5e Spellcasting for 3x [Archive] - Giant in the Playground Forums

Maat Mons

2021-06-03, 09:20 PM

Spirit Shaman is from 2004, and UA Spellpoints are from 2004 as well. So I don't think this WoW d20 thing originated the concept.

If you use exhaustion-based mechanics to balance martials with casters, it will wind up very sensitive to the individual DMs' pacing. I'd much rather have a system whose balance doesn't go out the window if a DM fails to enforce an "X encounters per day" rule.

As a rule, it isn't fun to find yourself no longer able to do the stuff your entire class is about. So I'd rather have a balancing factor for casters that isn't designed to leave them unable to cast spells after a certain point.

It's also not fun to spend a bunch of battles refraining from doing your cool stuff, only to find out that the adventuring day is over, and you were saving your spell slots for nothing. It would also be nice for whatever is used to balance casters to not tend to cause this situation.

I don't think there's anything that's going to get around the fundamental issue that some classes are based on versatility, and some classes are based on big numbers. If you want true class balance, I think you'll need to decide on some level of versatility that all classes should have. Then build up the martial classes so they all have that much versatility, and strip down casters till none of them have more versatility than that. Fiddling with endurance or the size of numbers doesn't seem like the way to fix a disparity in versatility.

The problem with 5e Cleric, Druid, and Wizard, and with Pathfinder Arcanist, is these classes still get to completely reinvent themselves from day to day. All the martial classes lock you into one skill set. But these casters are never locked into anything. If your choices are "be able to do one thing" and "be able to do everything," how is that even a choice? As long as there are classes that can do everything, those will be the ones to pick.

At least Sorcerer is making decisions during character creation that determine what he'll be able to do. That's at least a measure of the same limitations all mundanes have, a nod towards the idea of fairness.

I propose you ask a few fundamental questions when considering fixes. "Should a single character be able to do everything?" If the answer is yes, make all classes able to do everything. If the answer is no, don't let any class do everything. "Should characters run out of steam after a certain point?" If yes, make all character run out of steam at about the same rate. If no, don't make anyone run out of steam.

We've got a system designed so that 20th-level characters of some classes are doing things 1st-level characters could scarcely imagine, but 20th-level characters of some other classes are … not. "Like 1st level but with bigger numbers" will never be a compelling counterpart to "reshape reality itself."

Elves

2021-06-03, 09:40 PM

Spirit Shaman is from 2004, and UA Spellpoints are from 2004 as well. So I don't think this WoW d20 thing originated the concept.
If the WOWd20 class was arcanist, that's clearly where PF got the name. True about SS.

If you use exhaustion-based mechanics to balance martials with casters, it will wind up very sensitive to the individual DMs' pacing. I'd much rather have a system whose balance doesn't go out the window if a DM fails to enforce an "X encounters per day" rule.

As a rule, it isn't fun to find yourself no longer able to do the stuff your entire class is about. So I'd rather have a balancing factor for casters that isn't designed to leave them unable to cast spells after a certain point.
I agree, but as long as Vancian is a sacred cow, arcanist casting is a better version of Vancian.

The problem with 5e Cleric, Druid, and Wizard, and with Pathfinder Arcanist, is these classes still get to completely reinvent themselves from day to day. All the martial classes lock you into one skill set. But these casters are never locked into anything. If your choices are "be able to do one thing" and "be able to do everything," how is that even a choice? As long as there are classes that can do everything, those will be the ones to pick.
Yes, the spell access of these classes needs to be restricted. (For example, wizards should be more limited by school, priests more limited by domain.)

There's room to provide both variability and permanent character choices. It's not either-or. Maybe your at-wills (cantrips) are permanent choices but the others can change day to day, maybe you have "spell masteries" that greatly improve your power with specific spells, maybe there's a small pool of spells everyone can prepare and then a pool of elite spells from which you can choose specific ones to learn, etc.

An example of combining variability and customization is Tome of Battle's known/readied system -- you have known spells but can only prepare a subset of them. Tome of Battle was a really prescient book.

RandomPeasant

2021-06-04, 09:04 AM

At the same time, the number of spell slots available are quite limited. I think this, plus some tweaks to martial classes, can bring a lot of balance to the Force.

Why is that a good thing, though? If you limit spell slots, you naturally push people towards the most broken spells. If you want to balance the game, you should take away the broken spells and increase the number of spell slots. A Wizard who is casting cone of cold every round does far less to imbalance the game than a Wizard who casts planar binding ever at all.

If you use exhaustion-based mechanics to balance martials with casters, it will wind up very sensitive to the individual DMs' pacing. I'd much rather have a system whose balance doesn't go out the window if a DM fails to enforce an "X encounters per day" rule.

This is absolutely true, and is why I think classes should have resource management that works per-encounter, with most people getting the same number of daily abilities. Adding implicit assumptions about workdays (or, on a similar issue, party composition) to your balance assumptions tends to cause more problems than it solves.

The problem with 5e Cleric, Druid, and Wizard, and with Pathfinder Arcanist, is these classes still get to completely reinvent themselves from day to day. All the martial classes lock you into one skill set. But these casters are never locked into anything. If your choices are "be able to do one thing" and "be able to do everything," how is that even a choice? As long as there are classes that can do everything, those will be the ones to pick.

I think that analysis is over-focused on the contingent realities of how 3e works, and even then it's missing some things. Consider the Incarnate. The Incarnate can reinvent itself as fully as a Cleric can every day. And yet, power-wise, it's somewhere between "mediocre" and "bad". Conversely, the Dread Necromancer doesn't even get to make build choices, and it's probably in the top 10 strongest classes. It's true that versatility is useful, and the fact that Druids and Wizards can change their abilities around makes them more powerful, but the majority of the power discrepancy is exactly that: power discrepancy. You can play a Beguiler in a party with a Cleric and a Wizard and pull your weight. You can play a Warblade in a party with a Binder and a Totemist and not be overshadowed. That suggests to me that, while not meaningless, versatility is only a small part of the puzzle.

paladinn

2021-06-04, 09:35 AM

Why is that a good thing, though? If you limit spell slots, you naturally push people towards the most broken spells. If you want to balance the game, you should take away the broken spells and increase the number of spell slots. A Wizard who is casting cone of cold every round does far less to imbalance the game than a Wizard who casts planar binding ever at all.

The spell choice is up to the player. I don't like "fire and forget". If a character needs to cast 3 fireballs, s/he should be able to. Yes, that means they won't be able to cast fly later on. It's resource management, just with more options.

This is absolutely true, and is why I think classes should have resource management that works per-encounter, with most people getting the same number of daily abilities. Adding implicit assumptions about workdays (or, on a similar issue, party composition) to your balance assumptions tends to cause more problems than it solves.

This sounds like you are a fan of 4e? My statement about "balance" was not meant to imply "absolute game balance." That was where 4e went off the rails; and that way lies madness. Just my $.02

RandomPeasant

2021-06-04, 10:33 AM

The spell choice is up to the player. I don't like "fire and forget". If a character needs to cast 3 fireballs, s/he should be able to. Yes, that means they won't be able to cast fly later on. It's resource management, just with more options.

I'm not sure how this responds to my point.

This sounds like you are a fan of 4e? My statement about "balance" was not meant to imply "absolute game balance." That was where 4e went off the rails; and that way lies madness. Just my $.02

Not at all. There are lots and lots of different non-daily resource management systems you could have. Just in 3e we have at-will (Warlock), random recharge (Recharge Magic variant), recover-by-not-using-powers (Warblade), encounter (Swordsage), deck-based randomization (Crusader), prepared power suites/fixed recharge (Binder), allocating power points (Incarnum), and probably more I'm forgetting. And we can easily imagine way, way, way more than these like Drain or "powerups based on the order powers are used" or "at-will, but with daily preparation" or Rage Meter. And you could easily imagine multiple classes using resource management that is basically the same but with different themes. You don't have to go as far as 4e did to avoid giving some people dailies and other people not, and there's really no reason you'd want to. People should do different things, but the headache of balancing daily v non-daily powers isn't worth it (especially since any daily power can trivially be an encounter power).

Elves

2021-06-04, 11:33 AM

The Incarnate can reinvent itself as fully as a Cleric can every day. And yet, power-wise, it's somewhere between "mediocre" and "bad". Conversely, the Dread Necromancer doesn't even get to make build choices, and it's probably in the top 10 strongest classes. It's true that versatility is useful, and the fact that Druids and Wizards can change their abilities around makes them more powerful, but the majority of the power discrepancy is exactly that: power discrepancy.
Agreed, the problem is about design more than power level. Like I mentioned, finding the balance between variability to keep your powers adaptable and stop them from becoming boring (some players won't want this, but most should have it as an option) and customization that gives you lasting choices to make and separates different members of the same class.

Take the examples you mentioned. DN/beguiler/warmage have no variability, while meldshapers have total variability, but the result in both cases is lack of distinction between different members of the class. [To be fair, DN and its ilk get advanced learning to offer some customization; my point is that there's a horseshoe effect where both high and low variability reduce uniqueness.]

The total day-to-day variance of binders and incarnum classes is a real problem with otherwise good subsystems. They don't even get domains like clerics. It also means these classes are a) overwhelming for a new player who has to read and choose between every soulmeld and b) disproportionately good for dips.

Psyren

2021-06-04, 02:09 PM

I particularly like the spell-slot idea because a caster (say a cleric) doesn't have to have Cure Minor/Light/Medium/Serious/Critical/etc Wounds prepared. S/he just has Cure Wounds and casts with a higher spell slot. There are a Lot of things that this could help. School/domain specialization can be achieved simply by allowing a free upcast to school/domain spells, or automatically Downcasting opposing school/domain spells.

At the same time, the number of spell slots available are quite limited. I think this, plus some tweaks to martial classes, can bring a lot of balance to the Force.

Again though, you should combine that with at least a few at-will or encounter/short-rest powers in order to prevent overcorrecting and forcing the caster to whip out the crossbow after a couple of spells. Otherwise the caster will be incentivized to be less of a team player with their limited resources.

Why is that a good thing, though? If you limit spell slots, you naturally push people towards the most broken spells. If you want to balance the game, you should take away the broken spells and increase the number of spell slots. A Wizard who is casting cone of cold every round does far less to imbalance the game than a Wizard who casts planar binding ever at all.

^ This. If I only have one 4th-level slot per day, it's probably going to be something like Polymorph or Dimension Door, instead of a team-oriented spell like Solid Fog or Remove Curse.

Agreed, the problem is about design more than power level. Like I mentioned, finding the balance between variability to keep your powers adaptable and stop them from becoming boring (some players won't want this, but most should have it as an option) and customization that gives you lasting choices to make and separates different members of the same class.

Take the examples you mentioned. DN/beguiler/warmage have no variability, while meldshapers have total variability, but the result in both cases is lack of distinction between different members of the class. [To be fair, DN and its ilk get advanced learning to offer some customization; my point is that there's a horseshoe effect here where both high and low variability reduce uniqueness.]

The total day-to-day variance of binders and incarnum classes is a real problem with otherwise good subsystems. They don't even get domains like clerics. It also means these classes are a) overwhelming for a new player who has to read and choose between every soulmeld and b) disproportionately good for dips.

Agreed. This is compounded by the fact that spells have consumable versions (scrolls and wands) to allow the caster to hedge their bets on a given day. Soulmelds and Vestiges have either no equivalent, or theirs are much more expensive/cumbersome to use.

RandomPeasant

2021-06-04, 04:53 PM

separates different members of the same class.

I don't think this is really all that important, especially for late expansion classes like Dread Necromancer and Binder. Like, have you ever had two Dread Necromancers in a party? It's just not something that comes up. There's something to be said for people's desire to diddle with fiddly bits on their character, but I think you can get as much of that as you want through feats, PrCs, and other stuff (particularly if you're allowed to add new stuff, or allow people to take more feats).

overwhelming for a new player who has to read and choose between every soulmeld

Again, I'm not sure this is that much of an issue. It is okay if there are some classes that are very complicated. The issue with Incarnum is that it's an entire splatbook dedicated to a system that is not only very complicated to learn, but complicated to use in play, and more complicated than it needs to be (you don't need both the Chakras and Essentia).

^ This. If I only have one 4th-level slot per day, it's probably going to be something like Polymorph or Dimension Door, instead of a team-oriented spell like Solid Fog or Remove Curse.

It's even worse than that. The really abusive spells are things that are more class features than spells to begin with. If you're using planar binding to summon up a horde of demons you were never going to do your trick during the adventuring day to begin with. Anything you get to do with your spell slots in a fight is basically gravy. So those characters (who, again, are by far the most problematic Wizards to begin with) barely care about the change at all.

Agreed. This is compounded by the fact that spells have consumable versions (scrolls and wands) to allow the caster to hedge their bets on a given day. Soulmelds and Vestiges have either no equivalent, or theirs are much more expensive/cumbersome to use.

I'm not sure that's really fair. It's not like Binders or Incarnates can't use scrolls or wands (indeed, there's a Soulmeld for that, as it turns out). I think in general consumable items do more to reduce the gap between casters and non-casters than increase it, it's just that the way they do that is by making "how good are you at using consumable items" more important than whatever it is your character nominally does.

Kitsuneymg

2021-06-04, 05:30 PM

PF has the arcanist. That class actually preceded 5e, but it may have been based off the 5e playtest documents. I wasn't playing then so I never read those.

Arcanist’s casting was first done by the 3.5 spirit shaman class. I think.

Elves

2021-06-04, 09:39 PM

I don't think this is really all that important, especially for late expansion classes like Dread Necromancer and Binder. Like, have you ever had two Dread Necromancers in a party? It's just not something that comes up. There's something to be said for people's desire to diddle with fiddly bits on their character, but I think you can get as much of that as you want through feats, PrCs, and other stuff (particularly if you're allowed to add new stuff, or allow people to take more feats).
I think it's important that base classes include permanent decisions that differentiate your actual class gameplay kit from other members of that class.

The issue with Incarnum is that it's an entire splatbook dedicated to a system that is not only very complicated to learn, but complicated to use in play, and more complicated than it needs to be (you don't need both the Chakras and Essentia).
You can explain the system in two or three sentences. The problem is they made it sound more complicated than it is.

A good editor would have made sure page 2 of the book was a condensed, 1-page description of the system.

Another lesson from MOI and TOB: if you're trying to teach people a new system, fluffing it as exotic and foreign and shrouding it in strange terminology is counterproductive.

I think in general consumable items do more to reduce the gap between casters and non-casters than increase it, it's just that the way they do that is by making "how good are you at using consumable items" more important than whatever it is your character nominally does.
True.

RandomPeasant

2021-06-05, 06:44 AM

I think it's important that base classes include permanent decisions that differentiate your actual class gameplay kit from other members of that class.

Why? Dread Necromancer characters receive meaningful customization from feats and PrCs (and I can certainly see the argument for adding more kinds of customization options). Adding customization to the class means you very quickly run into the prerequisite problem, where the "Soul Mage" or "Cthulhu Cultist" Dread Necromancer variants are basically dead text. The majority of games won't have a Dread Necromancer in them. The majority of those games won't have the Dread Necromancer take any particular class variant. I'm not opposed to ACFs or Archetypes in principle, but adding them for late-expansion classes seems like a very low-value proposition.

You can explain the system in two or three sentences. The problem is they made it sound more complicated than it is.

That's true of the majority of systems. I still maintain that having "some soulmelds trade off with other soulmelds according to no particularly coherent set of rules" and "soulmelds can be powered up in various ways, some of which are transparent between classes and some of which aren't" and "you can allocate points between your different soulmelds and move them around during the day" all be one system was unnecessary.

Elves

2021-06-05, 01:15 PM

Why? Dread Necromancer characters receive meaningful customization from feats and PrCs (and I can certainly see the argument for adding more kinds of customization options). Adding customization to the class means you very quickly run into the prerequisite problem, where the "Soul Mage" or "Cthulhu Cultist" Dread Necromancer variants are basically dead text. The majority of games won't have a Dread Necromancer in them. The majority of those games won't have the Dread Necromancer take any particular class variant. I'm not opposed to ACFs or Archetypes in principle, but adding them for late-expansion classes seems like a very low-value proposition.
The class and level system in D&D is a fill-in-the-blanks 20 row table. That's inherently friendly to a modular approach. I'd say the relevant question is closer to being "why not go full build-a-bear" than it is to "why should classes have any customization at all".

That's true of the majority of systems. I still maintain that having "some soulmelds trade off with other soulmelds according to no particularly coherent set of rules" and "soulmelds can be powered up in various ways, some of which are transparent between classes and some of which aren't" and "you can allocate points between your different soulmelds and move them around during the day" all be one system was unnecessary.
Mutually exclusive chakra binds are the most extraneous part of incarnum. That should either be dropped, or there should be stricter theming by slot so that there's a logic to the tradeoffs. Arguably, the whole "equipment" theme of the subsystem is misplaced -- if they wanted to go in that direction, they should have leaned into it (eg, essentia points get invested directly into your items to enhance them, soulmelds are a simple safety net of placeholder items in case you don't get good loot).

Dynamic essentia investment is fun and it's what makes incarnum more interesting than the binder, a snoozefest of a class that stands out as one of the most underdesigned in 3e. To make binder work, they needed to turn the "influence" mechanic into meaningful gameplay. Because at that point you're asking an interesting question -- how to make "PC loses agency" fluff into gameplay that doesn't strip agency from the player.

RandomPeasant

2021-06-05, 02:20 PM

The class and level system in D&D is a fill-in-the-blanks 20 row table. That's inherently friendly to a modular approach. I'd say the relevant question is closer to being "why not go full build-a-bear" than it is to "why should classes have any customization at all".

That seems backwards to me. The nature of a class system is to give things identity by making members of a given class like each other and not like other characters. That's what telling people they have to take levels in "Wizard" or "Bard" instead of just picking abilities freeform does. I can certainly understand the desire to mitigate that, but the point of classes is that they put people on rails.

And I'm not against classes having customization in absolute terms, I'm saying it's not really necessary for something like the Dread Necromancer or Binder that is coming in at the end of the edition's lifespan in an obscure splatbook. I see basically three reasons you'd want classes to be customizable. First, it lets you write broad classes while still hitting narrow character concepts. Second, it adds distinctiveness between characters when there are multiple people with the same class in the same campaign, or in subsequent campaigns. Third, people just like character customization. But those reasons don't apply nearly as strongly to something like a Dread Necromancer or Binder. The Dread Necromancer is already narrowly-focused on being a Necromancer. You're probably never going to have more than one Binder in a group, and unless someone at your table really likes Binders, you're probably not going to have them in successive campaigns. The last argument is the best reason for these classes to have some customization, but I think it's fairly weak by the time you get towards the end of an edition, because of how many non-class customization options you've added. I can think of half a dozen ways you might build a Dread Necromancer, and that's without considering the reality that "any PrC that advances casting at every level" is a viable option for a Dread Necromancer.

Of course, all that's strictly defensive. None of it's a reason not to write customization options for Dread Necromancer, just a reason you might not want to do it as much as you do for a core class like Rogue or Paladin. The reason you wouldn't want to write Dread Necromancer-specific ACFs (or whatever) is what I was referring to as "the prerequisite problem". If you write an ability that anyone can take, that ability is live for 100% of characters. If you write an ability that requires you to have some other ability, or to be some particular class, that ability is live for a much smaller subset of characters (particularly organic characters). You could write an ability that lets Dread Necromancers pick up some Soul Magic at the expense of some of the abilities they currently get. That's the sort of thing that Necromancers sometimes, but not always, do. But that takes up space, space that could have gone to an additional horror-themed class, or a Soul Magic feat that anyone could take, or a PrC, or some fluff about cool necromantic oddities. And if you do write it, it's only relevant if A) someone wants to play a Dread Necromancer and B) they'd like to have more soul magic than they get out of the base class. And it's irrelevant if someone wants to do soul magic as a Cleric or a Wizard (either of which make serviceable Necromancers).

Fizban

2021-06-06, 04:15 AM

I know one of the big issues of D&D is the power disparity between casters and "martials". I think going forward, I will grab the 5e spellcasting (spell-slot) system for all casters in any other edition. I think it allows much more flexibility for casters; but casters also have fewer spells/day("long rest"). Would this not help address some of this disparity?
I assume by any other edition you mostly mean 3rd, since this is the 3.etc forum. Unless you're planning on doing some major rebuilding of 4e? Anyway.

One of the major reasons given for the problem is that spell slots are eventually enough that they never run out. This is caused by a number of factors, including:

Conveniently ignoring all the single target survival buffs the casters are meant to be using on the whole party, or replacing them with much more efficient power creeping mass versions and cheap items.
The fact that an average of four encounters per day must necessarily include days where there are more than four encounters in addition to the chance of a random resting encounter- and thus the party should always be budgeting to use as few as 1/6 (or even less) of their daily resources per fight if possible, while many games seem to have a maximum of four and often fewer and with no resting encounters.
A gap between the game's expected ability scores (and thus bonus spell slots) and the much higher values used at some tables.
Power-creeping variants and magic items that provide ever more slots and free effective slot increases (free metamagic etc).
A gap in perception caused by people looking at high level monsters which can possibly be beaten with just a couple high level spells from a character of appropriate level as unintended, when the CR system says that yes an equal level encounter should be won with only a couple major spells.
And my new favorite pet theory/realization: the fact that 3.x was designed with two-spell-per-round Haste spell which could be assumed always active at high levels, and yet was ripped out in what seems like an obviously good fix for 3.5, but leaves casters with twice as many slots and half as much dps and suddenly the concept a spell not working perfectly every time is anathema.

It should also be noted that 5e increased the expected encounter "day" to 6-8 encounters of "medium to hard" difficulty. So that drastically reduced number of spell slots is actually supposed to be stretched even further than it might look at first glance.

Not only are spellcasters supposed to use their infinite use "cantrips" (often on par or weaker than basic attacks, with touch attacks not even existing anymore) frequently, but the massive change to the death and dying rules making is fighting at low hit points significantly less dangerous, leads me to assume that the party is also expected to drag themselves between some fights on little or no hit points as well, relying heavily on yet another new mechanic of "Hit Dice" where every character also has a daily healing pool.

So my advice would be to focus less on "importing 5e spellcasting," and more on figuring out what exactly you want from that and then doing it.

I particularly like the spell-slot idea because a caster (say a cleric) doesn't have to have Cure Minor/Light/Medium/Serious/Critical/etc Wounds prepared. S/he just has Cure Wounds and casts with a higher spell slot. There are a Lot of things that this could help. School/domain specialization can be achieved simply by allowing a free upcast to school/domain spells, or automatically Downcasting opposing school/domain spells.

At the same time, the number of spell slots available are quite limited. I think this, plus some tweaks to martial classes, can bring a lot of balance to the Force.
So you want all spellcasters to be spontaneous? Easily done, though you might run into some problems with what the game expects of the 3.x Cleric role which aren't so quickly homebrewed out of.

Making all spellcasters spontaneous with daily prepared lists, that's trickier, because 3.x very much does not expect it. The Cleric has access to all Cleric spells, but is limited by needing to guess how many of each and can't just pull more out of nowhere (until splat feats and features start allowing some)- some monsters just aren't a threat if you can always spam their hard counter. The Sorcerer is supposedly powerful because it has no limits on how many casts of each spell, but its known list is still worse than the prepared list of a Wizard.

For this, the 5e numbers are probably as good a starting point as any. Level+casting mod for the "prepared" casters, and Sorcerer gets some number, but since the 3.x Sorcerer does not have a monopoly on the power boosting "metamagic" ability like they do in 5e- Well Sorcerers could get spells at the same rate as the Psion along with some bonus feats. Or you could yank the entire metamagic system and make it Sorcerer-only, drastically reducing the power of the "prepared" casters in the process and making the terrible Sorcerer tables a tradeoff.

None of this addresses the fixed-list spontaneous casters, but I don't think they fit in a world where everything is spontaneous- in that case they're just a hack for massively increased spells known and spells "prepared" at the "cost" of only knowing a certain theme of spells. I suppose they could be like the Cleric, knowing their entire list which is also longer than a Sorcerer's but preparing only some of it?

Why is that a good thing, though? If you limit spell slots, you naturally push people towards the most broken spells. If you want to balance the game, you should take away the broken spells and increase the number of spell slots. A Wizard who is casting cone of cold every round does far less to imbalance the game than a Wizard who casts planar binding ever at all.
Any DM who is considering changing the rules of the game, should also already have their responses to this or that other broken game element lined up. If they're ready to change the spellcasting mechanics of every class to fix an imbalance, why would they allow Planar Binding cheese?

The problem with 5e Cleric, Druid, and Wizard, and with Pathfinder Arcanist, is these classes still get to completely reinvent themselves from day to day. All the martial classes lock you into one skill set. But these casters are never locked into anything. If your choices are "be able to do one thing" and "be able to do everything," how is that even a choice? As long as there are classes that can do everything, those will be the ones to pick.
I think that analysis is over-focused on the contingent realities of how 3e works, and even then it's missing some things. Consider the Incarnate. The Incarnate can reinvent itself as fully as a Cleric can every day. And yet, power-wise, it's somewhere between "mediocre" and "bad". Conversely, the Dread Necromancer doesn't even get to make build choices, and it's probably in the top 10 strongest classes. It's true that versatility is useful, and the fact that Druids and Wizards can change their abilities around makes them more powerful, but the majority of the power discrepancy is exactly that: power discrepancy.
Indeed. In 5e the spells are much less powerful, and the published spell lists of uncapped spellcasters much shorter (or at least they were for a while). Completely reinventing yourself off a tiny list of bad options leaves the Incarnate and Binder still bad. Completely reinventing yourself by cherry picking the most broken spells combed from dozens of books with a DM that refuses to acknowledge a problem, and the Cleric/Wizard/etc are busted.

Quentinas

2021-06-06, 06:33 AM

For the numbers of slot and daily known spells one could use the spirit shaman that work in that way like a cleric of 5e . But i'm quite sure that the numbers of the spirit shaman are higher than the numbers of 5e as the slot per spell level are the same as a sorcerer so quite high even without bonus slot for the high Wisdom/Charisma

RandomPeasant

2021-06-06, 06:35 AM

Any DM who is considering changing the rules of the game, should also already have their responses to this or that other broken game element lined up. If they're ready to change the spellcasting mechanics of every class to fix an imbalance, why would they allow Planar Binding cheese?

You've got that backwards. If you're going to spot-fix the broken spells, you don't also need to change the underlying casting mechanics. If you're going to make sweeping mechanical changes, those changes should solve the problems the game has, or there's really no point.

Herbert_W

2021-06-06, 08:30 AM

I think it's important that base classes include permanent decisions that differentiate your actual class gameplay kit from other members of that class.

I tend to be very wary of forcing players to make permanent decisions unless I can guarantee that all of those decisions are good. A player who prepares a spell that's not actually as good as it seems can learn from their mistake and stop using it. A player who makes a mistake on a permanent choice is stuck with it - potentially for a long time depending on how permanent "permanent" actually is.

This is compounded by the fact that subclasses/specializations/archetypes/etc. make certain combinations of abilities impossible, for the mechanically-straightforwards but lore-wise-nonsensical reason that they are exclusive choices of one class. I can play a warlock who can also sneak attack by multiclassing rogue. AFAIK I can't ever play a warlock with two pacts (in 5e, at least) because there's no way to combine subclasses of the same class.

There's another way to differentiate characters, and that's multiclassing. Our wizards might have identical class features yet play differently because I multiclassed into factotum while your wizard is also a cleric. (Even characters with the same classes might be different due to differing levels in those classes. A pal6/sor1 is quite different from a pal1/sor6.) One of the advantages of 5e-style spellcasting is that it makes multiclassing between spellcasting base classes broadly viable. If we're doing an overhaul of spellcasting then encouraging (or even requiring?) at least some degree of multiclassing to lean in to this would be a viable alternative.

Given that we already have (and need to balance!) multiclassing, and therefore already have permanent character differentiation - why add another thing that needs balancing that serves the same role?

I don't think there's anything that's going to get around the fundamental issue that some classes are based on versatility, and some classes are based on big numbers. If you want true class balance, I think you'll need to decide on some level of versatility that all classes should have. Then build up the martial classes so they all have that much versatility, and strip down casters till none of them have more versatility than that. Fiddling with endurance or the size of numbers doesn't seem like the way to fix a disparity in versatility.

I think this is close to the real problem, but you've not quite hit the nail on the head. Versatility and power are both important - but the real problem is that, compared to other pairs of things where both are important, versatility and power are especially difficult to balance.

You can adjust the balance between per-day output vs. sustained output by having different number of encounters per day, for example. You can balance AoE vs single-target effects by adjusting the number of opponents per encounter and whether they cluster. You can balance damage types by having an appropriate mix of enemies with resistances and vulnerabilities.

The balance point of versatility vs power depends on factors that are much harder to adjust. It depends on how predictable the setting is, which takes considerable DM skill to adjust deliberately. It depends on player skill, which a DM cannot adjust freely and which may be different for different players at the same table. It depends on several different types of player skill, with some skillsets favoring power and others favoring versatility: identifying generally good options without needing to experiment, identifying good options for a specific situation, predicting what the DM will do on a given day, predicting what the DM will do over the long term - and while correlated, a player may be strong on some fronts but weak on others.

Ultimately, I think that the only way to consistently balance power and versatility is to give all classes the same amount of both.

As a personal preference, I'd rather see the versatility level of all classes be very high. Say, for example, that while a wizard can prepare a vast array of spells, a fighter of high enough level could independently re-discover any martial arts technique in existence with a little time to practice. While a wizard can tactically teleport, a fighter is so agile that they may as well be able to do the same. I wouldn't want a game where everyone can do everything, but I wouldn't mind something close to it.

RandomPeasant

2021-06-06, 09:31 AM

I tend to be very wary of forcing players to make permanent decisions unless I can guarantee that all of those decisions are good.

Players already make permanent decisions when they select feats. It's true that you don't want to have list of permanent options where one of them is "Monk" and another one is "Druid", but generally speaking as long as all the options are positive and you do some basic sanity checking, things will turn out okay because the dirty little secret of game design is that it is okay if players are slightly above target. If you write up Blood Mage, Soul Mage, and Uttercold Assault as Dread Necromancer ACFs, it doesn't really matter if Soul Mage is better than the others unless A) it's so much better that people who want to play Blood Mage or Uttercold Assault characters feel obligated to play it instead or B) it's so powerful you can't meaningfully challenge a Soul Mage without wiping the rest of the party. But if Soul Mage is just a little bit better, that will easily vanish into variance in player skill, DM pity items, encounter design, and other build choices.

This is compounded by the fact that subclasses/specializations/archetypes/etc. make certain combinations of abilities impossible, for the mechanically-straightforwards but lore-wise-nonsensical reason that they are exclusive choices of one class. I can play a warlock who can also sneak attack by multiclassing rogue. AFAIK I can't ever play a warlock with two pacts (in 5e, at least) because there's no way to combine subclasses of the same class.

That doesn't seem nonsensical to me. If I'm a Demon Lord, and I make a deal with a mortal to give them magical power, it seems pretty reasonable that I would not want to make that deal if they had already gotten their power from a Fae Prince or Star God. Certainly there are some cases where it wouldn't make sense for archetypes to be mutually exclusive, but I see that as either an acceptable compromise for mechanical simplicity, or evidence that those things shouldn't be archetypes to begin with and should instead be feats or something else that is not mutually exclusive.

Beyond that, I think a certain level of "this makes sense by fluff but is impossible in game" is something you inevitably get by virtue of a class-and-level system. Consider someone who wanted the Druid's Woodland Stride ability, but not an animal companion. That's the sort of thing that seems like it could reasonably happen, but (ignoring ACFs or other classes that might grant Woodland Stride) can't be done in 3e. Similarly, any Cleric you build is going to be able to cast raise dead whether you feel that's a thing that makes sense for them to do or not, and all Barbarians gain DR (again, ignoring ACFs for a second, because that just turns from "A" to "A or B").

Given that we already have (and need to balance!) multiclassing, and therefore already have permanent character differentiation - why add another thing that needs balancing that serves the same role?

One might equally say the same thing of feats and multiclassing. Or skill tricks and feats. Or PrCs and archetypes. The advantage of having multiple kinds of differentiation is that they naturally chunk in different ways. Also, I'm unconvinced that (open) multiclassing can be balanced, as the number of possible builds grows exponentially by definition and I haven't seen a general solution to balancing that doesn't require major sacrifices elsewhere (5e multiclassing, for example, requires that everyone be using essentially the same resource management system to solve the multicaster problem).

I think this is close to the real problem, but you've not quite hit the nail on the head. Versatility and power are both important - but the real problem is that, compared to other pairs of things where both are important, versatility and power are especially difficult to balance.

I don't really think this is true. All you have to do to balance power and versatility (in the Wizard v Sorcerer sense) is set things up so that the value of tactical versatility is comparable to the value of strategic versatility. To understand what I mean, consider a simple game theory problem:

Two people are going to play a modified Rock Paper Scissors several times in a row. There are two ways for the game to work:

1. Before each round A picks a move. Then, knowing A's move, B picks a move.
2. Before the rounds start, A picks two moves. Then, knowing the moves available to A, B picks a move. Then A picks from their available moves.

It's easy to see both how 2 is strictly better for A (in that optimal play from B means a tie, rather than a loss for A) and how these scenarios are analogous to the difference between the Wizard and the Sorcerer. Frankly, I think the dynamic between the Wizard and the Sorcerer is already pretty close to balanced in practice, and you could probably fix it entirely by increasing the Sorcerer's spells known and/or removing the half-level gap in casting progression (and maybe spot-remove Focused Specialist for making Sorcerers sad).

Herbert_W

2021-06-06, 02:01 PM

Players already make permanent decisions when they select feats. It's true that you don't want to have list of permanent options where one of them is "Monk" and another one is "Druid", but generally speaking as long as all the options are positive and you do some basic sanity checking, things will turn out okay . . .

I'm not so optimistic about that. I'm the most familiar with 3.5, and in that game you literally do have a list of permanent options where one is "Monk" and another is "Druid." (Well, basically permanent. You can multiclass out but your options for removing the levels that you already have are either obscure or homebrew.)

The standards of game design that need to be maintained are more lax for reversible choices. For reversible choices, you just need to make sure that there are no dramatically overpowered options. Underpowered options, including so-called trap options that seem good but aren't, are perfectly fine - in fact, trap options can even be a good thing as they teach players about the game! Permanent choices require more care, as both under-and overpowered options must be avoided.

Permanent choices where a player chooses one of some list of options are especially fraught with peril, because thier choice not only permanently invests a build resource but also permanently locks them out of all of the other options on that list. That's why optional class features raise my heckles more than feats. If a Fighter misses out on Power Attack, maybe they're carrying a useless feat instead, but they can still get Power Attack later. Not so for optional class features!

Certainly there are some cases where it wouldn't make sense for archetypes to be mutually exclusive, but I see that as either an acceptable compromise for mechanical simplicity, or evidence that those things shouldn't be archetypes to begin with and should instead be feats or something else that is not mutually exclusive.

There's a lot of those cases, and I'm inclined to take the latter interpretation: that those things shouldn't be archetypes. 3.5 has ancestry feats and there was absolutely nothing stopping a character from having more than one ancestry, for example.

If a class needs a subclass in order to make sense (not every Wizard needs a specialty, but one needs a patron to be a Warlock), then characters could get one by default and be able to spend some other build resource to get more. I think there's an Extra Domain feat knocking around somewhere in 3.5e, isn't there? I think that sort of thing should be the norm in cases where archetypes/subclasses/etc. are unavoidable.

Beyond that, I think a certain level of "this makes sense by fluff but is impossible in game" is something you inevitably get by virtue of a class-and-level system.

"X comes bundled with Y" makes perfect sense. You can't get Druid spells without getting other nature skills for the same reason that you can't learn calculus without learning algebra, for example.

"You get X or Y, and can never ever get the other one" doesn't make sense (usually, there are some cases where it does) - and my complaint is that archetypes/subclasses/etc. often establish this rule in places where it doesn't make sense.

One might equally say the same thing of feats and multiclassing. Or [etc.] The advantage of having multiple kinds of differentiation is that they naturally chunk in different ways.

I think we've had a subtle misunderstanding here. I'm not arguing choice of class features shouldn't exist - I'm arguing that they shouldn't be permanent. Maybe they might be difficult to change, or require retraining during downtime, but they should be possible to reverse or expand.

Also, I'm unconvinced that (open) multiclassing can be balanced, as the number of possible builds grows exponentially by definition and I haven't seen a general solution to balancing that doesn't require major sacrifices elsewhere (5e multiclassing, for example, requires that everyone be using essentially the same resource management system to solve the multicaster problem).

Using the same resource doesn't have to mean using the same resource management system. So long as each class gets an additional resource which can be non-exclusively combined with the main resource to enhance or extend it, they'll have different resource management systems. For example:

Sorcerers might get an additional per-encounter spellcasting resource which can restore some of the spell slots used in that encounter (and, to prevent abuse, only those used in that encounter).
A Wizard might be able to have a certain number, depending on Wizard level, of enhanced spells prepared that can each be cast once and consume a spell slot when they are prepared. If they can prepare these spells between encounters, then they can make choices about which spells to prepare throughout the day as well as in the morning.
Clerics could have a chance, scaling up with Cleric level and down with spell level, to upcast each Cleric spell they cast without needing a higher-level spell slot.
Duskblades and Paladins could get slower spellcasting resource progression, but also get martial resource progression (something like BAB from 3e) and use both simultaneously by empowering attacks with spells.

These are just examples off the top of my head. I see no problem with many classes sharing a common pool of resources so long as each gets a little bit of their own special resource that "twists" the shared pool in interesting ways and which combines well with the resources provided by other classes.

I don't really think this is true. All you have to do to balance power and versatility (in the Wizard v Sorcerer sense) is set things up so that the value of tactical versatility is comparable to the value of strategic versatility.

In your example, you are assuming perfect play on the behalf of both players. That's a reasonable assumption in a simple game like RPS but not in DnD. The relative utility of power and versatility (and for strategic and tactical versatility) changes based on player skill in ways that are more dramatic and more complex than e.g. the utility of burst vs sustained output.

This means that a game that's balanced for a table with a given skillset will be unbalanced for tables with different skillsets - and the only way to make the game equally balanced for everyone is to give all classes equal power and versatility.

RandomPeasant

2021-06-06, 03:37 PM

The standards of game design that need to be maintained are more lax for reversible choices. For reversible choices, you just need to make sure that there are no dramatically overpowered options. Underpowered options, including so-called trap options that seem good but aren't, are perfectly fine - in fact, trap options can even be a good thing as they teach players about the game! Permanent choices require more care, as both under-and overpowered options must be avoided.

Temporary choices are more permanent than you seem to think. In my experience, the majority of Wizards or Clerics simply have a list of spells they prepare, and they do not change them unless you absolutely bludgeon them over the head with the need for it (or for downtime stuff, which is separate). Basically no one uses the retraining rules, and they make all choices temporary.

If a Fighter misses out on Power Attack, maybe they're carrying a useless feat instead, but they can still get Power Attack later. Not so for optional class features!

The list of feats you don't have will always be longer than the list of ACFs you don't have. And with how infrequently you get feats, there is a not-unreasonable chance that the campaign will end before you see the next one.

"X comes bundled with Y" makes perfect sense. You can't get Druid spells without getting other nature skills for the same reason that you can't learn calculus without learning algebra, for example.

That seems incredibly arbitrary. Why is it okay for "can't be tracked" to necessarily imply "has a pet wolf", but not for "made a deal with a demon" to imply "didn't make a deal with Cthulhu"? Certainly I can imagine how some ability might require another as a prerequisite for functional reasons (it would be nonsensical to get an ability that buffed your animal companion without having an animal companion, for example). But very few class progressions are set up that way. I'll grant you that you probably need alegbra to understand calculus, but you probably don't need it for geometry, even if my high school did have alegbra first.

Using the same resource doesn't have to mean using the same resource management system. So long as each class gets an additional resource which can be non-exclusively combined with the main resource to enhance or extend it, they'll have different resource management systems. For example:

Requiring everything to layer on top of one resource management system is still a far starker constraint than you'd get if you were allowed to segregate classes entirely, and mixing resource management creates opportunities for dramatic imbalances. Imagine you have a class with a Rage Meter (like Warriors in WoW). As they take hits, their abilities get better. How does that work in a system with open multiclassing? Obviously some things depend on the details of how the system works, but we can make a number of assumptions.

First, there's inherently a very strong incentive to multiclass. If your Rage is charging up a Crippling Strike, you're much more interested in a Deafening Shout you can use at the start of a fight than a Bear Form that also lets you spend Rage. Second, different multiclass options are going to have wildly different levels of synergy. Your Rage Meter means you are naturally weaker towards the start of a fight and stronger towards the end. That makes it a good combo with a class that has Encounter Powers (because you can burn your encounter-limited as your Rage builds up) and a bad combo with one that has Recharge Magic (because by the time your spells recharge, you're raged up and don't care). And it's like that for every single resource management system you introduce. And it's not just pairwise combos! Because after you pick up a Crippling Strike that works off Rage and a Soul Siphon that's an 1/encounter, you can pick up a Stellar Beam that hits you with backlash or a passive ability like animate dead. It's simply intractable to balance all the possible combinations to any meaningful degree. You end up with multiclass characters being awful (3e), minimal variance in resource management (5e), or optimized characters being Frankensteins of every system they can get their hands on (you can actually see this to a degree in 3e, where people will pick up one Soulmeld or something because it's free if you don't have any others, or in Gestalt builds).

In your example, you are assuming perfect play on the behalf of both players.

Imperfect play cuts both ways. For every time the Sorcerer picks bad spells because he's new, there will be a Wizard who does less to scout out their opposition than you expected. It's true that player skill is important, but in practice it's not much more important than build choices or encounter design or the various places a DM can put their thumb on the scales. If you really want to try to account for player skill, the way to do it is by deliberately under-tuning more complicated classes, with the expectation that people will optimize them in ways you didn't anticipate.

Psyren

2021-06-06, 03:49 PM

Another lesson from MOI and TOB: if you're trying to teach people a new system, fluffing it as exotic and foreign and shrouding it in strange terminology is counterproductive.

But they have to explain why it's rare or new in the world too. Being exotic does that.

What they should do is have a plain-English "here's what we're going for" explanation in a sidebar, alongside the esoteric stuff. For example, Incarnum would say something like "think of it like you're wearing a cybernetic suit, and allocating essentia as rerouting power to the components."

Herbert_W

2021-06-06, 08:46 PM

Temporary choices are more permanent than you seem to think. In my experience, the majority of Wizards or Clerics simply have a list of spells they prepare . . .

That's true, but how much experimentation do new players do when settling down on their standard preparation lists? If it's more than none, then having the ability to swap out spells helped those players to learn the game and/or their home campaign faster and that's a good thing.

The list of feats you don't have will always be longer than the list of ACFs you don't have. And with how infrequently you get feats, there is a not-unreasonable chance that the campaign will end before you see the next one.

We're not comparing the absolute number of missed feats and ACFs; it's only the missable build-critical and "feat tax" ones that matter in this context. Most missed ACFs can never be grabbed later, while you might be able to pick up a missed feat later. Both situations are bad; my point is that the former is worse.

That seems incredibly arbitrary. Why is it okay for "can't be tracked" to necessarily imply "has a pet wolf", but not for "made a deal with a demon" to imply "didn't make a deal with Cthulhu"? . . . I'll grant you that you probably need alegbra to understand calculus, but you probably don't need it for geometry, even if my high school did have alegbra first.

For what it's worth, I don't think that either of those pairs of abilities should be tied together. Avoiding being tracked should be a use of the tracking skill, having a pet wolf should be an option for people with enough ranks in animal handling (with various class features being usable on such a pet, but also good for summoned monsters and allies so that characters in those classes aren't obliged to get a pet) and deals with multiple eldritch entities should be difficult and dangerous but not mechanically forbidden.

Given the similarities between spellcasting and real-world fields of science and engineering, I think that it makes sense for spellcasting in particular to be heavy with prerequisites such that e.g. you can't learn 3rd level spells without practicing 2nd level ones first. Incidentally, you do need algebra for modern geometry. You can do a sort of instinctive geometry without it, but rigorous geometric proofs require at least a little algebra. If mathematics were a feat tree, it would be heavy with prerequisites.

Getting back to the main point, I do think that abilities that don't rely on each other in any way (either by necessity or in lore) shouldn't be bundled together. This does mean that there are some classes that I think either shouldn't exist or should be narrowed in scope significantly. The Ranger is one of them. There's no necessary connection between a Ranger's abilities other than the fact that the whole class was clearly inspired by one or more specific fictional characters. It'd make much more sense to make Favored Enemy and a Ranger's stealth abilities into feats, and let Aragorn wanabees play as the Fighter/Cleric/Paladins that they should have been in the first place.

Requiring everything to layer on top of one resource management system is still a far starker constraint than you'd get if you were allowed to segregate classes entirely, and mixing resource management creates opportunities for dramatic imbalances.

Opportunities? Yes.

Inevitiabilities? I don't think so.

All of the problems that you described could be avoided by having the various resource systems interact in the right sort of way with the game's action economy. There are three main ways that a character can gain a benefit from a resource. Each can cause problems, and all of those problems have solutions.

Most obviously, characters can spend a resource through (1) an action. If this is the only significant way that players spend resources, then resources that compete for the same actions will be underpowered in combination. Players will naturally look for combinations of resources that use different action types and which use actions at a different stage in the encounter, leading to some combinations being much more synergistic than others. If players can't find appropriately synergistic combos, you end up with multiclass characters being awful - which is one of the problems that you raised, and you quite rightly cited 3e as an example.

The solution to this problem is to ensure that there is at least one good way to spend each resource (or every resource but one?) that doesn't require an action. This could mean reactive use, or procing on another action, or a passive ability . . . but I'm getting ahead of myself, because those are what I'm going to talk about next. My point is that every resource should have a good way to spend it that doesn't require an action.

Getting on to other ways to spend resources, they can (2) proc on or enhance other actions. This is what happens when a Barbarian/Fighter piles the benefits of rage, bonus feats, and high BAB all into the same full attack. This can lead to a problem where players can abusively proc an ability more times than the designers expected (such as 5e Rogues getting an extra sneak attack out of turn), or turning in to Frankensteins of every system that they can get their hands on where the initial investment has a disproportionate return (such as all of the classes that give 1d6 of some thematically altered sneak attack on the first level and can be dipped).

The solution to this is to set appropriate limits for how often an ability can proc or what enhancements are possible. Sneak attack should be usable once per round, not turn. Sneak attack, sudden strike, and whatever else should all stack in a way that adds 1/2 applicable class levels before rounding up, not adding after rounding for each applicable class.

Finally, resources can (3) be spent reactively or power passives that require no action. There's less room for abuse here, but there's still a need to be careful to avoid situations where low investment in many different resources gains more bang-per-buck than the same investment in one of them.

The various combinations of differing levels of differing resources aren't intractable at all, so long as you are using them in an action economy that is designed to handle them.

Imperfect play cuts both ways. For every time the Sorcerer picks bad spells because he's new, there will be a Wizard who does less to scout out their opposition than you expected.

Imperfect play cuts both ways, but it cuts unevenly both ways. A given table might be terrible at predicting their DM's plans but great at whiteroom optimization, or vice versa. They might be too lazy to prepare a different set of spells per day, but great at knowing which spells are usually good, or vice versa. A game with power and versatility variance that's balanced for either table will be unbalanced for the other.

RandomPeasant

2021-06-06, 09:27 PM

But they have to explain why it's rare or new in the world too. Being exotic does that.

I don't even think you really need to do that in a lot of cases. If some of the people who were previously Beguilers are now Shadowcasters, or some of the people who were previously Fighters are now Warblades, that doesn't require any real explanation. It's not like we needed some special fluff to explain why no characters previously had the Swashbuckler class, you could just handwave it as "mechanics don't always perfectly match the world". If the party fights Binder cultists of Amon instead of Cleric cultists of Vecna, that doesn't require you to rewrite your setting (or at least it shouldn't).

That's true, but how much experimentation do new players do when settling down on their standard preparation lists? If it's more than none, then having the ability to swap out spells helped those players to learn the game and/or their home campaign faster and that's a good thing.

Conversely, what if they land on a less effective (or less enjoyable) list of abilities than they would have gotten from a fixed-list class like the Warmage? Undirected optimization hits local maxima all the time.

We're not comparing the absolute number of missed feats and ACFs; it's only the missable build-critical and "feat tax" ones that matter in this context. Most missed ACFs can never be grabbed later, while you might be able to pick up a missed feat later. Both situations are bad; my point is that the former is worse.

Why not? Certainly, by the metric you're proposing ACFs are worse. But there are other plausible-seeming metrics by which feats are worse. Why is one thing you can never have worse than ten things you will never have?

Given the similarities between spellcasting and real-world fields of science and engineering, I think that it makes sense for spellcasting in particular to be heavy with prerequisites such that e.g. you can't learn 3rd level spells without practicing 2nd level ones first.

Sure. But we can easily get into the specifics of class lists, and the arguments we can make there are inherent to the nature of class lists. Is it really inconceivable that there be a religion whose priests can cast animate dead but not bestow curse? Should learning summon nature's ally I inherently mean learning goodberry? The function of a class system is to tie things together, and you will never have a set of packages such that everyone agrees all of them are correct.

The solution to this problem is to ensure that there is at least one good way to spend each resource (or every resource but one?) that doesn't require an action. This could mean reactive use, or procing on another action, or a passive ability . . . but I'm getting ahead of myself, because those are what I'm going to talk about next. My point is that every resource should have a good way to spend it that doesn't require an action.

If every resource is usable passively, the optimal strategy is to get passive abilities from every single resource management system. Pick up the Death King's Unholy Aura, the Wizard's Arcane Perception, the Berzerker's Unceasing Rage, the Artificer's Cogwork Armor, the Druid's Nature's Mantle, and the Bard's Inspiring Song. Put them all in a pile and end up with a character who gets enormous virtual action economy because all their class features are powering passives. This character is also incredibly boring, because they have a very strong incentive to pick up only whatever the best general-use offensive ability is, since anything that uses an action will only matter in some rounds, while new passive abilities matter in all rounds.

The solution to this is to set appropriate limits for how often an ability can proc or what enhancements are possible. Sneak attack should be usable once per round, not turn. Sneak attack, sudden strike, and whatever else should all stack in a way that adds 1/2 applicable class levels before rounding up, not adding after rounding for each applicable class.

That sounds like it punches people who haven't done their Voltron-ing directly in the junk. If Sneak Attack is balanced on the assumption that you also have Death Attack, Skirmish, Sudden Strike, Fearful Strike, Shadow Strike, and Draining Strike, the single-classed Rogue is going to suck. The "appropriate limit" for an ability is simply not the same if you only have that ability as if you have a bunch of other related abilities.

The various combinations of differing levels of differing resources aren't intractable at all, so long as you are using them in an action economy that is designed to handle them.

And yet, after two decades of working on the problem, the best solutions the field has come up with are "pretend it doesn't exist" (Pathfinder) and "stick everyone on the same system" (5e). I'll grant that the problem is solvable in theory, but in practice you're looking at a system with dozens of variables before considering what happens when you start writing expansion content that wasn't planned at the start of the game.

Imperfect play cuts both ways, but it cuts unevenly both ways. A given table might be terrible at predicting their DM's plans but great at whiteroom optimization, or vice versa. They might be too lazy to prepare a different set of spells per day, but great at knowing which spells are usually good, or vice versa. A game with power and versatility variance that's balanced for either table will be unbalanced for the other.

Sure, different tables will have different play experiences, but that's true for any difference you have between classes. Imagine that you had a Warlock (who gets a bunch of at-will abilities) and a Wizard (who gets more powerful abilities with starkly limited uses). You might balance those classes by making assumptions about how many encounters there'd be in a day (or how long encounters would be), but if a group had radically more or radically less, balance would collapse. Or imagine an ability like Trapfinding, which is critical for defeating certain types of encounters, but useless elsewhere. If the expectation is that those encounters are large percentage of the game, bringing someone with Trapfinding is critical. But if those encounters are non-existent, it's pointless, and the classes with Trapfinding had better hope they measure up elsewhere. You're not wrong that the value of versatility changes from table to table, but so does the value of everything. There's a way of running the game that makes single-classed Monk the best possible character. It's wildly divergent from the assumptions any of us would make about the game, but it exists.

Psyren

2021-06-07, 10:39 AM

I don't even think you really need to do that in a lot of cases. If some of the people who were previously Beguilers are now Shadowcasters, or some of the people who were previously Fighters are now Warblades, that doesn't require any real explanation. It's not like we needed some special fluff to explain why no characters previously had the Swashbuckler class, you could just handwave it as "mechanics don't always perfectly match the world". If the party fights Binder cultists of Amon instead of Cleric cultists of Vecna, that doesn't require you to rewrite your setting (or at least it shouldn't).

That's fine for an individual table, but not so much for the game developer who has to accommodate them all. A table that is fine with handwaving the introduction of a new kind of magic to their world like this won't care regardless of what the devs come up with, whereas one that isn't will demand that explanation, so coming up with that explanation (or a couple of potential ones to choose from) is generally the right answer from a business perspective.

Using Incarnum as an example - I enjoy both the "it always existed but was a lost/hidden tradition" and the "someone found a special artifact that opened the floodgates and now meldshapers are popping up randomly" scenarios presented in the book. You might prefer "it always existed and was even widely used off-camera" and that's totally okay, those parts of the book are simply not aimed at you.

Elves

2021-06-07, 12:16 PM

"think of it like you're wearing a cybernetic suit, and allocating essentia as rerouting power to the components."
Or just fluff the system in an intuitive way to begin with. If incarnum were cybernetics, people would instantly get it.

If you write an ability that anyone can take, that ability is live for 100% of characters. If you write an ability that requires you to have some other ability, or to be some particular class, that ability is live for a much smaller subset of characters (particularly organic characters). You could write an ability that lets Dread Necromancers pick up some Soul Magic at the expense of some of the abilities they currently get. That's the sort of thing that Necromancers sometimes, but not always, do. But that takes up space, space that could have gone to an additional horror-themed class, or a Soul Magic feat that anyone could take, or a PrC, or some fluff about cool necromantic oddities. And if you do write it, it's only relevant if A) someone wants to play a Dread Necromancer and B) they'd like to have more soul magic than they get out of the base class. And it's irrelevant if someone wants to do soul magic as a Cleric or a Wizard (either of which make serviceable Necromancers).
The kind of customization I'm talking about doesn't require more effort after writing the class. This conversation thread started with the sorcerer, whose spells known give it a lot of customization even with a bare bones chassis. That's what's lacking in the meldshapers. You could do soulmelds known, or at least you could have masteries that alter your use of particular soulmelds.

That seems backwards to me. The nature of a class system is to give things identity by making members of a given class like each other and not like other characters. That's what telling people they have to take levels in "Wizard" or "Bard" instead of just picking abilities freeform does. I can certainly understand the desire to mitigate that, but the point of classes is that they put people on rails.
The problems with a fully a la carte system are that it becomes exponentially more difficult to balance the more content you add and that the lack of structure can impair the ability to create complex gameplay. Classes should be a way to provide that organizing structure, not just specific presets. And in a structural function there will be plenty of parts that can be swapped in and out for variation. That can be spells known, or it can be subclasses, ACFs, etc.

Third, people just like character customization.
And that's important. Character customization is one of the original virtues of RPGs. If you're just pushing parts around a predetermined core, does that feel as much like "your" character?

"any PrC that advances casting at every level" is a viable option for a Dread Necromancer
Sure, in a free multiclassing system like 3e, multiclassing can arguably serve the role of customization in the area of class. But single classing should also be fun. It should probably be more appealing than it is now, not less.

But those reasons don't apply nearly as strongly to something like a Dread Necromancer or Binder. The Dread Necromancer is already narrowly-focused on being a Necromancer. You're probably never going to have more than one Binder in a group, and unless someone at your table really likes Binders, you're probably not going to have them in successive campaigns.
You could embrace the divide between versatile core classes and highly specialized, low customization splatbook classes. Or your whole approach to class could be a high volume of thematically focused classes with little customization. One thing to watch for is if that starts running into the support problem you mention in the quote at top. In late 4e, the vampire class was infamous for having virtually no choices to make and no support outside the splat it appeared in. It was weak and ignored.

Starbuck_II

2021-06-07, 12:48 PM

Or just fluff the system in an intuitive way to begin with. If incarnum were cybernetics, people would instantly get it.

The kind of customization I'm talking about doesn't require more effort after writing the class. This conversation thread started with the sorcerer, whose spells known give it a lot of customization even with a bare bones chassis. That's what's lacking in the meldshapers. You could do soulmelds known, or at least you could have masteries that alter your use of particular soulmelds.

The problems with a fully a la carte system are that it becomes exponentially more difficult to balance the more content you add and that the lack of structure can impair the ability to create complex gameplay. Classes should be a way to provide that organizing structure, not just specific presets. And in a structural function there will be plenty of parts that can be swapped in and out for variation. That can be spells known, or it can be subclasses, ACFs, etc.

And that's important. Character customization is one of the original virtues of RPGs. If you're just pushing parts around a predetermined core, does that feel as much like "your" character?

Sure, in a free multiclassing system like 3e, multiclassing can arguably serve the role of customization in the area of class. But single classing should also be fun. It should probably be more appealing than it is now, not less.

You could embrace the divide between versatile core classes and highly specialized, low customization splatbook classes. Or your whole approach to class could be a high volume of thematically focused classes with little customization. One thing to watch for is if that starts running into the support problem you mention in the quote at top. In late 4e, the vampire class was infamous for having virtually no choices to make and no support outside the splat it appeared in. It was weak and ignored.

Oh totally, though I did buff it up:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1KWf8-nFyE0yIqKa9w1ewqv3ltB0P_QCwLZlPSXEG_Ik/edit

I expanded it so the subclass Devourer (old one) and Blood Knight (new one) get additional benefits when using moves.
Example Cantrips/Encounter:

Dark Beckoning
Hit: 1d6 + Charisma modifier psychic damage and you pull the target up to 3 squares.
Level 21: 2d6 + Cha psychic
Devourer: If target pulled adjacent you deal 1d10 necrotic damage and gain same amount Temp hp.
Blood Knight: Until end of next turn, target gets -2 penalty to defenses.

Since Blood Knight was my tank (controller) that marks and weakens enemies, this seemed fine.

Ray of Nightmares:
Hit: 1d8 + Cha Necrotic damage,
Level 21: 2d8+ Cha Necrotic damage.
Devourer: Weakened (save end)
Blood Knight: Slowed (save end)

Since standard Devourer was vampire, this felt flavor they weaken you.

Then encounter powers: one of the two
Usually encounters powers only buffed by one of the two
Let the blood Flow
With a swipe at your foe, you flay them open, letting out the crimson river you desire to drink from.
Encounter * Shadow, Implement, Weapon Standard Action Melee weapon
Target: One creature Attack: Dexterity vs. AC
Hit: 2[w] + Dexterity modifier damage, and the target takes ongoing damage equal to the vampire's Strength modifier (save ends). If the target is bloodied, the vampire may gain 5 temporary hit points instead of dealing the ongoing damage.
Devourer: You may choose to deal ongoing 5 damage each round (save end) that heals you 1 hp each time it occurs.

While Night Talons
The nails on the ends of your fingers sharpen into inky-black claws that rend at your foe, drawing forth the blood you so desire.
Encounter * Shadow, Implement Standard Action Melee 1
Target: One creature Attack: Dexterity vs. AC
Hit: 1d10 + Dexterity modifier damage, and the target takes ongoing 5 damage (save ends). If this attack bloodies your target, you gain temporary hit points equal to 3 + your Charisma modifier.
Blood Knight: Target marked until the start of your next turn. Marked targets get -2 penalty to hit someone other than you.

Or Symphony of Night
Opening your mouth and spreading your arms, the night around you erupts in the unearthly howls of the wild predators, driving your foe momentarily mad with fear.
Encounter * Shadow, Psychic, Thunder, Fear, Implement Standard Action Close burst 2
Target: One creature in burst Attack: Strength vs. Will
Hit: 2d6 + Charisma modifier psychic and thunder damage, and you may slide the target, and all enemies adjacent to the target, 1 square. If there are no enemies adjacent to the target, you may instead slide the target 3 squares.
Devourer: You heal Cha damage.

Granted, I don't play 4E much so the improvements are not as important now.

Psyren

2021-06-07, 01:08 PM

Or just fluff the system in an intuitive way to begin with. If incarnum were cybernetics, people would instantly get it.

More people would grok it right away, but also have a lot less desire to run such overtly technological fluff in a quasi-medieval-themed campaign. Default fluff does matter when it comes to selling books.

RandomPeasant

2021-06-07, 03:59 PM

Using Incarnum as an example - I enjoy both the "it always existed but was a lost/hidden tradition" and the "someone found a special artifact that opened the floodgates and now meldshapers are popping up randomly" scenarios presented in the book. You might prefer "it always existed and was even widely used off-camera" and that's totally okay, those parts of the book are simply not aimed at you.

I think you're missing the point. Consider something like Pathfinder's Inquistor or 3e's Favored Soul. Those are both new magical classes, and yet no one (at least, no one I'm aware of) has felt you needed to do any serious setting-development work to accommodate them. This is even more true for something like Tome of Battle, which is indistinguishable from an in-world perspective from the various "you have a special mace-based fighting style" feats in Complete Warrior. It's true that Incarnum loudly insists that it is special and different and demands that Blue Soul Magic be explained, but you could just as easily declare that the Totemist was a new type of Druid-ish person, and needed no more explanation than Complete Divine's Spirit Shaman.

The kind of customization I'm talking about doesn't require more effort after writing the class. This conversation thread started with the sorcerer, whose spells known give it a lot of customization even with a bare bones chassis. That's what's lacking in the meldshapers. You could do soulmelds known, or at least you could have masteries that alter your use of particular soulmelds.

Except it does. The Sorcerer took more effort to write than the Beguiler, Dread Necromancer, or Warmage, and it's not just because they wrote the spell list for it first and then the other ones. Giving people a fixed list of things they can do is less effort than letting them pick from a larger list, almost by definition.

And that's important. Character customization is one of the original virtues of RPGs. If you're just pushing parts around a predetermined core, does that feel as much like "your" character?

Sure. That's why you should have Feats and Skills and PrCs (or Paragon Classes or whatever you call them) and maybe Backgrounds or Subclasses or Traits or any number of other things. You don't need to declare "this is a customization option that is only for Dread Necromancers" to write customization options for Dread Necromancers, and indeed the decision to do that sort of thing tends to piss people off (consider how many hoops people jump through to qualify for PrCs with the "wrong" entry class).

You could embrace the divide between versatile core classes and highly specialized, low customization splatbook classes. Or your whole approach to class could be a high volume of thematically focused classes with little customization.

I don't think you can go all the way in the latter direction. The core book just isn't long enough. You're going to have to start with broad classes, even though they're less popular and even though they have a weaker identity, because if your game launches with "Fire Mage", "Stellar Oracle", "Necromancer", and "Lightning Channeler" as the only types of mages, people aren't going to play it. You start with the Elementalist and you give it a Fire Magic specialization not because that's better than writing a Fire Mage (it isn't) but because for people to play Fire Mages before you release the Guide to the Inner Planes, there has to be a class which lets you specialize into Fire Magic. But once the Fire Mage comes out, it doesn't need to specialize further into Lava Mage and Smoke Mage and Inferno Mage. Fire Mage is the thing people want to play. Further fire-based specialization should be written so that it is available not just to Fire Mages, but to Fire-spec Elementalists, Sorcerers, Druids, Warlocks, Warmages, and all manner of other casters.

Lucas Yew

2021-06-07, 08:30 PM

The one thing I'm sure of is that if Arcanist casting is rendered default for prepared casters, spontaneous casters of an equal level MUST know more spells than the maximum number of prepared spells each day.

I still wonder to this day if the writer of the 5E Sorcerer (and Skip Williams, per this probably dead link (http://www.wizards.com/chat/logs/jul00_211.doc)) had a burning grudge against Sorcerers (or maybe any "Talent > Effort" archetype) in general...

Maat Mons

2021-06-07, 09:08 PM

Amen on Sorcerer-style classes needing more spells known than Arcanist-style classes get spells prepared.

As it stands in Pathfinder 1e, Sorcerers of most races get a paltry 9 more spells known than Arcanists get spells prepared. That wouldn't be enough even if you were free to choose them. And many bloodlines have less-than-stellar bonus spells.

A human (or demi-human) Sorcerer can get an extra +17 non-cantrip spells known by 20th level. When compared to the 34 non-cantrip, non-bloodline spells known all Sorcerers get (and the 34 non-cantrip spells prepared Arcanists get), that's a respectable +50% increase.

That might be enough to make that small subset of Sorcerers competitive with Arcanists… if Arcanists didn't get the ability to change their spells prepared throughout the day. … And if the acquisition of those extra spells known didn't lag so far behind.

For 5e, at least they sort of wised up and started giving bonus spells known from bloodlines in Tasha's. It still only brings them up to 25 (non-cantrip) spells known at 20th level, which is a tie with how many spells prepared a 20th-level Wizard gets. But hey, at least Sorcerers are now only worse in day-to-day versatility, not in both day-to-day and round-to-round versatility.

RandomPeasant

2021-06-07, 09:20 PM

And if the acquisition of those extra spells known didn't lag so far behind.

To be fair, this is an issue Sorcerers have had since forever. At 10th level, a Sorcerer knows one 5th level spell. A 10th level Wizard who has done absolutely nothing to expand their spellbook knows four. It makes the whole notion that the Sorcerer's tactical flexibility might outweigh the Wizard's strategic flexibility kind of a farce. You can cast whatever combination of spells the day demands, as long as all of those spells are cloudkill!

Psyren

2021-06-07, 10:57 PM

I think you're missing the point. Consider something like Pathfinder's Inquistor or 3e's Favored Soul. Those are both new magical classes, and yet no one (at least, no one I'm aware of) has felt you needed to do any serious setting-development work to accommodate them. This is even more true for something like Tome of Battle, which is indistinguishable from an in-world perspective from the various "you have a special mace-based fighting style" feats in Complete Warrior. It's true that Incarnum loudly insists that it is special and different and demands that Blue Soul Magic be explained, but you could just as easily declare that the Totemist was a new type of Druid-ish person, and needed no more explanation than Complete Divine's Spirit Shaman.

Those are bad examples, because both fluffwise and mechanically, they use the exact same divine casting mechanic we've already seen in core. Favored Soul casting is just "sorcerer but divine" and Inquisitor casting is just "bard but divine." Even for someone who never saw them before, there's no explanation needed beyond those quick blurbs. Incarnum users don't cast spells, so there is already something fundamentally different about their magic that could lead players and even DMs to reasonably ask "why haven't we heard of this before now?" Which is why WotC, rightly, came up with reasons to explain that.

The folks who don't need those reasons can certainly skip those pages in the book, but that doesn't mean there was no value in writing them.

RandomPeasant

2021-06-08, 06:26 AM

Incarnum users don't cast spells, so there is already something fundamentally different about their magic that could lead players and even DMs to reasonably ask "why haven't we heard of this before now?"

That's special pleading. People in-world don't know that Druids cast spells and Totemists don't. If you don't like the examples given, consider the Warlock, who doesn't cast spells but also doesn't have a lengthy digression about how special and different their magic is. The reason Incarnum needs to be explained is no more and no less than that it insists it needs to be explained. You're also ignoring Tome of Battle, where the case for your position is much weaker. Why does the existence of Tiger Claw style need a mountain of new fluff, but the existence of the Three Mountains style need only a single feat? In-world, there's no difference, it's "some fighting men fight differently" in both cases.

Psyren

2021-06-08, 10:30 AM

That's special pleading. People in-world don't know that Druids cast spells and Totemists don't.

Of course people in-universe can know that, it's called Spellcraft. That's a skill that can be learned in the setting. So are Knowledge Religion and Knowledge Arcana. Your average peasant might not be able to tell the difference between a soulmeld and a spell, but there's a vast gulf between that and saying nobody can know, the PCs especially.

If you don't like the examples given, consider the Warlock, who doesn't cast spells but also doesn't have a lengthy digression about how special and different their magic is.

Once again, mechanically invocations are a core concept (specifically, spell-like abilities.) No lengthy digression is needed for something that's right there in the Monster Manual.
For two, they are explicitly arcane magic, not a new kind never seen before. That is why "+1 arcane caster level" stuff works on warlocks but not incarnum users. So even fluffwise, what they're doing is nothing particularly new to the world.

RandomPeasant

2021-06-08, 03:23 PM

Of course people in-universe can know that, it's called Spellcraft. That's a skill that can be learned in the setting. So are Knowledge Religion and Knowledge Arcana. Your average peasant might not be able to tell the difference between a soulmeld and a spell, but there's a vast gulf between that and saying nobody can know, the PCs especially.

But people can also know the difference between Paladins and Hexblades or Sorcerers and Spirit Shamans. You have yet to present an argument for why a mechanical difference (something that is abstraction not necessarily visible to in-world characters) necessitates a flavor difference. Would we need special fluff for a line of Druid spells that were like bite of the werebear, but for Manticores, Displacer Beasts, and Grey Renders? If so, why didn't we need it for bite of the werebear and friends? If not, why do we need it for the Totemist?

Once again, mechanically invocations are a core concept (specifically, spell-like abilities.)

Once again, that is special pleading. Consider Tome of Battle. Are you going to tell me that "you can do this once per encounter" is so fundamentally foreign from "you can do this once per day" as to require mountains of special explanation?

For two, they are explicitly arcane magic, not a new kind never seen before. That is why "+1 arcane caster level" stuff works on warlocks but not incarnum users. So even fluffwise, what they're doing is nothing particularly new to the world.

You understand this is you agreeing with me, right? If your argument is "Incarnum needs special fluff because it is not backwards compatible with existing mechanics", that is the same argument as "Incarnum only needs special fluff because it insists that it is special and different". They could have let Incarnum classes benefit from +1 caster level as easily as they let Warlocks, they just chose not to do so.

Tzardok

2021-06-08, 03:50 PM

I am not sure where the problem with the "special" fluff of rare subsystems is. More fluff is generally a good thing in my book.

RandomPeasant

2021-06-08, 06:34 PM

I am not sure where the problem with the "special" fluff of rare subsystems is. More fluff is generally a good thing in my book.

Well, that's a separate question. My argument with Psyren is his insistence that the Incarnate needs new and special fluff to explain its existence in the world as someone who is aligned with a philosophy and gets magic powers, but you can drop Favored Souls who are aligned with a philosophy and get magic powers into the world without doing any extra work.

As far as why you wouldn't want extra fluff, there are two basic reasons I can think of. The first (which has been alluded to in this thread) is that extra fluff can be obscurantist and make it less clear what is going on, making it harder for people to understand the mechanics, or convincing DMs skimming the book that it will be a pain in the ass to deal with. The second is that the more specific you make fluff, the more likely it is that you will make a fluff declaration that will rub people the wrong way, and cause them to reject your book even if they understood it and are fine with the mechanics. This is a common reaction to Psionics, for example, with many people feeling that the fluff "doesn't fit", but rather fewer arguing that spell point accounting is fundamentally unacceptable in their games.

FWIW, my view on Incarnum is somewhere in the middle of those two. The mechanics are fine (somewhat more complicated than they need to be, but not really any worse than the Binder or Warblade), but the way it insists upon the idea that Blue Soul Magic is new and special and different is obnoxious. An Incarnate isn't really any specialier than a Dread Necromancer or Dragonfire Adept. It's a skill monkey that does some weird accounting.

Psyren

2021-06-08, 07:13 PM

As far as why you wouldn't want extra fluff, there are two basic reasons I can think of. The first (which has been alluded to in this thread) is that extra fluff can be obscurantist and make it less clear what is going on, making it harder for people to understand the mechanics, or convincing DMs skimming the book that it will be a pain in the ass to deal with. The second is that the more specific you make fluff, the more likely it is that you will make a fluff declaration that will rub people the wrong way, and cause them to reject your book even if they understood it and are fine with the mechanics. This is a common reaction to Psionics, for example, with many people feeling that the fluff "doesn't fit", but rather fewer arguing that spell point accounting is fundamentally unacceptable in their games.

Neither of these points is relevant to Incarnum. Psionics' fluff (and the subsequent aversion to it) is centered around the fact that it is NOT magic - whereas Incarnum very clearly is, its right there in the book's title. And Incarnum's difficulty to grok has nothing to do with the explanation of where it came from, which is in the back of the book well behind the mechanics themselves. Whatever problem people have understanding Incarnum has no relation whatsoever to WotC deciding to put in two pages explaining where it could have come from.

paladinn

2021-06-09, 07:30 PM

Neither of these points is relevant to Incarnum. Psionics' fluff (and the subsequent aversion to it) is centered around the fact that it is NOT magic - whereas Incarnum very clearly is, its right there in the book's title. And Incarnum's difficulty to grok has nothing to do with the explanation of where it came from, which is in the back of the book well behind the mechanics themselves. Whatever problem people have understanding Incarnum has no relation whatsoever to WotC deciding to put in two pages explaining where it could have come from.

I'm not sure how this thread got hijacked to be about Incarnum.

VladtheLad

2021-06-12, 05:20 AM

PF has the arcanist. That class actually preceded 5e, but it may have been based off the 5e playtest documents. I wasn't playing then so I never read those.

Wasn't the Magister, in Monte Cooks Arcana Evolved/Unearthed the same?

RandomPeasant

2021-06-12, 08:24 AM

Wasn't the Magister, in Monte Cooks Arcana Evolved/Unearthed the same?

I think Recharge Magic also had a pretty similar setup for prepared casters. I don't know the release timelines well enough to say what the oldest version it is, but it's been around for a while.

Elves

2021-06-13, 12:32 PM

Except it does. The Sorcerer took more effort to write than the Beguiler, Dread Necromancer, or Warmage, and it's not just because they wrote the spell list for it first and then the other ones. Giving people a fixed list of things they can do is less effort than letting them pick from a larger list, almost by definition.
Within any existing body of content (for example, the work that had already been done on Magic of Incarnum) it doesn't take much additional work to add differentiation if none is present. Choose a particular meld; once per round you can shift 1 essentia into or out of that meld as a non-action. That doesn't even require bespoke customizations for the different melds. Of course, you want something that changes how the melds are used since a straight-up numerical bonus is redundant with the choice the player is already making about which meld is best for them.

Sure. That's why you should have Feats and Skills and PrCs (or Paragon Classes or whatever you call them) and maybe Backgrounds or Subclasses or Traits or any number of other things. You don't need to declare "this is a customization option that is only for Dread Necromancers" to write customization options for Dread Necromancers, and indeed the decision to do that sort of thing tends to piss people off (consider how many hoops people jump through to qualify for PrCs with the "wrong" entry class).
Adjacent to D&D's class system are MOBAs like League of Legends, where you play a specific character instead of a class. You can customize your character's perks/talents and skin but not their core gameplay. It's easier to balance but also feels exactly like what it's depicting: that you're playing a specific franchise character. When you take that same system and try to say it represents your character, I don't think it connects. Having a big "off limits" sign at the center of your character doesn't promote a sense of ownership.

Further fire-based specialization should be written so that it is available not just to Fire Mages, but to Fire-spec Elementalists, Sorcerers, Druids, Warlocks, Warmages, and all manner of other casters.
This is done all the time in 3e by putting a spell on multiple class spell lists.

I don't think you can go all the way in the latter direction. The core book just isn't long enough. You're going to have to start with broad classes, even though they're less popular and even though they have a weaker identity, because if your game launches with "Fire Mage", "Stellar Oracle", "Necromancer", and "Lightning Channeler" as the only types of mages, people aren't going to play it. You start with the Elementalist and you give it a Fire Magic specialization not because that's better than writing a Fire Mage (it isn't) but because for people to play Fire Mages before you release the Guide to the Inner Planes, there has to be a class which lets you specialize into Fire Magic. But once the Fire Mage comes out, it doesn't need to specialize further into Lava Mage and Smoke Mage and Inferno Mage. Fire Mage is the thing people want to play.
I think you should take the long view, or else you end up with redundancy -- once there's a fire mage subclass and a pyromancer base class in the same game, it gets ugly. It's fine giving the wizard some fire spells, but not actually having a full class or subclass devoted to fire magic until later. Where you do need judgment is choosing what concepts need a full class treatment. You can draw up an elaborate system of "spark" and "sizzle" and "voltage potential" mechanics for your lightning mage but at some point you have to ask if this formalization has anything to do with the idea of shooting lightning blasts at people.

RandomPeasant

2021-06-13, 02:51 PM

Choose a particular meld; once per round you can shift 1 essentia into or out of that meld as a non-action.

But that's a pretty pathetic form of customization. My Incarnate does not feel meaningfully unique because I get to do slightly nicer accounting with my incarnate avatar than other Incarnates do.

When you take that same system and try to say it represents your character, I don't think it connects. Having a big "off limits" sign at the center of your character doesn't promote a sense of ownership.

I think if you let people pick feats, some kind of class-agnostic lifepath thing, a bunch of skills, and a Prestige Class/Paragon Path, I don't think people who want to play a Necromancer are going to be upset that they get a pre-determined selection of Necromancy powers. People are, empirically, quite enthusiastic about the fixed-list casters, and they offer almost no customization at the class level. I just don't buy that things like that turn people off, especially if you make the rest of the system more customizable.

This is done all the time in 3e by putting a spell on multiple class spell lists.

But that only works because the spellcasting classes all have relatively similar mechanics. The Wizard, Cleric, and Dread Necromancer can all have the same animate dead because they all cast in largely the same way. But you can't do that with the Warlock and the Crusader, because the kind of mechanics that are okay for a class with random access are not okay for one that gets their abilities at-will (consider, for example, a no-save stun).

I think you should take the long view, or else you end up with redundancy -- once there's a fire mage subclass and a pyromancer base class in the same game, it gets ugly. It's fine giving the wizard some fire spells, but not actually having a full class or subclass devoted to fire magic until later.

Why? Certainly I think the fact that the necromancy-based class in 3e is a "Dread Necromancer" and not just a "Necromancer" represents a poor allocation of the namespace available to the game, I don't see any inherent problem with having multiple ways of doing things. Especially because the source material often involves a fairly wide range of characters under any given umbrella. Zuko, Harry Dresden, and Chandra Nalaar are all "fire mages" to one degree or another, but they don't all work in the same ways (and that's to say nothing of fire related mage character concepts I don't have a good named example of, like "Dragon Mage" or "Hellfire Warlock"). The fact that 3e has "Dread Necromancers" and "Necromancers" may be kind of dumb, but the fact that it has Necromancy-using Wizards, Clerics, and Dread Necromancers that all play differently is an advantage for the game.

You can draw up an elaborate system of "spark" and "sizzle" and "voltage potential" mechanics for your lightning mage but at some point you have to ask if this formalization has anything to do with the idea of shooting lightning blasts at people.

I think that's getting things backwards. Or at least, that's not the only reason you'll write a class. Sure, sometimes you'll write "Gadgeteer" or "Cavalier" at the top of the sheet and work down from there, but other times you'll say "let's have a class that uses Drain" or "we need a Paladin, I guess the Crusader's mechanics work fine for that". Your Lightning Mage might end up with Recharge Magic not because that's a homerun in the way that a Berzerker with a Rage Meter is, but because you want a Lighting Mage and "lightning strikes randomly" is as good a justification for the mechanics as anything.