a Hill Giant instead of a Troll at 5th level. That's totally fine, the DM can just flip to page 123 instead of page 247. The reason DMing is hard is that you have to design adventures and write plots, not that finding something for your players to stab to death is some massive intellectual hurdle.

But you know what's a huge pain point for DMs? Widespread alterations to how individual monsters work. Which is exactly what your change does. Monsters that have a pile of Cleric or Sorcerer spellcasting (e.g. every dragon) become substantially harder to deal with. SLAs either become different from spells in yet another way, or have to be individually spot-checked. If I have a party of casters, I just have to figure out what CR handcap they need, and then I can go back to using pregenned monsters with no additional thought. If I use this houserule, not only have I lost all my intuitions about how effective the PCs are, I have to re-evaluate every monster.

Kelb_Panthera

2020-09-18, 09:50 PM

No, you can't. Or rather, to the degree that you can, you can do the same with a party of Warriors that get level-appropriate WBL.

They'll struggle a lot more than a more varied party but, yes, even a group of 4 NPC class warriors with PC level wealth appropriate to their level can, indeed, deal with most high level challenges.

That's the point. In so far as it is a rising tide that raises all ships, WBL raises them -all- classes to viable. Or at least close enough to it that the difference can be covered with any two of race, multiclassing, and feat selections. It doesn't raise them all equally though and that's important too.

No matter how many wizards you've played, you've never played -just- a wizard. They were an elf wizard or a gnome wizard or a dwarf wizard and they spent some amount of their wealth on gear and spells to make themselves better wizards and they selected most if not all of their feats to be a better wizard. You do not play class alone, you play a whole character. Same goes for -every- class and character archetype in the game.

Yes, a Warblade can contribute in a level-appropriate combat challenge, and you can buy some number of scrolls. But you can't buy enough to make up for not having casters.

Who's talking about scrolls? You don't need scrolls. Nor do you need any other spell trigger or spell completion item. You don't need spells to overcome most challenges, even at high level. You need effects and those effects are available from a variety of sources.

Outsider banishment is available not just in weapon enhancement form but as a class feature of certain prestige classes if you're expecting to need it a lot. Same goes for dispelling if you expect to deal with a lot of magical dungeon features and SLA using monsters. Break enchantment, remove disease, restore ability damage, heal yourself, etc and so on are all available in items that require no special skill and various prestige class features. Divided across a typical 4 man party, it's very much doable to cover most areas.

Will you cover -every- base. No, of course not. Neither will a group of all casters because, no matter what any spell text might say to the contrary, you can't actually predict the future outside of white-room theory-crafting. You can only make an educated guess. Nothing can stop a GM determined to blindside you with something you don't have covered -right now- even if you could, ostensibly, have it covered tomorrow or even in just 15 minutes.

It seems to me that a basic standard for "meaningful" would be "something an NPC Expert couldn't do". So let's look at the Warblade (probably the best printed martial, discounting partial casters) and see how it measures up. It gets less skills than the Expert (meaning those aren't a meaningful contribution). So we're left looking at maneuvers. Off the top of my head, the Warblade gets the following for things I would consider non-combat abilities:

1. They have a stance that grants Scent.
2. They have a line of maneuvers that ignore hardness, making it easier for them to solve problems by breaking stuff.
3. They have stance that grants Flight at around 15th level.
4. They can make better use of the Shadow Hand teleports and Devoted Spirit healing maneuvers than most classes if they acquire them somehow.

That does not seem like a very meaningful list of abilities to me, and it is basically the best any martial class does. You can feel free to argue that the casters get too much, but unless you're moving the martials up too I feel comfortable dismissing your concerns.

Getting fewer of them doesn't suddenly make skills not count. That's an utterly asinine assertion. If you're skilled enough at diplomacy or one or another knowledge to be able to consistently make successful checks and influence NPCs or give useful information, I don't give a flying rat's ass what class or feat made them a class skill if they're even one at all.

To say that those contributions don't count because they didn't come from the right place is an absolutely garbage take and I won't accept it.

Balance on the Sky is a Shadow Hand stance, btw. Not that it matters when flying races could've had you flying tactically at 5 and flying all day at 10, several classes grant the ability one way or another, and a whole slew of options is available for purchase.

This is that insane, laser-focus on class that I mentioned before coming up yet again.

For a mere 1500 GP more than the Helm of Teleportation, the casters could buy three 5th level Pearls of Power,

Sure, you could.

which would allow them to cast Teleport at a higher level

Teleport doesn't need the higher caster level 95% of the time. 900 miles is plenty and CL has no effect on the destination or mishap rolls.

and provide much more flexibility as they can also be turned into Cloudkills or Raise Deads or Fabricates or Cones of Cold on days when Teleport is not needed.

Not raise dead; 5k gp material component. Remember how I said you don't know what the future holds? You're going to have teleport prepared -most- days and the ones you don't are very likely down-time. That slot is taken up whether you cast it or not. A pearl of power lets you double up on one of the spells you have prepared and that doesn't have to be teleport but it's less versatile than an open slot. You're only getting 2 memento magica for the same price and that would be the equivalent of just getting another slot.

Now if you don't prepare teleport on most days (gods why?), then you don't need the helm either.

And I feel compelled to point out that a Helm of Teleportation is in no sense "cheap". At the level where casters get Teleport, it is twice the WBL of an individual character.

Didn't say it was. I said logistics concerns were cheap. A ring of sustenance is only 2k and a Travel Cloak (my go-to) is only 1200.

As for the cost of the helm being twice the level 9 WBL, put it off a couple levels. As you say, teleport isn't strictly necessary. It's a nice thing to have but you don't need it in 99% of adventures. Overland travel is exactly as eventful as the GM decides it is so the difference between walking/ flying and teleporting can be as simple as that word when the GM says "Okay, then you <movement method> to your destination."

Moreover, it doesn't really have anything to do with the Fighter. A Cleric or Bard or Monk could use it just as effectively.

Yeah, that's rather half the point. You don't need a caster to teleport and if you have one you can save him some slots.

The Helm of Teleportation is an item that lets you very slightly economize on your castings of Teleport in exchange for dramatically reduced flexibility, with the added benefit of working if no one in your party can cast Teleport in the first place. That's it.

It's not in exchange for anything but the cash. You don't lose any slots for the party having a helm of teleportation. Your caster has lost no versatility unless you're ready to acknowledge WBL actually matters to them. Even then, I suggested splitting the cost as a party expense. If anyone in the party is not a caster, he's saving your caster money. In fact, teleport is on relatively few spell lists. It's very likely that only one character in the party can cast it at all, if that.

That's what it does, and none of that is in any way dependent on you being a Fighter. In fact, it's actually worse as a Fighter, because you need to spend more money on your other gear. WBL does not fix the Fighter, it puts him in an even deeper hole.

Repeating this will never make it true. Teleport is a QoL spell. It's not needed. If you want it, you can get it regardless of class. WBL is more than adequate to cover getting -any- character to where they need to be with plenty left over for QoL and expanded options from early mid-levels onward.

I mean the general category of things like Rainbow Warsnake. Eclectic Learning is, in fact, garbage as written. But Warmages can get Arcane Disciple and Prestige Domains and all kinds of other things that give them utility options that don't cost money to use.

So a warmage expanding his options with feats and prestige classes is A-okay but a warrior class doing the same isn't? And you accuse me of arguing in bad faith?

Why can't we learn from other people? Are you really so arrogant as to believe there's nothing any game does better than 3e?

We can. That doesn't change what we're talking about here. D&D is what it is and none of the warrior classes has anything -you- consider to be "meaningful," apparently.

Thor gets Plane Shift and has super-strength that is big enough to move space stations.

No he doesn't. The Bifrost is under Heimdal's control not Thor's. Ridiculous strength is eminently doable in the system as is. It's never acknowledged at all, much less as anything of note.

Captain America is basically a 6th level character with an artifact shield, it's entirely reasonable that he relies on skills.

Don't move the goalpost. He's a preternaturally capable warrior who has basically no ability outside of his combat ability and certainly nothing that comes close to the same level.

The spell lasts five hours if you can cast it at all. That's plenty to cover a standard adventuring day, and by ten hours you can cast it out of yesterday's slots and still have it be up.

That's not just wrong, it's painfully wrong. The 8 hour casting limit means that if you cast it "from yesterday's slots" then it's got 1 hour of duration left when you start your adventuring day after resting and preparing your spells for the day.

5 hours isn't even an entire work day, much less an adventuring day. 9 hours for sleep and spell prep' leaves 15 for adventuring. Maybe you can slice one more off for setting and striking camp if you still need to do that but that's still 14 hours where you'll be expected to be combat ready.

Absolute best case for the spell is that you're casting an extended GMW at CL 7. Anything less and the weapon covers you for the whole day while the spell doesn't. Even in that case the weapon covers you on surprise attacks in the night until the spell is extended at CL 12.

No, Fighter is the wrong class. Just like it is if I want a D&D where characters can do their jobs, or have abilities that matter. The paradigm of items being interesting is better than the paradigm of them being numbers fixes. Stop crab bucketing.

Stop daydreaming. Warriors can do their jobs just fine and the paradigm of needing to cover some element of your character with WBL is and always was universal. You're talking about much more fundamental changes to the system than just tweaking how some classes handle in play to get to where you're describing here.

If your obscure magic item from Tome of Magic is fine, so is my obscure magic item from Libris Mortis. If it makes my character better than yours, tough. No one said the game was balanced.

It's not the night stick alone that's a problem. It's not even using the night sticks to fuel divine metamagic. It's the combination of material from (at least) 3 sources to bypass the major limit of one of those pieces of material and in so doing bypass the major limitation of a whole host of other things, specifically the intentionally short duration of a whole host of spells from spell level 4 and higher, that makes it cheesey.

There's some -limited- mitigation to how out of line it is with the game's presumptions in the fact that it takes two night sticks, and thus 15,000 gp, to render even one extra spell persistent. You'll need at least one more source to even get one persistent spell without spending -some- gold or one more feat on it.

[quote]Then what are the acceptable buffs to Fighters in your mind? I've moved. If you're not willing to do so as well that, once again, makes you the problem. Either explain to me what we are giving the Fighter to make him more useful, or take your double standard and go.

First off, no you haven't. You've acknowledged that some things that casters can theoretically do render the game non-functional when they enter play and called acting on that fact a nerf. You even brought up one that was completely class independent, Pun Pun, as part of that statement.

That aside, while I don't think it's needed, I wouldn't object to maneuvers being given to a lot of the warriors that don't already get them and even a few new ones being created for those classes as long as their effect isn't obviously and overtly magical in nature for most of those classes. Perhaps a few more high power feats with appropriate requirements being created would also be fine.

In the vein of simple fixes, full BAB classes get full initiator level and 2/3 as many maneuvers known as a warblade with access to one martial discipline of their choice and a swordsage's refresh mechanic.

That's a great question. Why not just cut the Fighter? The Cleric does his job fine, and also provides additional resources he doesn't. There better be a damn good reason you're not okay with having that as the default melee type.

You're not talking about cutting -some- content here. You're talking about cutting an entire character archetype; more than a dozen classes and a whole host of prestige classes that are suddenly completely non-viable even if you do enter them late.

You want to cut -just- the fighter. Fine, whatever. That single class is not the subject of this discussion though.

A cleric is -not- a melee type. It's a divine spellcaster. It can be made into a melee type if you choose certain options. You can't be the default for a category you're not even part of in the first place. If you had at least gone with paladin or ranger this argument might have had a bit more merit.

No, you nit-picked a one sentence description in bad faith. Obviously the actual change would be more complicated than that, just as Anthro's change is now more complicated than "casters immune to spells with durations".

I pointed out an obvious reason that it -must- be more complex to not be a straight buff to casters. Even if you include language to make it -only- apply to buffing spells when cast on characters who gain proficiency with all martial weapons from their class and must have no spellcasting ability, that's STILL more of a buff to casters than to martials and does nothing to address any of your concerns about the imbalance between casters and martials.

Anthrowhale

2020-09-18, 10:48 PM

Monsters that have a pile of Cleric or Sorcerer spellcasting (e.g. every dragon) become substantially harder to deal with.

This is wrong. Anything with HD = 2x caster level isn't affected in their own spellcasting on themselves.

NigelWalmsley

2020-09-18, 10:56 PM

Getting fewer of them doesn't suddenly make skills not count. That's an utterly asinine assertion.

Anything a T5 NPC class could do equally well is not a meaningful contribution. If your class's contribution to the party's success is equivalent to that of the fourth worst class in the entire game, I am quite comfortable saying it is not meaningful. If I can replace you with an Expert and not notice, your character is not pulling his weight. And it's actually worse than that for many mundanes, because when the combat music isn't playing, the Expert is actually more useful than they are.

This is that insane, laser-focus on class that I mentioned before coming up yet again.

You have to think on the margin. The thing that changes between a Wizard and a Fighter is the class abilities. It doesn't matter what WBL does, because it does that no matter what class you are. What you give up for being a Fighter is being a Druid, or a Spellthief, or a Truenamer. Not money. Therefore it must justify itself on that basis. It doesn't matter if you can get some Wizarding for gold, because you get that gold either way. It would be another question entirely if being a Fighter let you spend your wealth more efficiently, but it doesn't do that. It makes you spend your money less efficiently, because you need a wider range of gear to do your job, and you can't buy caster-exclusive stuff like Pearls of Power.

You don't need a caster to teleport and if you have one you can save him some slots.

Sure. But the Pearls of Power are better at that. Because most days you only need one or two castings of Teleport. And on some days you'll want to get extra castings of Fabricate or Plane Shift or whatever other 5th level spell. That's the point. If you have a caster in your party, not only do you do the thing the Helm does for less money, you get to do extra stuff as well. But they require you to have a caster in the party. So we see that WBL does not lift all ships, as your proposed solution is in fact less efficient than one that is exclusive to casters in the majority of cases. Factoring in WBL made the all martial party fall further behind.

Teleport is a QoL spell.

No, it isn't. Consider the following adventure:

The enemy has invaded! Desperate Sendings from the border report a massive army marching towards the fertile river valleys that are the breadbasket of the empire. They'll arrive within days, and the capital (where the PCs are) is hundreds of miles away and can't deliver support in time. Can the players act fast enough to stop the enemy from putting grainaries to the torch and causing a famine?

That's a pretty reasonable adventure for a 9th level party. They go off, carve into an army of lizardfolk or orcs or something, fight a sequence of elites, and then end up beating down the demon or dragon or whatever it is that orchestrated the invasion. With Teleport, you can win that. Without it, you can't. Teleport is only QoL if you assume that every adventure has to be solvable by characters who don't get meaningful abilities because you think "Fighter" is a more legitimate character concept than "Wizard". Ditto Plane Shift and every other spell you insist is unnecessary. These spells do things. Adventures can and should depend on those things, because players should have abilities that matter and the abilities they have should matter.

We can. That doesn't change what we're talking about here. D&D is what it is and none of the warrior classes has anything -you- consider to be "meaningful," apparently.

Exactly. That is a problem, and we can look at how other media works to fix it. A favorite example of mine is The Stormlight Archive. There are a lot of characters in that story, but I'll talk about two: Kaladin and Shallan. Kaladin is a spear-wielding soldier. Shallan is an academic/artist. Shallan gains magical powers that basically amount to transmutation and illusion. Obviously this is a lot better than Kaladin's ability to have a spear and be pretty good at stabbing people. So what happens? Kaladin gets some goddamn magic. So, hey, there's a novel idea, what if we solved the problem of Fighters not having abilities we care about by giving them abilities we care about?

The Bifrost is under Heimdal's control not Thor's.

When Thor Bifrosts into Wakanda in Infinity War, Heimdal is dead. He doesn't start out with Bifrost powers (though Heimdal is notably also a warrior, so you're still basically wrong), but he definitely gets them eventually.

That's not just wrong, it's painfully wrong. The 8 hour casting limit means that if you cast it "from yesterday's slots" then it's got 1 hour of duration left when you start your adventuring day after resting and preparing your spells for the day.

Have you heard of something called the "five minute workday"? An hour is totally sufficient to fit in all the combat you are going to do on most days. Will there be some days where you have to recast the spell? Sure. But those days aren't common enough to justify spending the thousands of gold it would take to have permanent magic weapons. In fact, the Pearl of Power rears its ugly head here too, as a 3rd level one is only marginally more expensive than a +2 weapon and will save you money at every point thereafter. Once again, having casters in your party instead of mundanes lets you make better use of your WBL.

You've acknowledged that some things that casters can theoretically do render the game non-functional when they enter play and called acting on that fact a nerf. You even brought up one that was completely class independent, Pun Pun, as part of that statement.

It is a nerf. Unless you want to argue that Pun Pun is weaker than a DMM: Persist Cleric. And, yes, many of those things are class independent. That's true. Most of the problems people lay at the feat of casters are deeper problems with the system that manifest for casters because they have abilities that do interesting things. Casters are not problematic as classes. Casting spells like Stinking Cloud, Teleport, and Divine Power is a completely reasonable power level that it is entirely possible to tell interesting stories with. It's just that it's not compatible with the Fighter's ability to get +2 to damage with a spear.

A cleric is -not- a melee type. It's a divine spellcaster.

You say that like being both of those things is somehow incompatible. Once again, you're presupposing that only the classes you like get to call themselves melee types. But that's absolutely absurd. You can build a melee Cleric, just as you can build a ranged Fighter. The fact that your power comes from divine spells doesn't mean you can't fight on the frontlines, many divine spellcasters are very clearly intended to do exactly that.

I pointed out an obvious reason that it -must- be more complex to not be a straight buff to casters. Even if you include language to make it -only- apply to buffing spells when cast on characters who gain proficiency with all martial weapons from their class and must have no spellcasting ability, that's STILL more of a buff to casters than to martials and does nothing to address any of your concerns about the imbalance between casters and martials.

It addresses many of my concerns about imbalance. It gives you a concrete reason to have a Fighter in your party, because buffing him now actually is better than having a CoDzilla and layering more buffs on her. Or at least it could be, depending on specifics. And, yeah, it doesn't give the Fighter anything to do outside combat. But that's okay. A fix doesn't have to fix every problem to be a good idea. It just has to fix more problems than it causes.

This is wrong. Anything with HD = 2x caster level isn't affected in their own spellcasting on themselves.

But they still get the defensive benefits.

Kelb_Panthera

2020-09-19, 02:15 AM

Anything a T5 NPC class could do equally well is not a meaningful contribution. If your class's contribution to the party's success is equivalent to that of the fourth worst class in the entire game, I am quite comfortable saying it is not meaningful. If I can replace you with an Expert and not notice, your character is not pulling his weight. And it's actually worse than that for many mundanes, because when the combat music isn't playing, the Expert is actually more useful than they are.

By that metric, skills are invalid in their entirety and all the skill users with them. That even nukes a fair amount of spells that supposedly invalidate those clasess since all they do is interact with that subsystem. If a rogue rolling search isn't valid, neither is a cleric using find traps.

As for that comment about replacing the warrior (archetype, not NPC class) with an expert and not noticing, you'll sure as hell notice in a fight. You don't get to ignore in-combat features just because the game isn't 100% fight. Not while you're demanding a fighter player can't ignore out of combat options because the game isn't 100% fight.

If I've covered the "talk to NPCs" base to the point that I can get NPCs to be helpful, that's a contribution that means something no matter how I got there. You don't get to say charm person is valid and diplomacy is not.

You have to think on the margin. The thing that changes between a Wizard and a Fighter is the class abilities.

That's a long ways from all that changes.

It doesn't matter what WBL does, because it does that no matter what class you are.

That's just not true. Wealth expands a non-caster's options while it enhances casters' staying power. There's some overlap that is class agnostic but the bulk of what it does varies from one class to the next to a pretty solid degree.

What you give up for being a Fighter is being a Druid, or a Spellthief, or a Truenamer. Not money.

And that's a problem, why exactly? If I don't want to play a druid or a spellthief or a truenamer, why should I? It's not to "pull my weight," as I can do that regardless.

Therefore it must justify itself on that basis. It doesn't matter if you can get some Wizarding for gold, because you get that gold either way. It would be another question entirely if being a Fighter let you spend your wealth more efficiently, but it doesn't do that.

The only class that even arguably has that feature is the artificer. Other classes, including warrior classes, can take options in that vein if they choose but only the artificer actually gets it by default.

It makes you spend your money less efficiently, because you need a wider range of gear to do your job, and you can't buy caster-exclusive stuff like Pearls of Power.

As a warrior, my -job- is to make the bad guys fall down. That takes a fairly narrow range of gear. The stuff you spend on after that is gravy for covering side jobs. And why can't I buy caster exclusive stuff? If there's a caster and I want to make a deal with him, there's no rule or guideline forbidding that. If there's not, I don't have any reason to buy a pearl of power but it's not exactly difficult to make UMD +19 a thing if I -really- want to make use of wands and the like, not that doing so is at all necessary.

In the extreme case, I remind you of the wizard replacement stick I brought up in our last discussion:

[spoiler=wizard stick]Intelligent +1 staff with ranks in UMD that is also a staff containing spell storing item gives you 50 spells of level 4 and lower from -any- list.[/quote]

Sure. But the Pearls of Power are better at that.

If you're using a pearl, you're still giving up the slot to teleport and the replacement slot is limited to one of the other spells you have prepared. It is -not- as good as an open slot in which you can prepare any of the spells you have access to. It's only an extra cloudkill if you actually prepared cloudkill today.

Because most days you only need one or two castings of Teleport.

Offloading it onto a dedicated item so you don't need to think about it means not having to be concerned with forgetting about or being tempted to sacrifice it for some other option. The 3rd casting being redundant most days still leaves you with it ready to go on days you do need it, whether that's because you missed the mark on how many you'd need, you don't have the 15 minutes to prepare another, or one of them failed from either interference or mishap.

And on some days you'll want to get extra castings of Fabricate or Plane Shift or whatever other 5th level spell.

Isn't that what scrolls are for? Spells that you rarely need and so don't want to prepare a casting in one of your actual slots. Pearls are for spells where your CL actually matters, typically combat spells and things like dispel or break enchantment.

That's the point. If you have a caster in your party, not only do you do the thing the Helm does for less money, you get to do extra stuff as well. But they require you to have a caster in the party.

Literally everything a caster can do is for sale. Very little of it is actually required. Casters are not required.

So we see that WBL does not lift all ships,

At best, you've proven that it does not lift them evenly. You're arguing that it does more for casters by letting them do the things they were already doing by some fairly marginal degree at great expense. For non-casters it gives them whole new abilities and actually -improves- their ability to do the thing their class is built to do.

as your proposed solution is in fact less efficient than one that is exclusive to casters in the majority of cases. Factoring in WBL made the all martial party fall further behind.

They get a QoL ability just a little later than the party with a caster in it if they decide it's even needed. Big deal. The gold could easily go to any of a number of other options, some of which are more versatile than others.

No, it isn't. Consider the following adventure:

The enemy has invaded! Desperate Sendings from the border report a massive army marching towards the fertile river valleys that are the breadbasket of the empire. They'll arrive within days, and the capital (where the PCs are) is hundreds of miles away and can't deliver support in time. Can the players act fast enough to stop the enemy from putting grainaries to the torch and causing a famine?

That's a pretty reasonable adventure for a 9th level party. They go off, carve into an army of lizardfolk or orcs or something, fight a sequence of elites, and then end up beating down the demon or dragon or whatever it is that orchestrated the invasion. With Teleport, you can win that. Without it, you can't. Teleport is only QoL if you assume that every adventure has to be solvable by characters who don't get meaningful abilities because you think "Fighter" is a more legitimate character concept than "Wizard". Ditto Plane Shift and every other spell you insist is unnecessary. These spells do things. Adventures can and should depend on those things, because players should have abilities that matter and the abilities they have should matter.

That doesn't require teleport unless the "week away" is at the absolute fastest speed of any vehicle the party can access. Even then, simply requisitioning a single casting of the spell shouldn't be off the table if the PCs are -expected- to actually be deployed as skirmishers and champions of the realm.

If they absolutely need teleport to make it in time and the GM is actively shutting down teleport that's not through one of the party being able to cast the spell, I have no reason to believe they wouldn't just block that too, since it's not at all difficult to justify.

Even if you can't teleport and you can't find some means of travel to close the distance in the time alotted, that's not the end of the campaign under a decent GM. The villages get sacked and the PCs arrive to see the devastation and now have a stronger motivation to engage in guerrilla attacks on the enemy force until they can locate and take out the command groups and then back to the draconic mastermind. Realistically, that was probably always the outcome anyway. Four level 9 characters can't do -much- to stop an army from marching, particularly if that army's "elites" aren't just pushovers.

Heroes of Battle has a whole section on creating exactly this kind of campaign.

If a GM wants to hinge an entire adventure on a single ability like teleport or plane shift, I don't think even you would genuinely argue that doing so is good game design. I'll take it a step farther and say that doing so and then demanding there must be a caster in the party to provide it or "Screw you! You fail!" isn't just bad, it's unacceptable.

As for whether fighter or wizard is a -more- valid concept, that's not an argument I'm at all interested in. They're both valid enough. You're the one hung up on fighter and similar not being valid.

Exactly. That is a problem, and we can look at how other media works to fix it. A favorite example of mine is The Stormlight Archive. There are a lot of characters in that story, but I'll talk about two: Kaladin and Shallan. Kaladin is a spear-wielding soldier. Shallan is an academic/artist. Shallan gains magical powers that basically amount to transmutation and illusion. Obviously this is a lot better than Kaladin's ability to have a spear and be pretty good at stabbing people. So what happens? Kaladin gets some goddamn magic. So, hey, there's a novel idea, what if we solved the problem of Fighters not having abilities we care about by giving them abilities we care about?

Abilities we care about =/= magic. Not necessarily anyway. As for that being a problem, that's -your- problem. You're the one who's set the bar so high that only paradigm shifting spells seem to count and won't accept them coming from anywhere but a class feature.

When Thor Bifrosts into Wakanda in Infinity War, Heimdal is dead. He doesn't start out with Bifrost powers (though Heimdal is notably also a warrior, so you're still basically wrong), but he definitely gets them eventually.

In the marvel universe, bifrost is magitech setup in asgard. In D&D terms, it's wondrous architecture. Technically -nobody- has that power, only control over the equipment that grants it and I looked that scene up, just to be sure. Thor arrives via Bifrost. There's no indication he's the one who activated it. As ruler of Asgard after Odin's death, he has the right to command its operation.

Have you heard of something called the "five minute workday"?

Almost always in complaints that it happens and with requests for how to prevent it (which isn't hard to do, btw).

An hour is totally sufficient to fit in all the combat you are going to do on most days.

And you have no way of knowing when that hour will come so you either have to cover the -whole- day or you have to spot cast when you need it, eating combat actions unless you get the drop on the enemy.

You also have to just -hope- the GM lets you get away with it.

Will there be some days where you have to recast the spell? Sure. But those days aren't common enough to justify spending the thousands of gold it would take to have permanent magic weapons.

Days where you need it more than once are as common or uncommon as the GM decides they are. The scenario you painted above will likely see it come up quite often.

GMW doesn't do anything to overlap with or obsolete any of the special abilities that might be tied to a warrior's weapon either. You're looking at a 20% difference in to-hit at CL 20, at most. Substantially less if things like bane or discipline get involved.

In fact, the Pearl of Power rears its ugly head here too, as a 3rd level one is only marginally more expensive than a +2 weapon and will save you money at every point thereafter. Once again, having casters in your party instead of mundanes lets you make better use of your WBL.

Same problem as teleport except worse. You will need GMW -every- day that isn't down time. If you have 6 level 3 slots, you can now prepare 5 spells plus GMW. You get to cast any one of those twice. For 1k less, you get to pick up to 6 different spells and maybe pick up an effect from the weapon for the loss of a single point of attack bonus, such as morphing turning your weapon into effectively every weapon of the same size or spell storing which will -actually- let you cast something from yesterday's slots.

A pearl of power has its place. It's a decent item. It's less good than the slot it's replacing if you're essentially giving one up permanently to lock in an ability that you may or may not be able to get cheaper from some other item or an item with a qualitative difference in the same field.

GMW may be the single -worst- example of a thing to be permanently dedicating a spell slot to. If it's not redundant, it's superfluous unless you're something that's not a warrior trying to ape one and even in the best case when it is providing the exact same bonus, it's doing so as a "good enough" substitute that sometimes fails when you really need it.

It is a nerf. Unless you want to argue that Pun Pun is weaker than a DMM: Persist Cleric. And, yes, many of those things are class independent. That's true. Most of the problems people lay at the feat of casters are deeper problems with the system that manifest for casters because they have abilities that do interesting things. Casters are not problematic as classes. Casting spells like Stinking Cloud, Teleport, and Divine Power is a completely reasonable power level that it is entirely possible to tell interesting stories with. It's just that it's not compatible with the Fighter's ability to get +2 to damage with a spear.

To say that acknowledging that some things are just plain broken and can't be allowed if the game is to function a nerf is only true in the most superfluous, technical sense in -some- cases. Saying "no Pun Pun" isn't a nerf to anything but reptilian humanoids and certainly not one to casters. "No planar binding abuse" isn't a nerf at all but a ruling on a rules ambiguity.

You say that like being both of those things is somehow incompatible.

They are. This is eroding the whole concept of archetypes. The wizard stick and WBL means that any class can be a caster but if I posited a fighter/ battlesmith that made clever use of his wealth to make it himself, you wouldn't be willing to call that a caster, would you?

Of course not. That's a warrior aping a caster just like a cleric that's buffed himself into combat capability is still a divine spellcaster aping a warrior.

Once again, you're presupposing that only the classes you like get to call themselves melee types. But that's absolutely absurd.

No, calling a thing something it's not because it can be made to look like that thing is absurd. A UMD rogue with a staff of spell storing item is not an arcanist and a DMM persist cleric that uses persistent divine power isn't a warrior.

You can build a melee Cleric, just as you can build a ranged Fighter.

Tha'ts true.

The fact that your power comes from divine spells doesn't mean you can't fight on the frontlines, many divine spellcasters are very clearly intended to do exactly that.

That's not.

Fighting on the front line isn't what makes you a warrior. Being dedicated to fighting on the front line as your primary role in the party is. Most divine spellcasters have to put serious effort into being able to do that by mid-level and cleric is one of two that can do so reliably, the other being OA's shaman. All the others have to go -way- out of their way to be able to use persistent spell at all and without persistent divine power, you're just plain -not- matching the actual warriors' to-hit rates, attack frequency, or damage output without reverting to just playing like a normal caster.

It addresses many of my concerns about imbalance. It gives you a concrete reason to have a Fighter in your party, because buffing him now actually is better than having a CoDzilla and layering more buffs on her. Or at least it could be, depending on specifics. And, yeah, it doesn't give the Fighter anything to do outside combat. But that's okay. A fix doesn't have to fix every problem to be a good idea. It just has to fix more problems than it causes.

Your whole thesis, in this and other threads, has been that the warriors, particularly fighter, don't have any meaningful non-combat abilities and that combat abilities aren't particularly meaningful since everybody is expected to have them. This does nothing to address that. It's just a straight caster buff. From your purported perspective, this fixes nothing. It just makes casters ever so slightly stronger.

If that's the choice being made, buffing the fighter was always better than buffing CoDzilla since it always meant either using fewer buffs or going further with them. That's a separate matter entirely from whether to -be- a fighter or CoDzilla.

Quertus

2020-09-19, 09:03 AM

As much as I love watching two of the more… clever (by which I mean, I expect them to correct me, not / more often than the other way around) Playgrounders be on opposite sides of an issue, and I agree with many points both have made, I just cannot believe that I saw an attempt to claim that Teleport x3 > [Teleport + Cloud Kill + Resurrection (how?!) + Fabricate + Plane Shift + (any combination of the above again x3)] + (can change the specifics of which Singletons are available tomorrow). Don't get me wrong - I've owned a Helm of Teleportation, loved it, worth every penny. But if I could have owned a Helm of [Teleport + Cloud Kill + Resurrection (how?!) + Fabricate + Plane Shift + (any combination of the above again x3)], let alone one that could can change the specifics of which Singletons are available tomorrow?

Ah, yes, the countless heroes who have fallen by not being able to boast about their mighty deeds while underwater. :smallwink:

Lol. Autocorrect, you have struck again.

King of Nowhere's response is what I had in mind. Good game design is about having actually challenging challenges. A party full of tier 1 casters with modestly good-not-super choices is typically not that challenged by standard encounters.

That hasn't been my experience, at least at low level.

Their spells would obviously be dispel-fragile, but that seems fine.

Fine? We may have different definitions of fine. Granted, nothing keeps buffs from coming from Dispel-proof Ravenloft devices, like they should anyway for critical bugs if dispelling is likely an issue.

The focus on fighters getting buffs from the spellcasters seems like a red herring to me. It's not even mentioned in the houserule. If spellcasters want to buff fighters, that's fine, but if they don't the game should still work. There's also nothing wrong with a fighter paying for a pearl of power or a karma bead share.

Two issues.

One is simple math. Well, not so simple math, but still. We've moved from a scenario where the self-buffed Cleric joins the (probably also buffed) Fighter on the front lines "as an equal" (at least in his own mind), to one where the Fighter is trying to hold the line by himself. It shouldn't take a genius to realize that the Fighter will need to somehow be *even stronger* to do the work of two. So, yes, you do need to buff the Fighter more just to get back to where you were - probably more than it is *possible* to buff the Fighter. Add in the extra resources spent for the Fighter's failures / inability to perform the work of two, and that's a lot of extra spells being spent.

Second, we've killed the concept of the self-buffer, saying "it's BadWrongFun to buff yourself" (:smallfurious:), and spent lots of virtual ink explaining how you can still buff the muggles. It seems odd to then claim, "but, despite all this careful explanation, you don't *have* to buff muggles".

Honestly, it would have been better to kill the toxic producer / consumer relationship altogether, and simply ban all buff spells, period.

Actually… I *like* that. If the game should work, even if you don't buff the Fighter, then simply ban all dwoemers, period. No more Haste, no more Lesser Vigor, no more Flight or Water Breathing. No more Detect Magic or True Sight. No more Wraith Strike. No more Avoid Planar Effects or Protection from Evil. Done.

Now that sounds interesting.

Anthrowhale

2020-09-19, 09:55 AM

hey, that's actually nice. i will definitely have a few npcs built that way. but is there anything to protect your allies from magic too?

Well, a +20 dodge bonus from Improved Combat Expertise applied to an ally goes a long ways against touch attack spells.

Rogues also have access to "Friend's Evasion" (Complete Champion, Page 51) which grants evasion to adjacent allies.

Paladin's have access to Stand Fast (http://archive.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/we/20070228a) which allows occasional-use bonuses to allies saves in 20'. In addition there is the 'Shield Maiden's Grace" feat which grants the Paladin's Divine Grace to an ally for Cha bonus rounds at the cost of a turn undead and Gift of Grace which allows you to give away your Divine Grace to allies.

(There may be others.)

But they still get the defensive benefits.
The defensive benefit to a dragon of reducing a debuff from caster level 20 to caster level 17 (for a CR 20 old silver dragon as an example) seems to minor to worry about.

That hasn't been my experience, at least at low level.

At level 1, my experience is that a party of Beguiler 1/Cleric 1/Druid 1/Wizard 1 is quite capable of handling common level 1 adventures. To give a sense of this, here's an optimized wizard 1 (https://forums.giantitp.com/showsinglepost.php?p=24650205&postcount=400).

I believe just about any character class can handle things at low levels via some combination of Hide+Move Silently for surprise, Combat Reflexes + reach weapon, Wild Cohort[Riding dog], Improved Initiative, or Shape Soulmeld[Blood Talons] and spending money wisely.

...and spent lots of virtual ink explaining how you can still buff the muggles. It seems odd to then claim, "but, despite all this careful explanation, you don't *have* to buff muggles".
If you review the thread, I believe you'll discover that most discussion of buffs on my side is simply pointing out fallacies of people. That seems rather inevitable if people are to actually understand the proposal.

Kelb_Panthera

2020-09-19, 10:22 AM

As much as I love watching two of the more… clever (by which I mean, I expect them to correct me, not / more often than the other way around) Playgrounders be on opposite sides of an issue, and I agree with many points both have made,

I appreciate the compliment. :smallsmile:

FWIW, I -do- see the potential for the toxic consumer/producer relationship you've mentioned, I just don't think its as prevalent or severe as some other posters, much less an absolute given, even under the proposed houserule.

I just cannot believe that I saw an attempt to claim that Teleport x3 > [Teleport + Cloud Kill + Resurrection (how?!) + Fabricate + Plane Shift + (any combination of the above again x3)] + (can change the specifics of which Singletons are available tomorrow). Don't get me wrong - I've owned a Helm of Teleportation, loved it, worth every penny. But if I could have owned a Helm of [Teleport + Cloud Kill + Resurrection (how?!) + Fabricate + Plane Shift + (any combination of the above again x3)], let alone one that could can change the specifics of which Singletons are available tomorrow?

I didn't say it was necessarily better. The implication of my argument was that the three pearls isn't necessarily strictly always better either.

You've got to realize that 3 pearls of power is -not- the equivalent of three extra slots.They only let you double up on 3 of the spells you've already prepared; that is, it's only an extra cloudkill, planeshift, and fabricate if you've actually prepared cloudkill, planeshift, and fabricate.

If you're not a specialist wizard, you're almost certainly only getting 6 slots at that level before you're -epic- unless you pick up a ring of wizardry V.

So you can do up to 6 things, right? Not if you have spells you have to prepare because you don't want to get caught without them. No amount of pearls of power will change that either. They'll let you do some of those things twice. If you need to have teleport prepared most days, then on most days you can only do 5 things with your slots because the 6th is locked with that teleport. If you have an item that produces teleport then you can do 6 things again because you -don't- need to prepare it anymore. Having 3 pearls means you can cast teleport up to 4 times but even a thousand pearls won't let you pull a 6th unique spell out of your pocket on that day.

Now if we were talking memento magica, that'd be a whole different ball game. That is just straight up buying an extra spell slot. The cost, however, means that you only get 2 of those for marginally more than the helm of teleportation. A third would have you up to over half-again the helm's cost. And, of course, if you are a spontaneous caster and you have a helm of teleportation, you don't need it as a spell known anymore. You can either trade it out or neglect having learned it in the first place.

Now if you want a strictly superior option; a minor schema of teleport is only 10k to be able to cast it once per day. That frees up a slot and lets you teleport way cheaper.

The helm being useable by the entire party instead of only the party's wizard/ wu-jen/ travel or portal domain cleric is also worth something but putting a value on that without having a particular party composition is difficult. It can at least justify splitting the cost amongst the party and does have the distinct advantage of meaning you can't have the party's ability to teleport knocked out along with just one of the party's memebers.

Now, of course, the whole argument is entirely moot if you don't see teleport as a necessity. In that case, yeah, of course the pearls are better. You can just bag a couple teleport scrolls for the rare occasion you do want to use it for chump-change and forget about it. It's not gonna take up a slot, basically ever, and there are a whole host of more important things you could otherwise use that gold to acquire. I'd probably be looking for a cheap true seeing item in the same price ball-park.

NigelWalmsley

2020-09-19, 10:52 AM

By that metric, skills are invalid in their entirety and all the skill users with them.

Not at all. There are plenty of ways you could be better at using skills than an Expert is. You could have more skills than the Expert (like the Rogue does). You could have abilities that allow new uses of skills (like the Rogue does). You could have abilities that let you use your skills more effectively (like the Rogue does). You could have abilities that let you get really huge bonuses to your skills (like the Incarnate does). All of those I would consider at least somewhat meaningful. But the Fighter doesn't get any of that. He gets exactly what the Expert does, but less of it.

That's a long ways from all that changes.

No, that is an exact and total description of the thing that changes. You lost "being a Wizard", you gained "being a Fighter". That is 100% of what happened, and therefore 100% of what matters. You gave up a bunch of class features and abilities that help the party solve problems, and in exchange you got ones that didn't do that. That is the opportunity cost of being a Fighter, and therefore the relevant change to consider when discussing the relative value of "Fighter" and "Wizard".

As a warrior, my -job- is to make the bad guys fall down.

Your job is to help the party overcome challenges. Making bad guys fall down can be how you do that, but for it to be a sufficient description of "your job", you have to both do it better than the alternatives (you don't) and do it well enough to overcome your total lack of meaningful abilities to do anything else (you don't).

If you're using a pearl, you're still giving up the slot to teleport and the replacement slot is limited to one of the other spells you have prepared. It is -not- as good as an open slot in which you can prepare any of the spells you have access to. It's only an extra cloudkill if you actually prepared cloudkill today.

Why would you not prepare Cloudkill twice? Cloudkill is awesome. There's some marginal value in getting "whatever you want" instead of "another of the spells you prepared", but it's not worth thousands of GP. You still prepare your spells in the morning, so you still need to hedge your bets, and the marginal difference between "the best 5th level spell I can prepare twice" and "the best pair of 5th level spells I can prepare" is very tiny.

Offloading it onto a dedicated item so you don't need to think about it means not having to be concerned with forgetting about or being tempted to sacrifice it for some other option.

"You have less flexibility" is a downside, not an upside. If the item is so great, and we're assuming players are so stupid they can't be trusted with options, clearly the real risk is that they will instead choose to buy the 1470 anchor feather tokens that 73.5k GP could get them.

Literally everything a caster can do is for sale. Very little of it is actually required. Casters are not required.

Literally everything a Fighter can do can be replicated with spell slots you don't need to even cast that day. If we play the "who's more replaceable" game, the Fighter loses hands down. I mean, the only reason we're even having this argument is that we all pretend the Wizard can't just go cast Dominate Person on a Fighter and play both characters.

You're arguing that it does more for casters by letting them do the things they were already doing by some fairly marginal degree at great expense. For non-casters it gives them whole new abilities and actually -improves- their ability to do the thing their class is built to do.

Calling it "great expense" is dishonest when it's cheaper than the things non-casters are trying to do. Yes, 25k GP is a lot of money. But 73.5k GP is, by definition, more money. And it's not like casters can't spend money on gear to make themselves better (+stat items, +save items, Rods), they just don't need to do that. Because casters can do their jobs and get to spend their money on doing additional stuff, while mundanes can't do their jobs without items.

I'll take it a step farther and say that doing so and then demanding there must be a caster in the party to provide it or "Screw you! You fail!" isn't just bad, it's unacceptable.

Making the abilities that players have matter is good design. The fact that it makes you sad because you want to be allowed to play characters that do not have abilities makes you a problem player, it doesn't make adventures where what the players can do is relevant to their success a problem. I want my character's abilities to allow them to succeed. I think most people want that, actually. That requires that not having those abilities would make them fail. If your DM reduces Teleport to QoL, they are directly spitting on every player who chooses to take Teleport as an ability, just as having only ECL 1 encounters would be spitting on everyone who choose to invest in getting better at combat.

In the marvel universe, bifrost is magitech setup in asgard.

When Thor arrives in Wakanda, Asgard has been destroyed. The magic is coming from him.

Of course not. That's a warrior aping a caster just like a cleric that's buffed himself into combat capability is still a divine spellcaster aping a warrior.

The difference is that the warrior will run out of spells very quickly (or is breaking the game in a fundamental way, which is why WBLmancy is incredibly unhealthy). The caster can get up every day and be an effective frontliner for no marginal cost. Incidentally, go crack open an economics textbook and read up on concepts like "marginal cost" and "opportunity cost". That will help explain why your arguments about how Fighters are totally okay are nonsense.

without persistent divine power, you're just plain -not- matching the actual warriors' to-hit rates, attack frequency, or damage output without reverting to just playing like a normal caster.

The difference between average BAB (what every divine caster gets) and good BAB (what the Fighter gets) is one point of to hit every four levels. It's one extra attack at all. Those things are absolutely trivial to get from the full suite of spellcasting casters get, even ones who aren't rocking Persistent Divine Power. Consider, for example, the basic 8th level Druid strategy of "turning into a Dire Lion". That grants you a comparable buff to Strength (better because it's not an enhancement bonus) and improves your attack routine past what either the Cleric or the Fighter is doing (baseline) at this level. That's 100% core-only, and the Druid hasn't cast any spells or remembered that he's allowed to have an animal companion.

Your whole thesis

I would imagine that I am a slightly better authority on what I believe than you are. If you are arguing that this does not solve my problem, and I am arguing that it does, that makes you wrong.

The defensive benefit to a dragon of reducing a debuff from caster level 20 to caster level 17 (for a CR 20 old silver dragon as an example) seems to minor to worry about.

But it's still something you have to worry about for every spellcasting monster. Whereas just buffing the Fighter up some (perhaps formalizing the Artifact Sword as free Items of Legacy) doesn't do anything to change the character of the work the DM needs to do. He just picks slightly tougher monsters out of the book of monsters he is choosing monsters out of.

Quertus

2020-09-19, 04:47 PM

I appreciate the compliment. :smallsmile:

What can I say? You're definitely saner and better researched than I.

FWIW, I -do- see the potential for the toxic consumer/producer relationship you've mentioned, I just don't think its as prevalent or severe as some other posters, much less an absolute given, even under the proposed houserule.

We're on the same - or at least adjacent - pages then.

However, to the person in the game where it *is* toxic, it probably isn't comforting to them to tell them that they're in the minority.

I didn't say it was necessarily better. The implication of my argument was that the three pearls isn't necessarily strictly always better either.

The helm being useable by the entire party instead of only the party's wizard/ wu-jen/ travel or portal domain cleric is also worth something but putting a value on that without having a particular party composition is difficult. It can at least justify splitting the cost amongst the party and does have the distinct advantage of meaning you can't have the party's ability to teleport knocked out along with just one of the party's memebers.

Probably more than anyone, I know that the Helm is better, because, when my squishy Wizard dies, you can loot the Helm off his mangled remains, pick up his corpse, and Teleport his body back to town for Resurrection.

Outside cases like this, where *someone else* is using the Helm, you will be hard-pressed to sell "lack of options is better".

You've got to realize that 3 pearls of power is -not- the equivalent of three extra slots.They only let you double up on 3 of the spells you've already prepared; that is, it's only an extra cloudkill, planeshift, and fabricate if you've actually prepared cloudkill, planeshift, and fabricate.

I am fully cognizant of this fact, yes.

If you're not a specialist wizard, you're almost certainly only getting 6 slots at that level before you're -epic- unless you pick up a ring of wizardry V.

Tainted Sorcerer? Using higher level spell slots to memorize 5th level spells? Terrible prestige classes that grant bonus spells?

So you can do up to 6 things, right? Not if you have spells you have to prepare because you don't want to get caught without them. No amount of pearls of power will change that either. They'll let you do some of those things twice. If you need to have teleport prepared most days, then on most days you can only do 5 things with your slots because the 6th is locked with that teleport. If you have an item that produces teleport then you can do 6 things again because you -don't- need to prepare it anymore. Having 3 pearls means you can cast teleport up to 4 times but even a thousand pearls won't let you pull a 6th unique spell out of your pocket on that day.

Absolutely true.

The pearls do not increase the versatility of "number of spells you can change" when you *have* to keep certain spells.

However, when you have to keep 3 Teleports because you *may* need that many, and 3 Cloud Kill spells because you *may* need that many, then the pearls *greatly* increase the caster's versatility. Thor knows I hate only having one of something, because I always feel like I'm going to "waste" it, and find a better opportunity / target for that spell later. Let alone the idea of only having one of something like Teleport, which has built-in fail states.

However, at this point, we're probably getting into "raises different ships differently" territory.

Now, of course, the whole argument is entirely moot if you don't see teleport as a necessity. In that case, yeah, of course the pearls are better. You can just bag a couple teleport scrolls for the rare occasion you do want to use it for chump-change and forget about it. It's not gonna take up a slot, basically ever, and there are a whole host of more important things you could otherwise use that gold to acquire. I'd probably be looking for a cheap true seeing item in the same price ball-park.

The "couple of scrolls (of Teleport)" is probably a good idea for cases where you need more Teleport per day that you expected (possibly due to bad rolls for Teleport itself), or for when the Rogue needs to UMD your mangled remains back to town. Pity my groups are so opposed to consumables.

Kelb_Panthera

2020-09-19, 10:23 PM

Not at all. There are plenty of ways you could be better at using skills than an Expert is.

Not really. There's precious little that modifies skill use in any way but "bigger number" or "take 10 at will" except HiPS and trapfinding.

You could have more skills than the Expert (like the Rogue does).

The quantity of your skills does not effect the quality of your skills. Your ability to pick a lock or hide from foes is completely and wholly independent from your ability decipher coded text or know how much the tarrasque weighs.

Either being able to perform the tasks skills allow you to perform matters or they don't. You can't just arbitrarily say that having only 4 skills doesn't matter because somebody else has 12.

You could have abilities that allow new uses of skills (like the Rogue does).

Trapfinding. You've described trapfinding here. It's a one level dip in any of half a dozen (prestige) classes or a couple feats away for any character. It's even an alternate feature on a ranger and a barbarian. The rogue gets no other ability that allows an otherwise gated use of a skill. I can't even think of another gated use of a skill but craft (alchemy) requiring literally any spellcasting ability.

You could have abilities that let you use your skills more effectively (like the Rogue does).

Skill mastery, which has to be selected, and HiPS on a wilderness rogue. The former is available for a one level dip in the prestige class with some of the softest requirements in the game on the following level; exemplar. The latter is on ranger by default and appears on a number of PrCs and gives one of the most marginal benefits imaginable at the same level spellcasters get 9th level spells. If you've been using hide to any meaningful degree up to that point, HiPS is a prime candidate to trade away for something more useful.

Notably, the rogue gives -no- bonuses to any skill. In 95% of use cases, he can't use his skills to any greater degree than an expert or fighter can. Hitting the higher DCs for some of the crazier stuff you can do with a skill -requires- +X bonus items. There are a few PrCs that give -big- bonuses to several of the movement skills but the one with the biggest bonus I'm aware of is the blade dancer from OA; a martial prestige class. Incidentally, blade dancer gives mastery for those same skills.

[qutoe]You could have abilities that let you get really huge bonuses to your skills (like the Incarnate does). All of those I would consider at least somewhat meaningful.[/quote]

Finally you hit something close to accurate. The incarnate -does- give big boosts to skills. Unfortunately, all that does is allow it to overcome its 2+int skill points and the most anemic skill list in the game. You have to purchase the ranks, cross class, to even match up to an equal level rogue most of the time. Beyond a certain point in the mid-levels, you need at least one incarnum focus to do even that.

But the Fighter doesn't get any of that. He gets exactly what the Expert does, but less of it.

So bard casting is worthless because sorcerer exits? That's the logic you're pushing here. Taken to its extreme, everything that's not an archivist may as well not have any spells at all for getting fewer known spells from more limited pools. I don't think you'll agree that's the case.

No, that is an exact and total description of the thing that changes. You lost "being a Wizard", you gained "being a Fighter". That is 100% of what happened, and therefore 100% of what matters.

No, it isn't. As a result of the changes to available features and skills, ability score, race, and wealth priorities all get shuffled around and wholly different prestige options are available to each, not just as individual classes but archetypally.

You gave up a bunch of class features and abilities that help the party solve problems, and in exchange you got ones that didn't do that.

No, I gave up the ability to derive a host of options from my class in exchange for having to derive many of them elsewhere and the ability to specialize in one set of options. My ability to solve problems is still only as limited as my ability to foresee them.

That is the opportunity cost of being a Fighter, and therefore the relevant change to consider when discussing the relative value of "Fighter" and "Wizard".

I repeat, again, no one plays a class alone. You play an entire character. Just because you minimize the importance of non-class options doesn't suddenly wipe them away from the game.

Your job is to help the party overcome challenges.

Tautology. That's every character's job, indeed every -player's- job.

Making bad guys fall down can be how you do that, but for it to be a sufficient description of "your job", you have to both do it better than the alternatives (you don't)

I do it with fewer daily resources and can, consequently, do it more often than the alternatives. You -need- the 15 minute adventuring day. If I pick up any of a host of self-healing options, I don't. Some of them can make it so I don't ever need to stop. I can hit harder and in a wider, perhaps even much wider, variety of ways without spending any daily resources at all.

If I can go through 4 encounters in a day before my HPs start to run thin or I've taken more ability damage than my gear can recover, while you're getting low on spells after only one or two, I -am- twice as good at getting it done. Same goes for if I can drop the enemy in 2 rounds while your caster needs 2 for buffing, debuffing, or setting up the field before you can even start, even if you can kill them in 2 after that.

and do it well enough to overcome your total lack of meaningful abilities to do anything else (you don't).

That depends entirely on how I've built. I can choose not to have any such abilities just as you can choose not to learn or prepare any combat oriented spells. Frankly, just freeing up your slots so that you can do other things with them can very easily be counted as my contribution to non-combat encounters. Every suggestion or tongues or secret page or invisibility sphere that you get to cast because you didn't need GMW, that's the fighter's doing.

Why would you not prepare Cloudkill twice? Cloudkill is awesome.

Because preparing two of -any- combat spell is a waste of opportunity on a prepared caster. If I wanted to spam combat spells, I'd play a spontaneous caster.

You don't have enough slots to prepare two of anything until you're a much higher level than when you get them. That 6 slots I mentioned before is at level -15- for a wizard with int between 29 and 35 for 5th level slots. At level 9, you get two unless you're a specialist, maybe. A pearl of power 5 is a -major- item for a character at level 13. That's most likely 4 slots.

Remember that you're the one that thinks teleport is necessary so you've got to get it somewhere. With spells being the source of your power and versatility, you do -not- want to just eat the loss of a slot for it; so that means spending gold. If you use a pearl, you're still giving up some of your overall versatility. If you use a dedicated teleport item, you're not.

There's some marginal value in getting "whatever you want" instead of "another of the spells you prepared", but it's not worth thousands of GP. You still prepare your spells in the morning, so you still need to hedge your bets, and the marginal difference between "the best 5th level spell I can prepare twice" and "the best pair of 5th level spells I can prepare" is very tiny.

What's better; teleport, cloudkill, mirage arcana, prying eyes, and telekinesis or teleport, cloudkill X2, prying eyes, and mirage arcana.

"You have less flexibility" is a downside, not an upside. If the item is so great, and we're assuming players are so stupid they can't be trusted with options, clearly the real risk is that they will instead choose to buy the 1470 anchor feather tokens that 73.5k GP could get them.

One of those sets is more versatile than the other. It's not the one that results from the pearl. A pearl of power is a more flexible item than the helm of teleportation but it makes your character -less- versatile.

Even taken on its own, the pearl doesn't increase a caster's versatility, it increases his staying power. Items with specific effects make casters more versatile by allowing them to use their spells for -different- things than their items, even if it doesn't actually allow them to do anything they couldn't do with their spell slots too.

Literally everything a Fighter can do can be replicated with spell slots you don't need to even cast that day. If we play the "who's more replaceable" game, the Fighter loses hands down.

It's not who's -more- replaceable that matters. What matters is that neither is -irreplaceable-. You keep throwing up these arguments like I'm saying that warriors are more valid or that casters are invalid and that's not at all what I'm saying. I've always been saying that warriors are valid. That's it. You're the one hung up on trying to invalidate an entire character archetype.

I mean, the only reason we're even having this argument is that we all pretend the Wizard can't just go cast Dominate Person on a Fighter and play both characters.

It's far from a given even with the specific fighter class. Getting will saves up isn't that tough and neither is just hard-blocking enchantment. That's why it's one of the first schools specialists give up along with evocation.

Calling it "great expense" is dishonest when it's cheaper than the things non-casters are trying to do. Yes, 25k GP is a lot of money. But 73.5k GP is, by definition, more money.

25k gp for -one- extra spell is a lot of money. 75k for 3 is more than 73.5k. The helm isn't the only way for warriors to get teleport either. Right there in the srd, you can get 3 per day from boots of teleportation too for only 49k.

The Jaunter prestige class also exists. allowing a planar fighter (planar handbook, pg 42) to access teleport and planeshift -earlier- than a wizard. If you're really that enamored of the freakin' abilities.

And it's not like casters can't spend money on gear to make themselves better (+stat items, +save items, Rods), they just don't need to do that. Because casters can do their jobs and get to spend their money on doing additional stuff, while mundanes can't do their jobs without items.

Just so I know, does your GM have the biggest, softest kid gloves ever or does he just not know how to deal with casters, like, at all?

You absolutely -do- need your +X to Y bonus items as a caster, at bare minimum. Unless every day is a 5 minute workday, you need some way to extend your staying power and/ or minimize necessary spell slot usage too.

Making the abilities that players have matter is good design.

Making them matter and requiring them are not the same thing. Your own poorly contrived scenario was a case of the former but that's because you were trying to create the latter and failed.

If teleport were absolutely -necessary-, as in you can't complete the adventure with out it, then that -is- bad design unless the adventure -also- provides a means to teleport just in case your party doesn't have it. The vast majority of even casters don't.

If the GM has intentionally added a teleport task to make the wizard's ability to teleport matter, then it's entirely reasonable to assume he will include material that plays to the strengths of other players' classes, regardless of what they are.

The fact that it makes you sad because you want to be allowed to play characters that do not have abilities makes you a problem player, it doesn't make adventures where what the players can do is relevant to their success a problem.

{Scrubbed}

Unless I'm demanding you -can't- play a caster because it "makes me feel bad" I'm allowed to suck as much as I damn well please. I can run through a veritable cavalcade of commoners with totally crap gear and feat choices that I intentionally screwed up and it's none of your damn business unless you're the GM. Maybe I amuse myself by getting killed in the most hilarious way I can find in any given dangerous situation. If that's what I find fun and the GM doesn't object, you can suck it up, buttercup.

All of that is true entirely regardless of the fact your opinion that warriors are worthless because don't meet your arbitrarily chosen standard of "meaningful" is not an objective fact. They can, in fact, meet system expectations and access the abilities you insist are the only ones that are "meaningful" regardless which specific class they choose. Do they get fewer of them because of the associated costs, yes. That doesn't change the fact they can get them if they want them.

I want my character's abilities to allow them to succeed. I think most people want that, actually. That requires that not having those abilities would make them fail.

Failure and success are not necessarily binary states. In your scenario, teleport mattered. You got to feel like you were doing something useful for having it but its absence did not and would not cause the adventure to fail. It just makes the overall victory a bit darker.

If your DM reduces Teleport to QoL, they are directly spitting on every player who chooses to take Teleport as an ability, just as having only ECL 1 encounters would be spitting on everyone who choose to invest in getting better at combat.

You couldn't elevate it from QoL to necessity when you were trying to prove that it was necessary. Making the cutting of travel time, and that's all teleport is, into something that is absolutely -necessary- is difficult at best and utterly contrived even if you can pull it off.

You might have been able to make -some- headway in this particular line of argument with planeshift but even then, natural portals are a thing and you're still just making things easier not making them possible.

The difference is that the warrior will run out of spells very quickly (or is breaking the game in a fundamental way, which is why WBLmancy is incredibly unhealthy).

He's using his class features to take on your role just like you're using yours to take on his. His arms and armor costs are cut in half too so he still doesn't need buffs that overlap. If I start into Kensai after battlesmith, I can cut the cost of the weapon down to nothing but a trivial XP cost. So I can still do my job -and- yours.

Drow house insignia set to produce power surge is only 5650 and each one I get is a charge off of the staff I can use for free each day. My spell slots are a -lot- cheaper than yours.

As for WBLmancy being unhealthy, why? Now suddenly the guidelines you spat on before matter?

The caster can get up every day and be an effective frontliner for no marginal cost. Incidentally, go crack open an economics textbook and read up on concepts like "marginal cost" and "opportunity cost". That will help explain why your arguments about how Fighters are totally okay are nonsense.

You're not arguing they're not okay here. You're arguing they're not as good as casters. That isn't the same thing at all. The fact you're ignoring the cost as "free" doesn't make it true. Giving up daily versatility, however little, -is- a cost.

The difference between average BAB (what every divine caster gets) and good BAB (what the Fighter gets) is one point of to hit every four levels. It's one extra attack at all. Those things are absolutely trivial to get from the full suite of spellcasting casters get, even ones who aren't rocking Persistent Divine Power. Consider, for example, the basic 8th level Druid strategy of "turning into a Dire Lion". That grants you a comparable buff to Strength (better because it's not an enhancement bonus) and improves your attack routine past what either the Cleric or the Fighter is doing (baseline) at this level. That's 100% core-only, and the Druid hasn't cast any spells or remembered that he's allowed to have an animal companion.

It's one attack at levels 6 and 7, 11 - 14, and 16 on. That's more than half the game. And its an extra attack that's -not- easy to pick back up because all the other methods of picking up extra attacks work just as well for the warrior. Turn into a big cat? yep, you can do that to the fighter too. Haste? You're expected to get that if you're a fighter, one way or another. TWF? Sorry, -two- attacks more than you for a third of the game.

And if you really want to bring a full suite of melee combat oriented bonuses and abilities into it, the warriors all get those baked right in without having to expend anything at all. A fighter with a non-magical sword and no strength booster is still going to have a decent shot at hitting at any level. A cleric in the same boat isn't hitting on anything but a nat 20 without buffing in the later levels.

I would imagine that I am a slightly better authority on what I believe than you are.

You'd think. Apparently not.

If you are arguing that this does not solve my problem, and I am arguing that it does, that makes you wrong.

You've stated your problems and why they're problems over and over in this and other threads. This does not address them as you've described them. By the metrics you've set out, this does not give the warriors any meaningful abilities. You're already abusing free metamagics with your cleric so you're not even gaining anything but a few daily resources saved which you've been arguing for the last several posts is inadequate to justify the -existence- of fighter and similar, much less making them a better choice than literally anything you do consider worthy of existing.

{Scrubbed}

Asmotherion

2020-09-20, 02:52 PM

I believe you've confused target and source here. The caster level of a most spells as applied to the target is capped by target HD - target caster level. That means that a half-caster level class like paladin is "optimal" in the sense that their caster level is not clipped for self-buffs. A wizard on the other hand would have a self-buff applied at 0 caster level, and a paladin with Practiced Spellcaster would end up having self-buffs reduced by 4 levels.

I agree the ramifications are not fully clear, but that's inevitable with any proposal. I'm skeptical about needing to go spell to spell past level 10, unless you can come up with at least one example.

The smorgasboard approach to house rules seems both (axiomatically) more difficult to describe, and feels much more arbitrary.

I'm not quite following this. If you are thinking of the ring of spell storing, that doesn't enable a wizard to buff themselves, since the wizards caster level is the wizard's hit dice.

I'm not following this. A Wizard 5/Incantatrix 3 would have the caster level of self-buffs reduced to 0 in application. perhaps, I should specify that caster level 0 = no spell.

A paladin 8 would have self-buffs take effect at caster level 4. Regardless of whether or not they are a persistomancer, this means that their buff stack would be quite delicate w.r.t. dispel magic. This seems like it's not much of an issue for game balance.

Black Tentacles, Acid Fog, Fog Cloud, and Solid Fog are all SR:No and hence would affect spellcasters normally. A wizard immunity to Mind Fog and Bestow Curse is certainly a benefit for spellcasters, although this may complicate their targetting a bit on offense.

I hadn't thought about nerfing spellcasting summons, but that seems like an acceptable implication. I also think it's reasonable for spellcasters to still be able to cast summons and buff them. This may be a viable tactic in general although it's typically not as good as buffing a mundane party member.

Oh, I see. SLAs don't count as spellcasting here, in the sense of reducing the caster level of spells applied to SLA users. They do count as spells w.r.t. their effects. (Su effects count in neither direction.) Hence Planar Binding is still a thing, and it can be used to create a pretty good buff target. Of course, it comes with some built in DM adjudication, and I expect that a spellcaster would not often want to lend magic items to a planar bound creature which leaves them at a disadvantage compared to a party mundane.

I think the designers generally "balanced" personal range spells by making them stronger than touch range spells so this provides a buff to the players in a PvM situation. In general, I tend to think of players as a little to good against monsters.

Aside from again making the players more powerful, many metamagics don't apply to buff spells. I expect Extend is widely useful with Reach or Chain being occasionally useful.

Do you think that PvM tends to favor P or M? If P, then "bringing casters down" a bit seems unavoidable.

It's 3 sentences. You've read more in getting here.

It seems like you are assuming that spellcasters must buff mundanes. I don't believe that's true.

I believe it would result in a more interesting game.

Items recover from dispel magic after 1d4 rounds while spells do not.

Kelb's response is good here---if a DM wants to mess with the default setting by making magic items super hard to get, there will be consequences.

A houserule is not for "fairness". Coming at this from a "Will my wizard like this tradeoff?", point of view doesn't lead anywhere useful.

So, in other words, you INTENT that a Paladin or Bard will be a better caster than a Wizard or Sorcerer?

I don't follow your logic, man.

I mean, not only self-buffs are important to a well built caster (see Mind Blank for example), it also renders self-only spells virtually useless (at least without a familiar). No more Alter/Disguise self, no more flying wizards?

At the same time, we have a wizard who could for example pass through a Wall of Flames unaffected, as long as he is of a higher level than the original caster.

NigelWalmsley

2020-09-20, 04:05 PM

Not really. There's precious little that modifies skill use in any way but "bigger number" or "take 10 at will" except HiPS and trapfinding.

"Except for all the things that make me wrong, I'm right".

So bard casting is worthless because sorcerer exits?

Does every spell on the Bard list exist at the same level on the Sorcerer list? No, they do not. I would certainly consider you to be wasting everyone's time if you played a Bard who took only spells that could be cast earlier and more often by a Sorcerer, but there's plenty of ways to not do that as a Bard.

Tautology. That's every character's job, indeed every -player's- job.

That's not what the word "tautology" means.

I do it with fewer daily resources and can, consequently, do it more often than the alternatives.

Persistent and hours/level spells aren't really "daily" resources. The Cleric is going to have Divine Power, Righteous Might, Magic Vestment, and Greater Magic Weapon up 100% of the time by mid levels. Realistically, the Fighter takes more damage than a comparably optimized caster, because he is straightforwardly worse at fighting than someone who has elected to cast a bunch of buffs on themself every morning. And that's not even the best way to use your spell slots!

Frankly, just freeing up your slots so that you can do other things with them can very easily be counted as my contribution to non-combat encounters.

No, it can't. Because of opportunity cost. By playing a Fighter, you lost an entire caster's worth of slots. You're not going to free up that many, even if we grant that you don't cost more.

Because preparing two of -any- combat spell is a waste of opportunity on a prepared caster.

The best course of action is to cast whatever the best spell available to you is. If that happens to be Cloudkill twice, casting Cloudkill twice is the best course of action. It's arguably true that if you end up casting the same spell a bunch, you should consider playing a Sorcerer for more spells per day, but that's not clearly true. Focused Specialist gets you a comparable number of spells, and as a Wizard you're half a level ahead of the Sorcerer for the whole game.

What's better; teleport, cloudkill, mirage arcana, prying eyes, and telekinesis or teleport, cloudkill X2, prying eyes, and mirage arcana.

That's an unanswerable question, because you don't know the encounters you are going to have with perfect accuracy. I'm sure that you can imagine both a sequence of encounters where I want the second Cloudkill (lots of low-HD enemies) and a sequence of encounters where I don't want any Cloudkills (a bunch of undead). But I don't know what set of encounters I'm going to face when I prepare spells.

Also, you're misrepresenting the Pearl case. It doesn't have to be a second Cloudkill. It could be a second Teleport instead. Or a second Mirage Arcana. And unlock the slot freed up by item Teleport, that decision you get to make on the fly. I think it's pretty reasonable to expect that "whichever of the 5h level spells anyone in my party prepared is best right now" is generally going to be better than "whatever 5th level spell I think is fourth best at the beginning of the day" most of the time. Suppose you ended up in an adventure with a bunch of undead. Would you rather have a Wizard who prepared Cloudkill (because that seemed reasonable this morning), or have your Cleric refresh his Flamestrike? Not to mention that in this hypothetical you are also nearly 50k GP richer.

Just so I know, does your GM have the biggest, softest kid gloves ever or does he just not know how to deal with casters, like, at all?

This is rich coming from someone who expects to never have adventures that require characters to use their abilities, or have those abilities to begin with.

If teleport were absolutely -necessary-, as in you can't complete the adventure with out it, then that -is- bad design unless the adventure -also- provides a means to teleport just in case your party doesn't have it. The vast majority of even casters don't.

Is it bad design to have CR 10 monsters in your adventure for 10th level characters? Of course not. Because we expect that people will have abilities that let them defeat CR 10 monsters at 10th level. Similarly, "cast Teleport" is just a 10th level non-combat challenge (and, of course, Teleport isn't the only mobility spell). Just as we shouldn't expect DMPCs to win the combat encounters for you if your characters happen to be terrible at fighting, we shouldn't expect spellcasters to automatically backfill the abilities you don't have. You choose to play a character that did not provide your party with the tools to succeed. As a reward, you get to fail.

Unless I'm demanding you -can't- play a caster because it "makes me feel bad" I'm allowed to suck as much as I damn well please.

That is literally the exact thing you are defending. We are arguing whether it is okay to nerf casters a bunch so martials are comparatively more viable. If you want to make some other point, open up a different thread and go be wrong over there. If your position is not "it is okay to demand that casters suck because martials do", your argument is off topic.

I can run through a veritable cavalcade of commoners with totally crap gear and feat choices that I intentionally screwed up and it's none of your damn business unless you're the GM.

No. It's everyone's business. Characters have goals. Those goals (typically) require the party to succeed. You playing a character who can't contribute is directly hurting other people's ability to enjoy the game.

You couldn't elevate it from QoL to necessity when you were trying to prove that it was necessary.

No, you just insisted that the scenario be re-written so that your character could win without having the ability he needed to win. If you don't have Teleport, you don't get there in time to fight off the army after they've done some damage. You get there days or weeks after the army has left and now the kingdom gets to suffer through a famine. It's true that the campaign doesn't end, but you absolutely failed that adventure. And you'll fail the next one too, because that one needs Plane Shift or whatever other ability you don't have because you refuse to play characters with abilities.

As for WBLmancy being unhealthy, why? Now suddenly the guidelines you spat on before matter?

If you take the "let's just use items to solve all our problems" logic to its conclusion, there is exactly one viable character: UMD monkey. He starts off throwing around scrolls that win fights for less money than he gets as treasure, then progresses to Staves of Holy Word that he UMDs at caster level 100. Charged items are game breaking in exactly the same way Planar Binding is. People tend not to notice, because the average player is incredibly irrational about charged items (hoarding them against future need that never arrives), but allowing them causes the same problems that allowing Candles of Invocation does.

yep, you can do that to the fighter too.

You can do that to the Fighter. You can't do it as a Fighter. Once again, you're forgetting opportunity cost.

You'd think. Apparently not.

So you're going to double down on the position that your understanding of my argument is better than my own? Yeah, you go on ignore now.