Why 3.5? [Archive] - Giant in the Playground Forums

Fizban

2021-12-26, 06:35 PM

3.5 is the most simulationist of any of the editions, and has the most content.
Aside from the momentum of it being the first TTRPG I knew and already having tons of time invested in it, yeah pretty much this.

I like when the game actually provides rules for being able to do cool things instead of just hoping the DM will let me do cool things.
And on the flipside, it's also nice how the game actually provides rules for being able to do cool things, and therefore pretty explicitly implies the DM should not just let you do "cool things." There are other rpgs that are designed much better for that, but in DnD 3.x, the game tells you what your character can and can't do. In other games (including 5e), often any character can roll any skill and the only things stopping someone else from succeeding at your special thing when you failed is probability, which lasts right up until it doesn't. In 3.x, characters are defined by what they can do, and a whole lot of things they can't.

The skill system alone is magnificent. It's almost completely superfluous- as I have begun chanting at every opportunity, no skills are ever required aside from search/disable, and yet it's also defined anyway. Want to know if your character can climb something? Open up the PHB and just read the Climb skill, which will tell you what the DC is for a given surface and context and the margins and penalties for failure (assuming the DM also used the Climb skill rules, rather than just making up a DC that doesn't match their description, wherein the problem lies). This extends to almost every skill really, codifying into rules a huge amount of detail that other games just can't be bothered with (or would actively go against their freeform goals). In so many other games the answer to every problem is "ask the DM if you can roll something" followed by "roll a die and hope you hit whatever DC they just made up on the spot" or even "no matter what you do it's opposed by the DM's character's roll anyway so it doesn't matter just roll something." (Ironically, when I see more freeform group playing DnD [see Loading Ready Run], they follow less rules than they do when they play the freeform games).

In DnD 3.x, the answer to most problems should make sense, as the game has already provided the rules to simulate a huge amount of stuff, including whole monster manuals full of standard monsters rated by CR (and premade adventures and campaigns, etc) that set "combat DCs" just as the skill rules set skill DCs. This is of course a double-edged sword that attracts the type of people who don't so much want to play a game with friends as they want to dominate a rules system, when the rules were designed to help the DM simulate rather than challenge people trying to defeat the system itself.

Multiclassing and multiple parallel advancement paths, some of which can mix and influence each other and some which can't, mean characters can be hugely complex or completely straightforward, and yet their actual play can be hugely complex or completely straightforward independent of the build itself!

Much of that is thanks to the basic combat system, usually maligned by people who just want to W+M1 through everything. The choice between waiting for a foe to come attack you or giving up your full attack to chase after them is huge, feeding into positioning and range and cover and all the tactical choices that make tactical combat tactical. "Combat manuevers" which are actually incredibly risky and something no serious combatant would recommend, are still as performable by anyone as you'd expect the concept of "just grab/trip/push" them to be, and yet also hugely risky for just anyone to do outside of surprise/flat-footed-but of course, characters can specialize in them if desired, and in the right situation they can be used even without supposedly necessary feats.

There are tons of things really, things people usually don't think about, which set 3.x apart from games where the answer is always "sure you can do that!", particularly since so many people "play DnD" but actually ignore huge swathes of the rules and just say "sure you can do that!" (even many of the most focused 3.5, RAW, 1st party, char-op, etc posters usually can be found to be ignoring plenty of basic constraints and taking free lunches and liberties with interpretation). Even people that like to ignore X/Y/Z rules (restrictions) they don't like have others they follow, and those that will let you do almost anything without rules support acknowledge that if the rules say you can you already can without asking.

But at its core, 3.x is a game where you can do that when you can do that, and not before, and you'll know because it says so. If you value simulation, tradeoffs, complexity, etc, there's not much that can compare. And I'm pretty sure much of it is still based on the same basic d20 mechanics. Pathfinder is quite literally just a homebrew 3rd party extended support version of 3.x- and since I don't agree with many of their most fundamental changes, no thank you.

Asmotherion

2021-12-26, 06:48 PM

Well, I enjoy the character creation process of 3.5e. Since 4e was... let's say sub par to my personal taste, I kept playing 3.5e for a while, and it was the first edition of D&D I ever played, so in a way there is also a nostalgia factor.

I also enjoy that, if you look hard enough, 3.5e seems to have rules for every situation. Having a "by the book" example on how to resolve something is always helpful.

Finally, 5e is too simplistic for my taste. I like it, but sometimes I need to play something more complex and 3.5e is the answear.

Biggus

2021-12-26, 08:17 PM

A lot of what's already been said applies to me too, but there's also a more specific reason. 3E is the crossover point between the old (TSR) and the new (WotC) visions of D&D. The old D&D was full of flavour, with references to real folklore and mythology, with irrelevant details and even playful/silly stuff at times, but it was mechanically clunky and complex and strictly for nerds. The new D&D is mechanically superior in most respects but is far more generic in its presentation, more aimed at the general public, and more serious/less playful. 3E to me was the point where you got a lot of both worlds, before the WotC culture started to take over.

Emberlily

2021-12-26, 09:12 PM

I don't play 3.5 anymore and have zero interest in doing so

but I put like over a decade's worth of thoughts into learning and playing w the rules and playing and making thought experiment characters and so it's interesting from time to time to look into that landscape again

3.5's arcane monstrous mess of rules to put together is like a lego set with three million distinct pieces. plenty of room to keep finding new combinations you had never seen before, new interpretations on old designs

Wildstag

2021-12-26, 09:21 PM

My simple response: because it has the most support for shapeshifters out of the D&D editions. Since shapeshifting characters are my favorite subtype to play, and because 5e has literally zero support for non-changeling shapeshifters, 4e has mostly class-based shapeshifting, and 1/2e have spell-based, 3/3.5 is my sole remaining option.

Pathfinder 1e kinda scratches that itch but then it also neutered a lot of the fun of it. I'd rather actually turn into an animal, and not just a humanoid facsimile of one.

3.5 has races that shapeshift, classes that shapeshift, and spells that shapeshift. It has class options that aid shapeshifters as much as it aids non-shapeshifters.

Like, I could play a Hengeyokai Scout as easily as an Elf Scout. However, in 5e, there's only Elf Ranger, but no Skin-changers.

Gruftzwerg

2021-12-26, 09:44 PM

Since shapeshifting characters are my favorite subtype to play,

...

Like, I could play a Hengeyokai Scout as easily as an Elf Scout.

I was always wondering what your avatar is resembling...^^
Let me guess now.. you are a Hengeyokai Scout with a reindeer as animal form! am I right?^^

________________________

It's really nice to see why we are all still sticking to 3.5

Fizban

2021-12-26, 09:46 PM

Pathfinder 1e kinda scratches that itch but then it also neutered a lot of the fun of it. I'd rather actually turn into an animal, and not just a humanoid facsimile of one.
Yup, there's another bit of the simulation-first aspect. In 3.x, when you turn into something, you turn into something. If it doesn't involve messily (and probably quite brokenly) replacing a bunch of your character's sheet with something else, you aren't actually turning into something else, no matter how much more "balanced" it might be. And the whole point of turning into something else is so that you can use your intelligent mind/memories/plan/etc in combination with the physical aspects of whatever you turned into, that's the whole point, it's an inherently power-gaming trope probably since ancient times.

I can dig stuff like PHB2 Druid and fixed polymorph subschool spells for being easier and more predictable (and yet still with their own holes to break open, ha), but I want a world with magic that can turn one creature into another, and that means the easier stuff exists alongside Polymorph and Wild Shape.

3.5 has races that shapeshift, classes that shapeshift, and spells that shapeshift. It has class options that aid shapeshifters as much as it aids non-shapeshifters.

Like, I could play a Hengeyokai Scout as easily as an Elf Scout. However, in 5e, there's only Elf Ranger, but no Skin-changers.
And while you could make something that says it's a shapeshifter, it would either blatantly be breaking form with the rest of the edition, or blatantly not be turning into something else. Meanwhile in 3.x I can expand the Shapeshifter PrC through to effective 20th by adding 3 levels and loosen the entry so more magicians can take it (Hengeyokai already can of course) to make a less-broken Wild Shape path if I don't like Master of Many Forms, and write a Manakete race that can turn into a dragon with an unlimited use breath weapon (with other limitations) at 1st level, and slap shapeshifting invocations on the Warlock base class at any grade I wish, and make a ridiculous Channeled Bearform spell, and it all fits in fine.

Elves

2021-12-26, 09:54 PM

Yup, there's another bit of the simulation-first aspect. In 3.x, when you turn into something, you turn into something. If it doesn't involve messily (and probably quite brokenly) replacing a bunch of your character's sheet with something else, you aren't actually turning into something else, no matter how much more "balanced" it might be. And the whole point of turning into something else is so that you can use your intelligent mind/memories/plan/etc in combination with the physical aspects of whatever you turned into, that's the whole point, it's an inherently power-gaming trope probably since ancient times.

I can dig stuff like PHB2 Druid and fixed polymorph subschool spells for being easier and more predictable (and yet still with their own holes to break open, ha), but I want a world with magic that can turn one creature into another, and that means the easier stuff exists alongside Polymorph and Wild Shape.
At the same time, every monster being more fodder for polymorph/shapechange is a problem. The answer seems simple: make them work like summon monster, with a limited list that only gets expanded when the monster entry says so.

PoeticallyPsyco

2021-12-26, 11:21 PM

I've never played 4E. What would you say makes it the most fun in terms of gameplay? Everyone else seems to hate it.

It all comes down to the combat. 4E is designed heavily around tactical combat, which hurts it in a lot of ways, but the combat is (to me and my friends at least) fun. Right from level 1, every class has a variety of options to use in every combat. You'll almost never see a basic attack outside of opportunity attacks, weird builds designed to optimize them, and the odd power that lets an ally make a basic attack for free; everyone is making a meaningful choice as to what's the best tool in their box that round based on the enemies, the terrain, and the group's positioning. Each class has its own little minigame of tactical positioning that, alongside differences in their available powers that range from subtle to major, make them all feel more distinct in play than you'd think just looking at them in isolation.

Also, 4E did races best out of all the editions. Every race has an active ability that they can use, usually 1/encounter, which makes your race way more relevant and obvious than in 3.5 or 5e. Dragonborn are blasting clumps of enemies, Dwarves are using their Second Wind as a (in 3.5 terms) swift action, and Elves are rerolling their attacks.

So yeah. I could clean up this explanation, but I think I've hit the important bits. The classes come online at level 1 and don't need to wait to become basically competent at their role. The powers are fun and flavorful, give nice things to martials, and encourage taking advantage of the terrain and coordinating with your party members. And the races and classes and builds all feel distinctive in play, making your character feel unique.

Doctor Despair

2021-12-26, 11:27 PM

So yeah. I could clean up this explanation, but I think I've hit the important bits. The classes come online at level 1 and don't need to wait to become basically competent at their role. The powers are fun and flavorful, give nice things to martials, and encourage taking advantage of the terrain and coordinating with your party members. And the races and classes and builds all feel distinctive in play, making your character feel unique.

Sounds neat! If that's your overall impression, would it be fair to say that you like 3.5 from levels 6+, then, and 4E does early levels (~1-5) better when 3.5 builds haven't diverged enough to feel unique in their tactical niche yet?

Mordante

2021-12-27, 04:52 AM

I was a hard core Forgotten Realms fan during 3 5. So when 4th edition came out, it was a double whammy for me. They nuked the setting and randomly threw in new crap that they thought would be "hip, cool, and what the kids want these days". It was forced, contrived, and totally disrespected the decades of work and collaboration that went before it. Then there was 4th edition it's self. A dumbed down, video game inspired ruleset that I just couldn't get behind. There was a meme at the time that had an ogre throwing a rock at the party and yelling "magic missle". Yeah... that pretty much summed up 4th to me.

With each edition you expect your rules to become obsolete. But when you also invalidate all the fluff in the books at the same time.....well that is something else entirely. I had already gone through this before with Dragon Lance, and had made a significant investment in 3rd edition books. I refused to buy any further WotC products, as I will never invest myself in another D&D setting just so some Johny Come Lately hack can think that they can "do it better", and destroy it.

3.5 was a complete system and it's core rules are free use. As for setting I have been home brew from there on out and haven't looked back. WotC can do as much damage as they want to their IP's now, and I don't care as it no longer impacts me in the slightest.

But the setting is something you create yourself. The Forgotten Realms books, the Dragonlance books have no impact on game play. You create a fantasy world. I never played a game where Raistlin, Elminster or any of the other characters exist or have ever existed. To me the books were example stories what you could do with D&D.

Why I play 3.5 is because I have 3.5 books and my group likes 3.5. I'm willing to play other systems as well. Makes no huge difference to me.

RandomPeasant

2021-12-27, 08:04 AM

At the same time, every monster being more fodder for polymorph/shapechange is a problem. The answer seems simple: make them work like summon monster, with a limited list that only gets expanded when the monster entry says so.

The solution is even simpler than that. You make polymorph a menu of buffs and a bonus to disguise checks. Then you can print as many monsters as you want and the spell will never be broken. Letting people open up the MM and pull stuff out of it is basically never a good idea, and should be avoided if possible. Even summon monster is kinda dumb because a lot of the things it has you summoning as expendable minions have a laundry list of abilities.

Scots Dragon

2021-12-27, 08:21 AM

But the setting is something you create yourself. The Forgotten Realms books, the Dragonlance books have no impact on game play. You create a fantasy world. I never played a game where Raistlin, Elminster or any of the other characters exist or have ever existed. To me the books were example stories what you could do with D&D.

Why I play 3.5 is because I have 3.5 books and my group likes 3.5. I'm willing to play other systems as well. Makes no huge difference to me.

Okay but not everyone plays like this.

For me the pre-created settings were interesting and I liked being able to play in the world of the books and video games I enjoyed. It's really no different from, say, playing a Star Wars RPG. If I were gonna go through the process of creating my own fantasy world, it'd probably be something mostly incompatible with the concepts put forth in Dungeons & Dragons to the point of requiring heavy rewrites of classes and rules and magic simply to account for it, and probably not be written with gaming in mind at all but storytelling.

Wildstag

2021-12-27, 12:27 PM

I was always wondering what your avatar is resembling...^^
Let me guess now.. you are a Hengeyokai Scout with a reindeer as animal form! am I right?^^

Oh, the avi is from a Regular Show episode, I waffle between it and "future funk Winnie the Pooh" if you see a Wildstag elsewhere.

And yeah, it's a bummer that there's such a limited list for Hengeyokai. But at least there's herbivore-based shapeshifters in 3.5. Pathfinder at most does omnivores (wereboar-kin), and doesn't even provide options for the herbivore fantasy (rabbit, deer, ram changers, etc.).

D+1

2021-12-27, 01:16 PM

JNAProductions

2021-12-27, 01:27 PM

I'm gonna go against the grain here and say "No."

I'm not a huge 3.5 fan. It has an absolutely stonkingly huge amount of resources, and you can do things that are incredibly far afield from what the designers intended. But that comes at the cost of being, in general, very unbalanced. And not just "My Druid does 15% more DPR than your Fighter," but things like "My Druid's Animal Companion is the equal of your Monk... And I'm an entire Druid besides."

I find character creation fun (at times) for 3.5, but I've rarely played it in a way that resulted in a more fun game than a similar concept in another system. And DMing it... Hoo boy! Never again.

That's not to say I'm ragging on anyone who does like or love 3.5. If that's what you have fun with, then have fun! But it's not for me. 5E is much simpler, more fluid and intuitive, and easier to really have fun with. 4E has much more involved tactics, with a lesser focus on strategy, and that's what I prefer if I'm looking for a more mechanical challenge. Mutants and Masterminds is a much more generic system, even if it's built on a similarish chassis to 3.5. Traveller and Stars Without Number handle sci-fi much better. All that is true for me-it's probably not true for the rest of you in this thread, but for me, 3.5 is a fun spectacle, not so much a fun game.

gijoemike

2021-12-27, 02:20 PM

I've never played 4E. What would you say makes it the most fun in terms of gameplay? Everyone else seems to hate it.

4th ed has several design features that got right. First when attacking the attacker would roll a die and compare it to the static defense of the defender. Period. Every single character has 2 at will powers from their class, several encounter powers, and a few once a day powers. There was no such thing as analysis paralysis. In 3.X/pathfinder a high level mage could have dozens of viable options to use this combat round. While a fighter could have trip enemy, charge, or just melee attack a bunch.

Take mage for example. They could always do a simple magic missile for a bit of damage. Or maybe set up a cloud of knives on one square.
A ranger could always attack with both weapons. Normal melee attack action was just 1 weapon.
A fighter could shield bash.
The at wills are very simple actions. Every class had 4 or 5 abilities to choose from at level up/char creation but limited themselves to 2.

But a mage could always use something a bit more flashy every single encounter. I think burning hands was an option. It has been years since I have cracked the books. My examples may be off. But that burning hands required a 10 minute rest. The fighter had an amazing encounter power of come at me they could gain at lvl 7. All enemies within 10 feet moved to you and attacked. Then you would attack every single one of them, and mark them. This forced all the enemies to focus on the fighter and every one got smacked back for it. Now they had difficultly attacking the rogue/cleric/wizard. Encounter powers would be "forgotten" and a new higher level ability would replace it. As a player you could see your character getting more competent. Not just my fighter can swing another time.

That same mage could nova and drop a daily which was fairly powerful. Think chain lighting/meteor swarm. The ranger had a high level daily that was a rain of blows. Attack with primary then off hand, keep going until you miss. The cleric had a stun enemy in place and deal free damage every single round.

But it gets better. Every character also got utility powers for out of combat use. Yes, fighters and barbarians had abilities and special class abilities to use out of combat by game design.

So 4th ed,
every single class had fun unique options they could do every round of combat
every single class has utility powers outside of combat
playing a defender who could meat wall for the whole party was a real thing

The gameplay was pretty awesome. But there were dozens of other problems that caused the game to fail.

Faily

2021-12-27, 02:51 PM

It was the first edition of D&D I played. We have played Pathfinder 1 instead of 3.5 for a while now, but I consider them to be mostly the same (with some variations).

I just jive well with 3.5/PF1's kind of mechanics, and I found them to be easy to learn while still having lots of room for learning more and exploring plenty of options. I feel like there is just no other edition that can match the amount of options and builds you can make in 3.5/PF1.

Elves

2021-12-27, 03:36 PM

The solution is even simpler than that. You make polymorph a menu of buffs and a bonus to disguise checks. Then you can print as many monsters as you want and the spell will never be broken. Letting people open up the MM and pull stuff out of it is basically never a good idea, and should be avoided if possible. Even summon monster is kinda dumb because a lot of the things it has you summoning as expendable minions have a laundry list of abilities.
Was @ing Fizban's comment that it's more exciting to "really turn into something" than to choose buffs from a set list, which I agree with. By limiting the monster selection you can have "real" polymorph without every new monster having to take the spell into consideration.

Fizban

2021-12-27, 05:05 PM

At the same time, every monster being more fodder for polymorph/shapechange is a problem. The answer seems simple: make them work like summon monster, with a limited list that only gets expanded when the monster entry says so.
Indeed, though I find it easier conceptually to leave that one in the realm of DM response rather than writing a whole new list.

I had considered using my/the Summon Monster list directly, but it has a lot of samey stuff and different goals. On the other hand, if one is going to make a list of polymorph forms with all allowed options, including those that would be weaker than 4th- well why not put those weaker forms on separate lower level lists, and make separate higher level lists, and use the same this list or lower mechanic for a whole series of spells, and with enough level gap the duration could increase to cover that issue too. But again, I'm not really up for another big index/comparison project, particularly when the last one I did burnt me out so hard and I didn't even finish it (evaluating nearly every spell for inclusion/exclusion from a new base class list). Of course the Summon Monster one also took years to get around to finishing, maybe one day I'll have noted enough specific exclusions that it will be time to write list-Polymoph.

Mordante

2021-12-28, 03:10 AM

Okay but not everyone plays like this.

For me the pre-created settings were interesting and I liked being able to play in the world of the books and video games I enjoyed. It's really no different from, say, playing a Star Wars RPG. If I were gonna go through the process of creating my own fantasy world, it'd probably be something mostly incompatible with the concepts put forth in Dungeons & Dragons to the point of requiring heavy rewrites of classes and rules and magic simply to account for it, and probably not be written with gaming in mind at all but storytelling.

In my experience the world develops as you play in it. When you start as level 1 character, chances are you you know very little of the world around you. So the world for a low level party can be a village with the surrounding lands. The players probably know that are big cities elsewhere in the lands and there might be wars or feuds somewhere. But chances are they have never heard of any of the names from the books. Could even be that the characters from the books are long dead or haven't even been borne yet.

Telonius

2021-12-28, 12:26 PM

The whole Polymorph thing was a problem (at least IMO) because the developers didn't realize the players were going to be Madam Mim, instead of Merlin.

The whole point of Shapechange was so you could actually do the Merlin/Madam Mim magical duel. Which is actually pretty awesome, and something a high-level Transmutation specialist ought to just be able to do. But when you actually start thinking about what that sort of insanity can cause, if you use it on a regular basis (or in cases where you didn't intend the players to use it), it just breaks so many things into smithereens.

Bohandas

2021-12-28, 01:10 PM

I washed my hands of D&D when 4e came out.

And 5e seems to have its own issues from what I've heard of it; it seems asymmetric between the way NPCs are handled and the way PCs are handled

Also, I'm not shelling out all that dough to learn a new system when the old one still works perfectly fine

Wildstag

2021-12-28, 01:11 PM

This whole polymorph thing is an entirely separate discussion, but I kinda want to clarify that the primary difference that holds things back for me is just how little you get from changing form.

So for example, in 3.5 you have the Dog Hengeyokai. You turn into a dog with your normal mental stats, and all the standard abilities of the dog save for scent (which feels like a big oversight on WotC's part, and makes the hybrid form a better tracker than the dog form, but I digress). This transformation is effectively permanent until dispelled or removed.

In PF1E, you have the Rougarou, the nearest analog to the Hengeyokai. With the Rougarou, you get 1/day transformation into a wolf. You keep all your ability scores and changes are a +2 size bonus to Strength, +2 natural armor, scent, and low-light vision. However, it only lasts for 1 minute per character level. There is no way to increase the number of uses since it is an (Su) ability and not an (Sp) ability.

In 5e you cry because there are no races to give you the ability to transform into a canine.

Just looking at this from player-side, racial transformations, we're left with only one edition that scratches the itch.

Looking at Polymorph as a whole is a terrifying beast though. It's why I prefer to get such transformations inherently rather than having to get them through spells or class abilities.

P.S. Also, for a tiny look at Polymorph, it only gives special attacks, not qualities or magical qualities, so it's already pretty limiting. Shapechange is the scary one though. I'd never touch it with a ten-foot pole.

Bohandas

2021-12-28, 01:18 PM

Some of the issues with polymorph probably tie into one of the flaws of 3.x, namely the developers' bizarre obsession with hit dice. If it went by CR for its limits on what you can turn into it would probably be more balanced and make more sense.

Quertus

2021-12-28, 01:35 PM

In my experience the world develops as you play in it. When you start as level 1 character, chances are you you know very little of the world around you. So the world for a low level party can be a village with the surrounding lands. The players probably know that are big cities elsewhere in the lands and there might be wars or feuds somewhere. But chances are they have never heard of any of the names from the books. Could even be that the characters from the books are long dead or haven't even been borne yet.

That would be fun, having an epic level party running around the Realms, then meeting Elminster as a first level fighter. :smallbiggrin:

Feldar

2021-12-28, 02:04 PM

Our group continues with 3.5e for many reasons:

We already spent a lot of $ on books for 3.5e.
We already know 3.5e.
We like Greyhawk and there is a lot of Greyhawk material, much of it specific to 3.5, that we haven't yet played including LOTS and LOTS of Living Greyhawk scenarios.
I didn't like the shift to the Realms for 4e. "There are copyright issues" was and continues to be a LAME excuse -- sort the copyright issues out.
Speaking personally, I disliked the video-game mentality of 4e. If I wanted to play video games I would.
4e seemed to have been designed to allow young children to play. Someone at a table once said, "My seven year old can play." Frankly, I don't want to play with your seven year old.
4e seemed to be designed to satisfy someone's OCD. I have enough OCD issues of my own :smallsmile:

I have tried 4e, even ran some at a game convention and received compliments on my GMing -- 4e blew chunks. I have tried 5e and it was ok (TONS better than 4e), but frankly it suffers from the same featuritis that made me stop playing MtG.

Yes, 3.5 has issues. So do 4e and 5e. We fix the issues in 3.5e and move forward.

Scots Dragon

2021-12-28, 06:41 PM

That would be fun, having an epic level party running around the Realms, then meeting Elminster as a first level fighter. :smallbiggrin:

I actually have been tempted to set both campaigns and fanfiction in earlier eras myself such as the heights of Netheril or Myth Drannor, or during the gulf between, so... yeah, lotta material to work with on that front.

Wildstag

2021-12-28, 06:48 PM

We already spent a lot of $ on books for 3.5e.
We already know 3.5e.
We like Greyhawk and there is a lot of Greyhawk material, much of it specific to 3.5, that we haven't yet played including LOTS and LOTS of Living Greyhawk scenarios.
I didn't like the shift to the Realms for 4e. "There are copyright issues" was and continues to be a LAME excuse -- sort the copyright issues out.
Speaking personally, I disliked the video-game mentality of 4e. If I wanted to play video games I would.
4e seemed to have been designed to allow young children to play. Someone at a table once said, "My seven year old can play." Frankly, I don't want to play with your seven year old.
4e seemed to be designed to satisfy someone's OCD. I have enough OCD issues of my own :smallsmile:

Yes, 3.5 has issues. So do 4e and 5e. We fix the issues in 3.5e and move forward.

I've definitely seen kids (9-12) play 3.5e as well. It's not mathematically complex, just basic addition and subtraction with the very occasional multiplication. A kid of any age can play any edition of D&D without issue.

Lastly, I really don't feel like 4e was videogamey at all, in game design and in gameplay. The encounter/daily power limit isn't even gone in 5e yet people don't call that edition "videogamey". Encounter powers required a short rest to regain them. Daily Powers required a long rest. The same reset-system works in 5e, but just doesn't call it "encounter powers" or "daily powers". Aside from that, none of it really feels videogamey.

The real answers here just seem to be "we spent money on 3.5 and don't want to for other editions" and "we like Greyhawk". And those are justification enough, tbh.

P.S. As far as setting differences go, I also just absolutely love the Goliath's identity in 3.5 (Greyhawk) and absolutely hate the boring and anti-Goliath way they were brought to Faerun. All of a sudden they're giant-kin and unoriginal? Ew. All of a sudden they're Lawful-Neutral-leaning? EW. Nowadays their lithoderms are gone, their skin patterns have become tattoo-like, and they all look comely and handsome instead of distinctly non-human like they were originally.

Elves

2021-12-28, 07:20 PM

The real answers here just seem to be "we spent money on 3.5 and don't want to for other editions" and "we like Greyhawk". And those are justification enough, tbh.

I took up 3e after it was over. Its value is clear vs. other D&D editions: more options, more customization, more detailed rules, and a higher power ceiling.

A more cutting question might be why use 3e as a base rather than PF1. I would have to think about that.

Jay R

2021-12-28, 07:23 PM

1. I already own the books.
2. My DMs already own the books.
3. The OGL guarantees that the core rules will remain available to any new player.
4. The OGL and Pathfinder guarantee that there are still new products available.
5. That's the game that two of my DMs are running. [I also still play AD&D 1e for the same reason.]

Mostly, I still play 3.5e (and occasionally AD&D 1e or 2e, and, very rarely, original whitebox) because that's the game a friend is running.

So it all boils down to this: I never picked up 4e or 5e because I have never had a reason to do so. Getting me to learn a new version requires making it worth my time and money. So 5e needs to guarantee me enough more fun than 3.5e to justify buying more books and spending more time learning a new system. And I have seen no such guarantee.

Telonius

2021-12-28, 09:34 PM

I took up 3e after it was over. Its value is clear vs. other D&D editions: more options, more customization, more detailed rules, and a higher power ceiling.

A more cutting question might be why use 3e as a base rather than PF1. I would have to think about that.

My own answer for that is ... well, kind of what I'd mentioned in my main answer. I already did a "minor" update from 3.0 to 3.5, with all of the fiddly little changes that came with it. I can't think of any specifically, but there were dozens of times our group ground to a halt because half of us were remembering how something worked in 3.0, that didn't work like that anymore. It was very, very annoying to me. It would be easier for me to learn a whole new edition than to un-learn a decent-sized chunk of the small (but important) rules I already know, again, and then have to look it up anyway because I don't trust my own brain.

I do back-port a few of the things that I really liked about PF - streamlining skills and eliminating XP cost to item creation for example - but those are the big, obvious, easy-to-remember things that are kind of self-contained.

RexDart

2021-12-29, 09:28 AM

My own answer for that is ... well, kind of what I'd mentioned in my main answer. I already did a "minor" update from 3.0 to 3.5, with all of the fiddly little changes that came with it. I can't think of any specifically, but there were dozens of times our group ground to a halt because half of us were remembering how something worked in 3.0, that didn't work like that anymore. It was very, very annoying to me. It would be easier for me to learn a whole new edition than to un-learn a decent-sized chunk of the small (but important) rules I already know, again, and then have to look it up anyway because I don't trust my own brain.

I do back-port a few of the things that I really liked about PF - streamlining skills and eliminating XP cost to item creation for example - but those are the big, obvious, easy-to-remember things that are kind of self-contained.

It seems to me that Pathfinder 1 was basically a collection of house rules to change stuff that didn't quite work in 3.5. Which is something most GMs still running 3.5 had already done themselves by that point. Hopefully with more rigor and playtesting than the average GM, but still, if you've got house rules that work for you, there might not be much to gain from switching to a different set of house rules, some of which you probably like more than others.

Darg

2021-12-29, 10:30 AM

Tzardok

2021-12-29, 10:46 AM

Darg

2021-12-29, 11:10 AM

I'm not sure how you come to that conclusion. When they introduced that school in the Player's Handbook 2, the description of the school explicitely stated that polymorph and any spell based on it are henceforth in that school too.

The rules of the school are specifically overwritten by the spell descriptions. As polymorph and shapechange are based on alter self they basically can ignore the entirety of the subschool rules. Dragonshape is explicitly worse than shapechange to become an adult dragon because it must follow the subschool rules instead of being based on alter self.

Gruftzwerg

2021-12-29, 11:15 AM

My biggest issue with polymorph is that they created this polymorph subschool that applies to everything except spells with polymorph in the name/description. It's really the biggest misnomer I've come across in 3.5.
&

I'm not sure how you come to that conclusion. When they introduced that school in the Player's Handbook 2, the description of the school explicitely stated that polymorph and any spell based on it are henceforth in that school too.

The polymorph subschool are introduced as "general rules/Primary Source" for polymorph effects.
Thus earlier published spells also fall under these "general rules".

But as always, specific spell text may supersede general rules. As such, all earlier spells remain untouched in their effect, since they call out their exceptions (to the general rules). This is even stated in the Porlymorph Subschool article: (http://archive.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/ex/20060501a&page=5)

For the purpose of adjudicating effects that apply to polymorph spells, any spell whose effect is based on either alter self or polymorph should be considered to have the polymorph subschool. However, note that the spells' existing rules text takes priority over that of the subschool. Alter self, for instance, does not change the target's ability scores (unlike normal for spells of the polymorph subschool).

Darg

2021-12-29, 11:18 AM

Your class and level, hit points, alignment, base attack bonus, and base save bonuses all remain the same. You retain all supernatural and spell-like special attacks and qualities of your normal form, except for those requiring a body part that the new form does not have (such as a mouth for a breath weapon or eyes for a gaze attack).

You keep all extraordinary special attacks and qualities derived from class levels, but you lose any from your normal form that are not derived from class levels.

If the new form is capable of speech, you can communicate normally. You retain any spellcasting ability you had in your original form, but the new form must be able to speak intelligibly (that is, speak a language) to use verbal components and must have limbs capable of fine manipulation to use somatic or material components.

This is really the offending text which is explicitly not allowed for other polymorph school spells which make them all lackluster in comparison to polymorph and shapechange fundamentally. The polymorph school spells also are not as versatile in choice and are most of the time not powerful forms.

Gruftzwerg

2021-12-29, 11:37 AM

This is really the offending text which is explicitly not allowed for other polymorph school spells which make them all lackluster in comparison to polymorph and shapechange fundamentally. The polymorph school spells also are not as versatile in choice and are most of the time not powerful forms.

Well that was the purpose: nerfing (future) formchanging abilities

The designers realized how OP Polymorph and Shapechange are and wanted to tone em down.

The problem was that the opinions in the community where split (and still are) on that topic. Thus, the Polymorph Subschool was created, leaving the older spells untouched (due to "specific trumps general"), while providing new general rules for weaker polymorph-like spells to come (for those who like to have weaker form changing abilities in their game).

It's up to you(r DM/table) to decide if you want to use the older stronger spells, or if you want to use the newer but weaker spells. Imho the best solution for the situation.

"new spells != stronger/equally strong" in this chase
it's more "new spells = weaker but more balanced"

Tzardok

2021-12-29, 11:59 AM

&

The polymorph subschool are introduced as "general rules/Primary Source" for polymorph effects.
Thus earlier published spells also fall under these "general rules".

But as always, specific spell text may supersede general rules. As such, all earlier spells remain untouched in their effect, since they call out their exceptions (to the general rules). This is even stated in the Porlymorph Subschool article: (http://archive.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/ex/20060501a&page=5)

Yeah, I know. But the post I argued against wasn't "polymorph doesn't follow the rules of the polymorph subschool", it was "polymorph isn't in the polymorph subschool".

This is really the offending text which is explicitly not allowed for other polymorph school spells

Again, I'm not sure how you come to that conclusion. Nowhere in that description is mentioned that all new polymorph spells have to follow those rules. In fact, the opposite is true:

Unless stated otherwise in the spell's description, the target of a polymorph spell takes on all the statistics and special abilities [etc]

Darg

2021-12-29, 12:12 PM

Well that was the purpose: nerfing (future) formchanging abilities

The designers realized how OP Polymorph and Shapechange are and wanted to tone em down.

The problem was that the opinions in the community where split (and still are) on that topic. Thus, the Polymorph Subschool was created, leaving the older spells untouched (due to "specific trumps general"), while providing new general rules for weaker polymorph-like spells to come (for those who like to have weaker form changing abilities in their game).

It's up to you(r DM/table) to decide if you want to use the older stronger spells, or if you want to use the newer but weaker spells. Imho the best solution for the situation.

"new spells != stronger/equally strong" in this chase
it's more "new spells = weaker but more balanced"

Considering they are core spells, it's alot harder to justify removing them entirely. Instead, I just nerf polymorph and shapechange by ignoring the "as alter self" text and substitute that with the subschool rules. It brings them in line with every thing else and makes them a balanced addition and more of a tactical choice for the caster themselves.

TBF the new spells are quite strong on their own as you generally get all the qualities of the new form, not just the attacks, and provide temporary hit points. It's just retaining your abilities and having the flexibility of choosing your form on the fly as a combination is just too powerful to give up if given the choice of one or the other. Doing what I did above, I've seen equal use of polymorph and the new polymorph spells because the advantages of each compete relatively well.

Yeah, I know. But the post I argued against wasn't "polymorph doesn't follow the rules of the polymorph subschool", it was "polymorph isn't in the polymorph subschool".

I said the subschool doesn't apply because the combination of including the description of alter self with polymorph and shapechange overwrite the balancing nature of the subschool rules. I never said they weren't a part of the subschool.

Again, I'm not sure how you come to that conclusion. Nowhere in that description is mentioned that all new polymorph spells have to follow those rules. In fact, the opposite is true:

Ah, but the subschool doesn't allow you to keep your original special attacks and qualities from your original form and class levels. You can cast spells when polymorphed into a troll with the polymorph spell, you can't cast spells when polymorphed using the trollshape spell which is the same level. It's like the transformation spell, you lose your most valuable asset to gain a niche benefit. Polymorph sacrifices practically nothing if you choose a form capable of casting.

Bohandas

2021-12-29, 02:57 PM

I didn't like the shift to the Realms for 4e. "There are copyright issues" was and continues to be a LAME excuse -- sort the copyright issues out.

Agreed. Forgotten Realms sucks.

D+1

2021-12-29, 06:08 PM

Any edition, when allowed to run amok, is likely to result in headaches for the DM, paralysis of choice for players, lack of focus, and so on. There is nothing inherently bad about 3E that it doesn't share to some degree with other editions. There is similarly nothing inherently greater about 5E that can't be accomplished with other editions. Each edition is, however, still going to have its own advantages and disadvantages - many of them are not going to have anything to do with game mechanics. Owning more books for one edition than another is clearly an advantage that has nothing to do with mechanics. Being more familiar with one over another is likewise an advantage that has nothing to do with game mechanics. Liking the "feel" of one edition over another could be related to mechanics, but doesn't have to be.

The editions I personally am most familiar with are 1E, 2E, and 3E. In my mind 1E and 2E are mostly the same and the parts that make 2E unique from 1E are parts that I just don't care about enough to EVER bother with 2E specifically. So when I run games I run 1E or 3E. I play 5E and enjoy it (I'd enjoy 1 or 3 more... familiarity again...), but I don't care at all to learn to run 5E as a DM. There is nothing about it as a separate edition that I have found inherently superior to the older editions - editions with which I am more familiar and have VASTLY more materials for, obtained over DECADES of playing. I have been given no motivation to stop running perfectly serviceable and enjoyable editions (yes - even 1E is perfectly serviceable BECAUSE I have the experience to deal with it) and instead vow to spend the rest of my days singing the praises of 5E from mountaintops.

No edition has an expiration date. Play what you want, and if others dare to suggest that you're wrong for playing what you like, you get to just laugh at them as you continue to have fun.

pwykersotz

2021-12-29, 07:10 PM

3.5 has a lot of my favorite lore. I mine AD&D and 4e too, but 3.X just feels the best to me. I play exclusively 5e and Cypher now, but I always come back to 3.5 for the lore. Part and parcel with that is all the prestige classes that have each carved their niche into the world. I love that so much care went into making everything feel like it had it's own place. By contrast, a lot of more generalized systems lack that attention to detail by necessity.

There will always be a special place in my heart for 3.5. It was my first system, so I have nostalgia going for me in addition to other things. I spent so much time having a blast putting together characters and min-maxing all sorts of stupidly fun builds/magic items/etc. But now I DM exclusively, and for me it's too much work. Plus my fellow gamers don't enjoy building things as much as they just want the system to get out of their way, so we're better served by a somewhat more lightweight system. I'll probably never play it again mechanically, but from my point of view I'm still playing it, just with different rules.

Hurnn

2021-12-30, 01:09 AM

I think it's the best edition. I like the rules complexity, and mountain of character options. Monsters and NPCs follow the same rules as players. I liked 1st and it was cool but limited, even when they added options. 2nd was really just 1.5. Both were pretty stale when 3rd came out also. 4th was a miniature game, 5th is honestly 3.5 for dummies and my second favorite edition

DigoDragon

2021-12-30, 07:47 AM

Why 3.5?

Because the GM in my local group doesn't want to learn a different system. That's really it.

He loves 3.5 and thinks the world of it. I prefer 5e for it's more simplified mechanics, but I don't mind using 3.5 with my local group; the GM doesn't know how to optimize, the other players don't know how to optimize, and so I don't have to worry much about all the little nuances in my builds for our adventures.

I might have the only Dragonwrought kobold PC in all the realms who is still a teenager. XD

Seward

2021-12-30, 04:07 PM

For me, it's where the community is. I played a lot of 3.5 back in the day, and got another half dozen years of Pathfinder in before life and COVID lockdowns ended that. We tried 4th ed but it bogged down after L5ish and was awkward in a variety of ways. It didn't solve the problems it tried to solve with higher level complexity, according to friends of mine who did push it all the way to L20 in real play, it just failed differently than 3.5. Also we felt dirty supporting a Hasbro product (see below).

Complexity....I grew up with Hero Games, and we liked that sort of thing. 3.5 is the closest to "build your own D&D" (well Pathfinder is. 3.5 was getting there before it was killed).

As for 5th ed, well, Hasbro is dead to me after they killed Living Greyhawk (and insulted us by releasing a dozen sourcebooks before anouncing they were killing the entire system) That'll change if an only I can't find somebody to game with any other way.

There is still a pretty strong online community for 3.5/Pathfinder, partly because the SRD exists, which isn't as true for other editions. So when I'm in the mood I participate. Of course this community is stronger than most because of where it is - on a web comic set in a world based on 3.5 rules.

Luccan

2021-12-30, 04:31 PM

I don't play any edition exclusively and in many ways I prefer 5e. But 3.X has some really cool material and I think some of the differences in rules give a different feeling to the actual game

Melcar

2021-12-30, 06:06 PM

Rulebooks for D&D editions 3 and 3.5 were published between the year 2000 and the year 2008. D&D has existed for more time after 3.5 than it did during it, and it has existed for even longer before. There's 2nd edition, there's pathfinder, there's 5e. There's even 4e, if you're into that sort of thing.

So, between all these options... What keeps you here? Why are you here to play and discuss an edition that'll never get new content, an edition known for being a mess, an edition that has very little potential to attract and be friendly to new players?

Why 3.5?

I know my answers, but I'd be curious to hear yours.

All of bellow:

I enjoy the added complexity of the system; that there's rules for everything adds to my verisimilitude, and I get enjoyment from learning new random complexities in it. 5e defers to the DM's imagination a lot more, and that is less interesting to me, as DM fiat is unreliable (if predictable).

I enjoy the added PC options of the system; that there are so many whacky interactions between feats, items, and prcs keeps things fresh for me, and I get enjoyment from challenging myself to optimizing certain tactics or strategies. 5e has a lot fewer PC options as far as I can tell, and leads to characters feeling "samey" mechanically, although of course you can RP/fluff things however you want, and that is less interesting to me.

Hmmm.

1) Have not found a game system I would rather play in.
2) Still enjoying the investment in books I made years ago.
3) Am appalled that the same titles get republished with a few tweaks for every edition.
4) Used to 3.5 and don't feel like learning yet another system to learn another one in a few years.

Because I don't find 4th edition fun and 5th feels like a babies first version of 3rd rehashed with less options.

I kind of want to get into second edition lore and mechanics, but mainly so that I can adapt those things into 3e. 1e and 2e are just missing the shear amount of content created for 3rd with all the supplements for 3.0, 3.5, Pathfinder 1e, and Open license d20. If there's something you can imagine, 3.PF has rules for it.

Imho it is still the best system if you are familiar enough. You can create characters at any power lvl, from npc-like noobs to godlike build. I don't know any other system where you can adapt fictional characters so good as with 3.5 (Orochimaru is done, Itachi will soon be released!)
I just love the system, for its flexibility. Over the years, I've seen some really crazy builds here in forum. And it doesn't stop! Even nowadays the Iron Chef contests are really fun and entertaining. I don't see any other system that produces new and fresh ideas with up to 20years old content. (and at the same time, I don't see the rule discussion ever stopping. But they can be fun too sometimes ^^ )

For me its basically all of the above. Its the first system I played pen and paper on, its a system I've been playing for 21 years and the familiarity, is safe, nice and fun. Sure, it has glaring holes, which if not careful can lead down broken paths... both brokenly weak and brokenly strong, but to be honest its part of its charm. I love the system, however flawed!

Eldest

2021-12-30, 06:28 PM

All my favorite homebrew's here. I have the system pretty much broken in with all the pieces I want it to have. So when I want to play D&D and it's not somebody else's game running 5e, this is my default.

That being said, I mostly default to PBTA games and Fate Condensed these days, so I don't know that it counts as my main game now. But for playing D&D, the 3.P homebrew mix has been years in the making and perfecting.

Rilem

2021-12-31, 08:02 AM

Scots Dragon

2021-12-31, 08:23 AM

The ability to customize almost anything, especially monsters in a way that made sense on both sides of DM screen. Making a bunch of kobolds a threat to higher level parties and being able to say “they all have Crusader levels” feels more transparent than saying “they’re a different type of kobold”

I agree with the idea, but not the execution.

Kobolds are all about traps and trickery and misdirection. You'll want high-level rogues and sorcerers and such combining magic and stealth and trapsmithing. A bunch of draconic stuff thrown in for good measure with some half-dragon kobolds and dragonwrought kobolds for more elite enemies.

Rilem

2021-12-31, 09:28 AM

Oh definitely, I was just adding random weak race/strong class. My point was that in 3.5 both players and GM could use the same toolbox, which I think helped game worlds feel more immersive and could have the side effect of tamping down on potentially unbalanced PC builds (I heard “anything you use, the monsters will use” many times)

Ignimortis

2021-12-31, 11:23 AM

Because every major other edition of D&D has proven to be less fun for me than 3.5. 1e and 2e are not my cup of tea at all, 4e is too narrowly focused, 5e is too shallow and replicates the worst parts of 3.5 instead of the best ones, and Pathfinder 2e is overbalanced and deprived of most fun things I liked about 3.5/PF1.

3.5 was also the last time when D&D has tried to actually experiment and think of new things on a massive scale, and maybe stray away from the roots of the game as a dungeon-focused wargame/crawler into something more fantastical and high-flying. It was, IMO, also the closest to breaking away from the "magic and spellcasting are the only ways to have cool powers" idea that seems to be plaguing D&D to this day still.

Yes, 3.5 is horribly easy to break and exploit. But I'd rather play a fun broken game than a boring balanced game, and out of the mainstream heroic fantasy TTRPGs, 3.5 provides me with the most fun. I'd love to someday redo its' core a bit, trim a few extraneous rules, incorporate some houserules, and then pretty much forget about other editions when I get the urge to run or play D&D.

unseenmage

2021-12-31, 01:32 PM

I like playing as monsters.

I like playing crafter.

I like minionmancy.

I'm dyscalculic but pretty good with layered effects and math comprehension. Which means while combat math is no good I am great with stacking effects.

Learning another system is hard.

Most importantly, this is where all of my imaginary friends live.

Bohandas

2021-12-31, 02:50 PM

My point was that in 3.5 both players and GM could use the same toolbox
Yeah. The monsters weren't just standees missing half their stats and the game didn't cheat

Quertus

2021-12-31, 02:52 PM

. I already did a "minor" update from 3.0 to 3.5, with all of the fiddly little changes that came with it. I can't think of any specifically, but there were dozens of times our group ground to a halt because half of us were remembering how something worked in 3.0, that didn't work like that anymore. It was very, very annoying to me. It would be easier for me to learn a whole new edition than to un-learn a decent-sized chunk of the small (but important) rules I already know

The big ones I remember are 3.0 haste, 3.0 item pricing, 3.0 crit range stacking, and mounts. In 3.0, you took up your normal space (ie, usually only a single square) on your mount. I really wanted to run the useless healer, seated in the middle of a 15’x15’ mount, who couldn’t reach the party; alas, 3.5 dashed my dreams.

Oh definitely, I was just adding random weak race/strong class. My point was that in 3.5 both players and GM could use the same toolbox, which I think helped game worlds feel more immersive and could have the side effect of tamping down on potentially unbalanced PC builds (I heard “anything you use, the monsters will use” many times)

I much more prefer, “anything the PCs use, the NPCs *won’t* use, unless they’re doing so for the express purpose of making the PCs look good”.

This relaxes slightly if the players are cool with 3 überchargers or 7 necromancers in the same party.

Darg

2021-12-31, 06:15 PM

The big ones I remember are 3.0 haste, 3.0 item pricing, 3.0 crit range stacking, and mounts. In 3.0, you took up your normal space (ie, usually only a single square) on your mount. I really wanted to run the useless healer, seated in the middle of a 15’x15’ mount, who couldn’t reach the party; alas, 3.5 dashed my dreams.

They made charging more difficult and got rid of charging overruns (the only form in 3.0) just because they made charging convoluted and broke ride-by-attack. You know you can pass through spaces occupied by friendly creatures right? At worst you can't reach a target at the edge of the limit of your mount's movement because you can't stop movement occupying the same space.

Raven777

2021-12-31, 07:50 PM

an edition that has very little potential to attract and be friendly to new players?

Not a factor. I successfully enrolled six workplace colleagues in a Rise of the Runelords campaign. Any new player is gonna be playing what their DM's willing to run. (or any new DM is gonna DM what their players are willing to play).

Seward

2021-12-31, 09:10 PM

Yeah. The monsters weren't just standees missing half their stats and the game didn't cheat

This to me is always part of the contract for D&D, going back to the basic set I first encountered in the 1970s.

Bad guys and heroes play by the same rules. They can also learn from each other's successes, if they live and communicate.

One thing that I didn't care for in 4.x was the monsters having entirely different statblocks and being broken into basically "mooks" and "elites" much like a MMORPG with each type. 1st ed was arbitrary and 3.x had all kinds of issues with advancing by hit die vs by class level vs by template or growth, but once you had the statblock it behaved mechanically like any PC that somehow accomplished the same basic attributes.

I did appreciate that 4.x was a lot more GM friendly on encounter design. In 3.x/PF I always had to customize my own cheat sheet for adventures, whether they were mine or a published adventure, to highlight what was likely to be important in a given encounter and minimizing the odds I'd have to stop play to look something up. When I didn't have time to do that, I was frankly a worse GM.

Any new player is gonna be playing what their DM's willing to run. (or any new DM is gonna DM what their players are willing to play).

Indeed. Back in the late 1980s I was into Hero Games (Champions/Fantasy Hero) and most of the online community on rec.games.frp (yes I am old) was into D&D. I had two plot ideas set in a post-apocolyptic Pacific Northwest in a world that was developing magic to combat an alien invasion (of Illithid). Gods, Demon binding and Magic were understood by players to be one thing, by the handful of folks who remembered the old world as something else. All using Hero games engine. I posted the creation myth of the major races, which looked exactly like an AD&D homebrew world, and told folks to send me character concepts. Not to worry about the system, I'd send back character sheets explaining how it all worked.

This was a rare play-by-email game that actually finished a plot arc, and nearly finished a second. Made friends all over the country and a decade later married one of the players...so it worked out rather well. A followup face-to-face game revisited that world a few years later, reskinning the old Slave Lords tournament modules, although the PC's were clearly not the party in those modules. They were a sneaky, assassin-oriented group who kinda did everything else that happened offscreen, including being the folks who interacted with all the slave lords that PCs normally never encounter in that module during the finale.

Then in the 1990s when our playgroup was burned out on Hero System and World of Darkness, I offered a retro-AD&D "by the book" with semi-adversarial GM Gygaxian campaign using Hommlet/Temple of Elemental Evil, an adventure I never got to run back when I was playing D&D and had knocking around for a decade. 7 players, 1 newbie at RPGs, most veterans of many games but never D&D, one old D&D hand... We got something like a year and a half of gaming out of that, although some of the players becoming new parents meant it was a good thing it ended when it did.

What you need is enthusiasm. Enough to overcome inertia of everyday life and get people to keep showing up until enough story happens that you feel you got to play the characters, watch them grow and see some stuff accomplished before the group falls apart due to scheduling/life.

danielxcutter

2022-01-01, 02:42 AM

I've heard from a friend that 4e works really good when played online. Of course, said friend's group usually builds their settings from the ground up, so they probably just ignore the lore fiasco I've heard about.

(Said friend is also head of a game that has one of the most enjoyable combat systems I've experienced, which was inspired by I think Pillars of Eternity which was inspired from 4e I think? Can't link it here as it technically goes against the forum rules though.)

As for why I play 3.5e... well, it's the only one I truly know, there's a lot of build options to play with even if you're not in a game, and 5e is basically a mix of DM May ITM and a watered down version of the first 7 levels or so of 3.X. Except for the casters. 5e certainly is far more beginner-friendly than 3.5e, I'll say that much, but as I cut my teeth on 3.5e after being introduced to OotS I'm still going to have a bias for that.

DigoDragon

2022-01-01, 07:46 AM

I like playing as monsters.

One minor annoyance with 3.5 is that some of the popular races to play come with Level Adjustments; tiefling for example. Also, no Tabaxi, which is my favorite to play in 5e. There's a catfolk, but again, pesky LA is there. Not every GM is willing to homebrew adjustments to these races to bring down the LA.

It is what it is, though. No system is perfect .

unseenmage

2022-01-01, 09:10 AM

One minor annoyance with 3.5 is that some of the popular races to play come with Level Adjustments; tiefling for example. Also, no Tabaxi, which is my favorite to play in 5e. There's a catfolk, but again, pesky LA is there. Not every GM is willing to homebrew adjustments to these races to bring down the LA.

It is what it is, though. No system is perfect .

At our table we use Pathfinder's CR = ECL rules.
They're not perfect but they're a far cry better than LA.

Bohandas

2022-01-01, 02:25 PM

At our table we use Pathfinder's CR = ECL rules.
They're not perfect but they're a far cry better than LA.

Agreed, that's probably the best way to do it.

Tzardok

2022-01-01, 02:54 PM

I think I disagree. CR is an even more abitrary mechanic than LA. Replacing one with the other doesn't solve anything.

RandomPeasant

2022-01-01, 06:16 PM

No it's not. CR is a very well-defined metric. You can argue that it's poorly implemented, but "a CR X monster is an appropriate challenge for a four person party with APL X" is massively less arbitrary than LA's "whatever the designers decided for that monster" (let alone RHD's "whatever is necessary to hit the numeric targets this monster needs).

That said, direct conversions of CR still have problems, but the reality is that "monsters as PCs" is enough of an afterthought for 3e that there's no system you can use that doesn't cause problems somewhere. If LA happens to make you happier than CR, using it as the starting place for your ad hoc fiddling is by no means going to make it impossible to do enough ad hoc fiddling to make things work for your game.

Bohandas

2022-01-01, 07:39 PM

In any case, at least one of the two is broken, since they nominally measure the same thing but rarely have the same value. And the more right of the two is likely to be CR as that comes up often enough for the developers to uave a strong impetus to measure it accurately

Elves

2022-01-01, 07:43 PM

CR = LA for monsters risks being another constraint on monster design, in addition to polymorph -- monsters must be balanced for play at ECL=CR. It also doesn't reduce the number of mechanics in the game, because you still need LA for templates.

Balanced as a foe and balanced as a PC are different metrics, and trying to create equivalences is just setting things up for exploitation of the edge cases. The "sturdiest" solution would be to publish a big book of monster classes (or include them in sidebars for select monsters) and make monsters unplayable otherwise. But maybe that's more in line with a 4e/5e design ethos.

Scots Dragon

2022-01-01, 07:44 PM

If you wanted perfectly balanced options, why the heck are you still playing 3.5e?

InvisibleBison

2022-01-01, 08:10 PM

In any case, at least one of the two is broken, since they nominally measure the same thing but rarely have the same value.

In what way are CR and LA measuring the same thing? The former measures how dangerous a creature is to fight, the latter measures how effective a creature is as part of an adventuring party. Those seem like rather different things to me.

danielxcutter

2022-01-01, 09:11 PM

LA is typically even more inaccurate than CR though, and in the case of a lot of monsters seems strongly suspect of being abused as a way to prevent people from playing monsters.

Scots Dragon

2022-01-01, 09:29 PM

LA is typically even more inaccurate than CR though, and in the case of a lot of monsters seems strongly suspect of being abused as a way to prevent people from playing monsters.

It also has diminishing returns. The bonuses from playing a drow at first level aren't nearly as prominent by the time you're tenth level. And are basically worthless by twentieth.

Saintheart

2022-01-01, 09:35 PM

LA is typically even more inaccurate than CR though, and in the case of a lot of monsters seems strongly suspect of being abused as a way to prevent people from playing monsters.

Having to also count the creature's hit dice in the calculation is what makes them seriously crippling. Bad enough when you have to try and slot an 8 RHD creature into an 8th level party when it generally won't have anywhere near the options of class-levelled players, but typically you'll get smashed with another 2 or 3 in LA at least to play something worthwhile. The monster "class," implicit in what increases as RHD progresses, is in my view notionally a Tier 4 at best for most creatures. And then you have to deal with LA on top of it.

That said, I don't think LA was secretly set as a way to stop people playing monsters; if they wanted that, WOTC has a simple tool right there in the rules: "if a creature hasn't got a LA score, it's not appropriate as a PC." They just overestimated the value of most monsters' abilities. In particular you can almost see a WOTC rule of thumb in play that "if it gets a +2 to any two stats, it gets LA +1, and LA increases scale up from there." That's arguable at low level, no where near tenable around level 10.

(Now, my conspiracy theory is that this is because they didn't seriously playtest the original books - PHB, DMG, MM - past level 6.)

danielxcutter

2022-01-01, 10:25 PM

It gets kinda weird when it comes to things like vampires(with a whopping +8 LA and the weaknesses are almost as crippling to an adventurer), and then there's the blue which has the same -2 total as a normal goblin and an extra power point, yet still gets a +1 LA.

Scots Dragon

2022-01-01, 10:27 PM

Having to also count the creature's hit dice in the calculation is what makes them seriously crippling. Bad enough when you have to try and slot an 8 RHD creature into an 8th level party when it generally won't have anywhere near the options of class-levelled players, but typically you'll get smashed with another 2 or 3 in LA at least to play something worthwhile. The monster "class," implicit in what increases as RHD progresses, is in my view notionally a Tier 4 at best for most creatures. And then you have to deal with LA on top of it.

That said, I don't think LA was secretly set as a way to stop people playing monsters; if they wanted that, WOTC has a simple tool right there in the rules: "if a creature hasn't got a LA score, it's not appropriate as a PC." They just overestimated the value of most monsters' abilities. In particular you can almost see a WOTC rule of thumb in play that "if it gets a +2 to any two stats, it gets LA +1, and LA increases scale up from there." That's arguable at low level, no where near tenable around level 10.

(Now, my conspiracy theory is that this is because they didn't seriously playtest the original books - PHB, DMG, MM - past level 6.)

They apparently did playtest things, and quite extensively.

But the playtests operated primarily under the assumption that it was a continuation of the way people played AD&D 2E. The assumptions and expectations didn't quite line up to the finished product.

Bayar

2022-01-01, 10:43 PM

Because I like 3.5e and don't like 4e,5e,pathfinder etc.

danielxcutter

2022-01-01, 11:10 PM

They apparently did playtest things, and quite extensively.

But the playtests operated primarily under the assumption that it was a continuation of the way people played AD&D 2E. The assumptions and expectations didn't quite line up to the finished product.

I hardly think the word "extensively" qualifies when the example druid did nothing but use a throwing returning scimitar.

Fizban

2022-01-02, 03:25 AM

I hardly think the word "extensively" qualifies when the example druid did nothing but use a throwing returning scimitar.
And unless you have a source for that I have to assume it is a gross exaggeration. There is a huge amount of space between reports of "mostly only used wild shape for scouting" and "did nothing but throw a scimitar." The very statblock which is the source of that throwing returning scimitar reference, has a perfectly reasonable spread of prepared spells with (mostly) blasting, save or lose, BFC, resistance and immunity, druid utility, and even dispel magic slots.

Though speaking of- that sure is an interesting spell list for what is usually billed as an alternate "healer," and continues to really make me wonder what the rest of that playtest party was.

Scots Dragon

2022-01-02, 03:42 AM

And unless you have a source for that I have to assume it is a gross exaggeration. There is a huge amount of space between reports of "mostly only used wild shape for scouting" and "did nothing but throw a scimitar." The very statblock which is the source of that throwing returning scimitar reference, has a perfectly reasonable spread of prepared spells with (mostly) blasting, save or lose, BFC, resistance and immunity, druid utility, and even dispel magic slots.

Though speaking of- that sure is an interesting spell list for what is usually billed as an alternate "healer," and continues to really make me wonder what the rest of that playtest party was.

They actually had a whole bunch of independent playtest groups, so the idea that they had a druid with a throwing scimitar and that’s all the class was ever used for in the playtest is dubious.

danielxcutter

2022-01-02, 04:44 AM

If the playtesting casters did explore the capabilities of their magic to a reasonable extent and we still got this unbalanced mess, that arguably might even be more of a problem.

Wasn’t there that example combat with the wizard using a bow and True Strike against a balor or something? I don’t remember where that was or the specifics.

Bohandas

2022-01-02, 05:36 AM

In what way are CR and LA measuring the same thing? The former measures how dangerous a creature is to fight, the latter measures how effective a creature is as part of an adventuring party. Those seem like rather different things to me.

CR represents how effective an NPC is against PCs in an encounter. LA represents how effective PCs are against NPCs in an encounter. Due to the general symmetry between PCs and NPCs in 3.5e, these two are the same value except in the edge case of builds based on the diplomacy skill being played at tables that actually roll for diplomacy.

danielxcutter

2022-01-02, 05:46 AM

Technically I think you mean ECL, not LA.

RandomPeasant

2022-01-02, 08:30 AM

I think it is definitely true that there are some monsters that work really weirdly as PCs, but in a lot of cases a flat level adjustment doesn't really help with that. A dryad can't move more than 900ft from her tree. That makes dryads not work as adventurers, and there's not some number you can add to the dryad's HD or CR to account for that. A pixie is a flying and invisible ranged attacker, making defeating many low or even mid level monsters into exercises in dice rolling, meaning a pixie isn't an appropriate character at those levels. But there's a certain point at which it becomes possible for PCs to have those defenses natively, so requiring a large LA just means that pixies are screwed in the games where you can play them. IMO, rather than LA, the ideal system would simply have a level minimum at which you could play monsters, which might or might not be the same level as the one at which those monsters were appropriate opposition.

InvisibleBison

2022-01-02, 09:02 AM

CR represents how effective an NPC is against PCs in an encounter. LA represents how effective PCs are against NPCs in an encounter. Due to the general symmetry between PCs and NPCs in 3.5e, these two are the same value except in the edge case of builds based on the diplomacy skill being played at tables that actually roll for diplomacy.

I don't think this is correct. NPCs are expected to only be in one encounter, while PCs are expected to be in every encounter, which leads to some abilities being valued differently when assigning LA or CR. For instance, from a CR perspective there's no real difference between a 1/day buff that lasts for 1 minute and an always-active buff, as either one will be active throughout the entire fight, but from an LA perspective the latter is clearly more valuable than the former.

danielxcutter

2022-01-02, 09:10 AM

I don't think this is correct. NPCs are expected to only be in one encounter, while PCs are expected to be in every encounter, which leads to some abilities being valued differently when assigning LA or CR. For instance, from a CR perspective there's no real difference between a 1/day buff that lasts for 1 minute and an always-active buff, as either one will be active throughout the entire fight, but from an LA perspective the latter is clearly more valuable than the former.

A [PC race] with a total of [x] class levels will be CR [x], so...

Darg

2022-01-02, 10:05 AM

It also has diminishing returns. The bonuses from playing a drow at first level aren't nearly as prominent by the time you're tenth level. And are basically worthless by twentieth.

And yet the drow is 18th level with the same WBL as 20th. The higher the level the smaller the disadvantage of LA. I'd say drow passive spell resistance is worth the LA. They also qualify for a familiar at 3rd level too thanks to their SLAs. People also undervalue darkvision as an advantage, especially one that reaches 120ft.

It gets kinda weird when it comes to things like vampires(with a whopping +8 LA and the weaknesses are almost as crippling to an adventurer), and then there's the blue which has the same -2 total as a normal goblin and an extra power point, yet still gets a +1 LA.

Vampires are extremely strong. They get tons of bonuses to ability scores, +6 natural armor, d12 HD, get an extra attack, get an ECL bonus to 6 skills, 5 bonus feats, get fast healing, get at will gaseous form (as powerful as the DM cares for; can't hurt what you can't hit), can create 2xHD spawn under their control which can thereby create spawn under their control, etc. This character also lowers the EPL. A 20 ECL party of 4 faces a difficult encounter of EL 18. Then again the DMG also discourages parties with a difference in LA greater than 1 or 2.

As for the blue, access to psionic feats, psionic focus, and easy access to some PRCs make the LA appropriate. Personally, I would say that Elans and Maenads are overpowered compared to their +0 LA.

danielxcutter

2022-01-02, 10:12 AM

The difference from a blue and a normal goblin is having a different bonus to stats and one singular power point. Which due to the nature of manifesting isn't even worth an additional 1st-level slot.

Darg

2022-01-02, 10:32 AM

That one power point opens a lot of doors. It's basically a bonus feat.

RandomPeasant

2022-01-02, 10:51 AM

And yet the drow is 18th level with the same WBL as 20th. The higher the level the smaller the disadvantage of LA. I'd say drow passive spell resistance is worth the LA. They also qualify for a familiar at 3rd level too thanks to their SLAs. People also undervalue darkvision as an advantage, especially one that reaches 120ft.

That's backwards. At higher levels, LA costs you more, because higher levels are worth more than lower ones. At ECL 5, a point of LA costs you access to haste and stinking cloud. At ECL 17, it costs you access to time stop and wail of the banshee.

Vampires are extremely strong. They get tons of bonuses to ability scores, +6 natural armor, d12 HD, get an extra attack, get an ECL bonus to 6 skills, 5 bonus feats, get fast healing, get at will gaseous form (as powerful as the DM cares for; can't hurt what you can't hit), can create 2xHD spawn under their control which can thereby create spawn under their control, etc. This character also lowers the EPL. A 20 ECL party of 4 faces a difficult encounter of EL 18. Then again the DMG also discourages parties with a difference in LA greater than 1 or 2.

They get a d12 HD, but also don't get to add their CON bonus to their HP anymore. For most people who aren't casters (and even for casters like Clerics or Druids), that's often a bad trade. Similarly, their bonus feats include gems like Alertness and Dodge, which many people would not notice if they got for free. The spawn sound powerful, but they're not really any better than the minionmancy abilities casters get, and those don't require you to light eight actual levels on fire. The vampire template is certainly not appropriate for LA +0, but the idea that it warrants LA +8 is somewhat laughable.

As for the blue, access to psionic feats, psionic focus, and easy access to some PRCs make the LA appropriate. Personally, I would say that Elans and Maenads are overpowered compared to their +0 LA.

What psionic PrC are you looking to enter without any levels in a psionic class that justifies the +1 LA?

The difference from a blue and a normal goblin is having a different bonus to stats and one singular power point. Which due to the nature of manifesting isn't even worth an additional 1st-level slot.

Also, I think the baseline Goblin is probably underpowered for LA +0 (and the game seems to provisionally agree -- the Goblin Warrior is CR 1/3 to the Orc or Elf Warrior's CR 1/2). It may be that the Blue is better, but that doesn't warrant +1 LA.

hamishspence

2022-01-02, 11:08 AM

The vampire template is certainly not appropriate for LA +0, but the idea that it warrants LA +8 is somewhat laughable.

It's interesting to compare it to the Vampiric Dragon template, which is LA +5 instead of LA +8.

danielxcutter

2022-01-02, 11:14 AM

That one power point opens a lot of doors. It's basically a bonus feat.

Guess what, literally every psionic race gets bonus power points. Heck, usually more than the blue. Goblins are already 2 stat points behind most races and they don’t get the ridiculous kobold support either. Compare a blue to a dromite, or even a strongheart halfling who’s taken Wild Talent. Yeah, not exactly impressive.

lizrrrd

2022-01-02, 11:29 AM

Arkain

2022-01-02, 01:40 PM

Mostly, I stick to Pathfinder, not only because I find it mechanically less frustrating, but because it allows convenient online access. Being able to browse online through most of the content is something I don't want to do without anymore. No wondering which book something is in, I can just hand out a link and everybody can look up all the things. I don't have to remind people to pretty please also check the SpC when leveling up their caster, for instance, most of the stuff is part of the default list already. I noticed this particularly the last time I got to play 3.5, when I decided to try a druid. What are interesting feats, spells, wildshape forms, where are they found, can I use them? At this point, I find it overly cumbersome. Not to mention that every single 3.5 group I got to play in ended up being horrible, which made it all the less enjoyable.
This has little to do with 3.5 as a system, but my experiences with it in recent years have been so immensely negative that after the last time I began wondering if I actually hate it. So yeah, I don't do it much anymore, besides helping people out here when I can.

Raven777

2022-01-02, 04:17 PM

Yeah, throw in the Elephant in the Room (https://michaeliantorno.com/feat-taxes-in-pathfinder/) and Path of War and really, Pathfinder 1e is just *chef's kiss*.

Bohandas

2022-01-02, 04:50 PM

Fizban

2022-01-02, 05:01 PM

If the playtesting casters did explore the capabilities of their magic to a reasonable extent and we still got this unbalanced mess, that arguably might even be more of a problem.
Unless of course the playtesters were actually far more optimized than you think, which is why they were able to handle things you think the game doesn't work for without a bunch of optimizaton. You don't actually know.

Wasn’t there that example combat with the wizard using a bow and True Strike against a balor or something?
There was an article linked in a previous thread on this topic, which I did bookmark, here (http://archive.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/tt/20050809a). It's four 16-17th level PCs vs a Balor (a foe 3-4 CR above their level and as such not necessarily something they even should be able to defeat) during 3.5 (not an example from earlier playtests). They were a Barbarian, a Cleric/Combat Medic, a Wizard, a Fighter/Elocator, and a Hammer of Moradin. It specifically acknowledges that the healer healed, the elocator wasn't able to do damage but did provide tactical support via Dimension Swaps, and that primary problems were Damage Reduction and Armor Class (as should be expected for a foe 4 levels above the party, some of their numbers are just too high and if the party doesn't all happen to have weapons targeting that weakness yet). They knew about the Balor's SLAs and specifically used Greater Spell Immunity to block them (as well as some other "standard buffing spells"), and the DM even used a Greater Dispel but simply failed to get the protections they wanted removed, though still hitting something important. Immediately before the Balor fight the party had apparently walked over a Marilith with little effort with a specific call out to the Hammer of Moradin (a decent combat PrC with various DR, AC, daze, and damage abilities)-who was also the one with the holy cold iron weapon and lost their Fly spell in that dispel on round 1 and was considered the greatest threat. Meanwhile on round 5 it is revealed that the Barbarian was apparently also occupied fighting a Mountain Troll for a much of the fight. And on round 6 the fight falls apart into crits as the Balor immediately lands a Vorpal hit on the dwarf (who is Revivify'd), which is followed by more manyshot holy bow, and Improved Critical hits from the barbarian's greatsword as the party piles on, and then they survive Death Throes thanks to pre-cast Fortunate Fate spells.

This party has 2-3 melee characters, one in rage, one spec'd to hammer/throwing hammer, and one who everyone acknowledged was underpowered so they didn't even waste a Spell Immunity slot on them, and their Cleric is specifically Vow of Nonviolence, and they're fighting a flying opponent (which char-op just assumes everything on both sides should have at all times anyway). The Wizard is literally the only person left with range, and they supply Quickened True Strike into Manyshot with cold iron arrows and a Holy bow- it's the big jank tech example in an article meant to illustrate how high level combat can be janky. This would be better from any actual combat character, but they're all melee specialists (a thing char-op loves to do, overspecialize). The party is fighting a foe far above their level requiring specific weapons, and the Wizard is wielding one of them with a spell and feat combo that make it more reliable than flinging high level spells uselessly into the SR and saves of a foe that will brush them off.

So sure, tell me how horrible this group is at the game, and what you would have done so much better. No, saying you would have brought 6 Wizards or 6 Cold Iron Holy Greatswords is not a proof, use the same characters-of course you can't, because none of ue know the Wizard's exact spell list, and as such can only complain that if they didn't have X perfect spell they should have because you totally would have :smallsigh:. This party absolutely was making good use of the spells they had: they wasted several of the Balor's Turns with Greater Spell Immunity and survived thanks to use of a powerful splatbook buff, while the Wizard had apparently equipped themselves with something that clearly was more effective than any of the spells they had in that situation. They had their melee characters buffed to fly- the specialized one with the best damage lost their Fly spell, another was apparently occupied soloing an extra monster, and the third couldn't deal damage so they used support utility abilities they had instead- and once enough party members could attack the foe, it fell.

The biggest mark to be made against them is that they have too many melee characters and someone was underpowered (for this fight anyway), which are hardly rare problems, and if the oversized party had a Ranger instead they probably would have won far more easily. They used prior information and a bunch of buffs to survive and beat something 4 levels above them as a team, succeeding in spite and because of random rolls. This is DnD working as intended. What more do you want?

I don’t remember where that was or the specifics.
Which is why you're getting this reaction from someone who does. You shouldn't act like you're an authoritative source if you. . . don't have a source.

A [PC race] with a total of [x] class levels will be CR [x], so...
No they aren't, as any amount of comparison against monsters of CR X will reveal. The CR=Level statement is for awarding XP and came long after the definitions of CR and EL in the original 3.0 version. It is not a foundational rule, and it should be no surprise to anyone that the system doesn't make sense when you treat it as one.

Psyren

2022-01-02, 06:32 PM

So, between all these options... What keeps you here? Why are you here to play and discuss an edition that'll never get new content, an edition known for being a mess, an edition that has very little potential to attract and be friendly to new players?

Here for Pathfinder actually (same subforum) but I do mix in some 3.5 stuff :smalltongue:

I'm steadily playing more and more 5e these days though, now that it has like, actual options.

RandomPeasant

2022-01-02, 06:55 PM

There was an article linked in a previous thread on this topic, which I did bookmark, here (http://archive.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/tt/20050809a). It's four 16-17th level PCs vs a Balor (a foe 3-4 CR above their level and as such not necessarily something they even should be able to defeat)

This is, of course, incorrect. A 16th level party should be able to defeat a CR 20 foe, thought they would not be expected to have the resources to defeat additional encounters of any particular significance. In fact, a 5 person party of 16th level characters against a Balor would be expected to be at a modest advantage.

No, saying you would have brought 6 Wizards or 6 Cold Iron Holy Greatswords is not a proof

Why, exactly, is it not a proof? I'll give you that strategies like "buy a bunch of Outsider (Evil)-bane weapons" are cheesing things, but simply playing different characters would be an entirely reasonable optimization to expect people to make.

No they aren't, as any amount of comparison against monsters of CR X will reveal. The CR=Level statement is for awarding XP and came long after the definitions of CR and EL in the original 3.0 version. It is not a foundational rule, and it should be no surprise to anyone that the system doesn't make sense when you treat it as one.

This is also incorrect. The DMG (page 110 in my copy) talks about "an NPC's level (or Challenge Rating, which is usually the same thing)", with the examples showing the variance owing exclusively to LA. If you have a more authoritative source that provides a specific guideline that conflicts with "CR == class level", feel free to provide it.

Seward

2022-01-02, 07:59 PM

This is, of course, incorrect. A 16th level party should be able to defeat a CR 20 foe, thought they would not be expected to have the resources to defeat additional encounters of any particular significance.

A lot of the quoted fight in the battle can be summed up as "the balor got into full attack range of a martial that could hit it on round 7 and died". Although it did manage a kill vs a prepared party, which is about exactly the expected result for an EL+3-4 encounter if it drags on for more than a couple rounds.

Even if the party didn't have the usual golfbag of weapons most fighters have at level 3, the iconic party of Mialee, Jozan, Lydda and Tordek can smoke a Balor if prepared.

With core spells alone, nothing above level 5 or unusual for a wizard to have by level 16 assuming basically no gear.

Mialee - Major Creation cold iron, fabricate into weapons Lydda, Tordek and Jozan can use.
Mialee or Jozan casts Greater Magic Weapon4 on 3 weapons
Jozan casts Align Weapon Good on 3 weapons
Mialee hastes the party. Maybe also slaps heroism down Lydda and Jozan
Jozan casts circle of prot evil (to keep summoned demons out if they're nearby), and probably bless and prayer. Lydda can do some of this if she has some scrolls or wands to UMD

By L16, most parties can simulate most of this with gear needing no prep ahead of time, or a lot less spells. But assume this baseline.

It is important to start the fight either out of the Balor's move+close range or you risk losing initiative and losing Mialee to implosion. Ideally you send in a summoned monster or illusion or something to draw its alpha strike, or maybe you are doing scry and fry type tactics except with just knowing where he's at (due to scouting options too numerous to go into, ranging from mundane to magical) and directing a dim-door to his location, leaving Jozan, Lydda and Tordek able to full attack, Lydda with a flank. A silence spell in case it survives to counter Blasphemy is also a pretty good idea, although mildly tricky to execute given the desire to have Mialee move the party into position to attack. Perhaps Jozan has a quickened silence prepared.

Of course if you actually kill it in the alpha strike, surviving the 100 point detonation is left as an exercise to the reader. Loading up on temp hitpoint spells (false life, aid or maybe hero's feast) to get over that threshold might matter. Jozan might want to forgo a full attack to interrupt spellcasting perhaps. Tactics are still needed but that balor is going to be on the defensive and maybe somebody will die. Such is the nature of EL+4 encounters. They're a coin toss if the party isn't prepared, and no joke even if they are if a party gets some bad luck.

At L16 death is a speed bump if you recover the body and don't TPK. Even if a body is destroyed, you are only 1 level from True Rez or wish, and probably are owed some favors by then to get it done, especially if that balor was doing something the powers in the world might care about.

By level 20, well, killing a Balor in 1 round if you can manage a full attack is the basic measure of a martial character, and surviving the detonation isn't usually a big deal either if you aren't an archer and forced to do it up close and personal. It's just getting that martial in position to do so that requires tactics and planning, especially if the party is fighting 2-4 Balors.

Bonzai

2022-01-02, 09:05 PM

But the setting is something you create yourself. The Forgotten Realms books, the Dragonlance books have no impact on game play. You create a fantasy world. I never played a game where Raistlin, Elminster or any of the other characters exist or have ever existed. To me the books were example stories what you could do with D&D.

Sure, games evolve and diverge over time. But you pay for setting books for background, details, flavor, and inspiration. Since they are well established, they become familiar and players from different groups can have similar experiences and expectations within them.

Now, I am doing exactly what you suggest, and fully creating my own material. Best of all I am free from having to reinvest whenever a company decides to invalidate my purchases.

RandomPeasant

2022-01-02, 09:14 PM

A lot of the quoted fight in the battle can be summed up as "the balor got into full attack range of a martial that could hit it on round 7 and died". Although it did manage a kill vs a prepared party, which is about exactly the expected result for an EL+3-4 encounter if it drags on for more than a couple rounds.

The Balor is unrealistically incompetent even outside that. I have some minor nitpicks, like not using Summon (though maybe that was the marilith) and opening with greater dispel magic instead of blasphemy, but the big issue is that it throws multiple spells into the spell immunity when that should not happen. When it sees the first spell fail, it should get a Spellcraft check (DC 28) to "Identify a spell that’s already in place and in effect". With the Balor's +30 to Spellcraft, that is impossible for it to fail. So at that point it should switch to using 9th level SLAs like implosion and dominate monster immediately, rather than wasting additional rounds on actions it has good reason to believe cannot succeed. Then, for some reason, it throws away the rest of implosion to close to melee with a hard target. That said, the overall result of the fight is not especially surprising. Five 16th and 17th level characters should be able to defeat a Balor. But the fact that they do so because it is played incompetently is not the argument for quality of playtesting it was present as.

Seward

2022-01-02, 09:21 PM

Balor's can have off days too, and their stated tactics aren't exactly amazing.

What he did would have worked on some parties. Maybe he'd smoked several other challengers with similar tactics. Or maybe the GM doesn't feel that there is anything to perceive in spell immunity if the balor isn't using something like arcane sight to distinguish it from other effects.

For example....fire storm - stopped by prot fire, a L3 spell, on entire party.

Blasphemy - party might be level 20, or have spell resistance spell cast or maybe somehow has individual silence effects on those unaffected (nobody was casting spells at him, although hearing perception might eliminate the latter as an option) or perhaps managed to somehow be immune to dazing (immue paralysis is a given with freedom of movement available by L16, on a ring if spellcasters are stingy) I note the one guy affected wasn't weakened either, or if so it didn't matter (you weakened a buff/support/heal guy but not enough to drop him to str 0)

power word stun - targeted character might have sufficient hitpoints. Honestly a Balor should expect everybody to have at least 100hp if they challenge him in self-destruct range, and 150 isn't at all unusual for any character who feels high enough to try. Usually you'd wait till you softened them up before going down that road, so I grant this wasn't an especially good call.

Implosion - did in fact target the wizard, and wizard saved against it Save and XXX suck that way, and the other characters were all folks expected to have strong fort saves.

Dominate monster is a pretty bad choice. Most parties engaging any high level demon will routinely cast prot evil just to keep the summons from doing melee attacks. It's not going to work unless you stick a dispel.

He was at the wrong end of a prepared party. Those encounters are dangerous. Frankly the biggest mistake he made was fighting 7 rounds, instead of teleporting away after the first few spells failed. Maybe he had to defend that spot for some reason? Or maybe his personality included getting enraged if stuff fails thus explaining his switching to melee tactics, which resulted in a mutual kill.

Fizban

2022-01-02, 10:19 PM

This is, of course, incorrect. A 16th level party should be able to defeat a CR 20 foe, thought they would not be expected to have the resources to defeat additional encounters of any particular significance. In fact, a 5 person party of 16th level characters against a Balor would be expected to be at a modest advantage.
"Of course."

15% Very Difficult EL 1-4 higher than party level

Very Difficult: One PC might very well die. The Encounter Level is higher than the party level. This sort of encounter may be more dangerous than an Overpowering one, because it's not immediately obvious to the players that the PCs should flee.

By contrast, an encounter of even one or two levels higher than the party might tax the PCs to their limit.
By all means, show me the quotation that says the players are expected to defeat this encounter. Pretty sure you can't because it's not there, and the relevant lines directly contradict that stance. An encounter even a single level higher has the potential to tax the PCs to their limits, and counts as Very Difficult, where one PC might very well die, and the PCs may be in more danger than you'd think because the players might not realize that they need to flee. That is the threshold the DMG allows for.

Resource expenditure does not magically (heh) scale into an expectation of beating higher encounters, it's quite clear on the subject. The connections that "prove" the system wrong do not actually exist, because the designers were not as stupid as people think they are.

Why, exactly, is it not a proof? I'll give you that strategies like "buy a bunch of Outsider (Evil)-bane weapons" are cheesing things, but simply playing different characters would be an entirely reasonable optimization to expect people to make.
This attack originally came from the "oh they didn't even playtest anything/they're so bad at their own game" angle- So, the playtesters/designers are supposed to not actually playtest things because they should be playing "more optimized" characters? The only characters that matter are those you personally find powerful enough, even when a supposedly weaker party gets the job done?

This is also incorrect. The DMG (page 110 in my copy) talks about "an NPC's level (or Challenge Rating, which is usually the same thing)", with the examples showing the variance owing exclusively to LA. If you have a more authoritative source that provides a specific guideline that conflicts with "CR == class level", feel free to provide it.
I literally just said why that's wrong: the NPC CR=level is an ease of use rule that is not the primary source. NPCs are not the base of the CR system. You can read all through pages 48-50, the pages which actually define the EL/CR system, and find no mention of classed NPCs. It's monsters, creatures, monsters, example after example of monsters. The system is defined by parties of PCs vs monsters, not PCs vs classed NPCs. This is made obvious by any attempts to compare classed NPCs to monsters of "equivalent" CR which lay bare the massive gaps in attack, damage, hit points, armor class, and magical firepower, and the simple fact that the system doesn't make sense when treating NPC level as the primary driver should make it blindingly obvious that it's not (or in other words: if you're reading the text in a way that doesn't make sense, maybe try not reading it that way).

There is no more authoritative section than the one that defines the actual system. Classed NPCs are assigned a CR for experience awards because they need something if they're going to fit into the CR system, and in the 3.0 version this not mentioned in the NPC section at all, but is found 100 some pages later in the Rewards section (only the most oblique and indirect reference can be found in the modifiers for generating NPCs from monster "races"*). The 3.5 version moved things around and added extra mentions so it would be easier find, but that does not make it more authoritative, because the 3.5 restructuring of the book is not how the system was designed.

And yes, I'm saying that NPC CR=level is directly, objectively wrong, regardless of how much the DMG says to use it for (which it still does not say is used as the primary driver of the CR system). The writers can and did get things wrong, and this is one of them, but it's easy to use and as long as you're still primarily using monsters, as the system clearly expects, it's not too big of a problem. If they had been more honest it would have caused even more confusion than the monsters advancement rules and ECL etc already do, directly telling people X class is "better" than Y class (which they would fail to grasp is only meant to apply in a completely different context) and cause even worse problems of DM optimization of monsters. So even if I think the rule is objectively wrong, I can see and even support why they went with that rule, while also lamenting the other problems that choice caused.

A fundamentally asymmetrical (and unidirectional) threat evaluation which is easy to use is good, but it being in a system which also encourages NPCs and even monsters to use part of the character creation rules means it was inevitably going to be muddied and cause problems however they tried to integrate it.

*Actually that's not quite right: It does say "Starting with an NPC's level (or Challenge Rating, which is usually the same thing)." at one point, but that line itself includes a "usually" qualifier. This seems to be the line you're referring to on p110 of the 3.5 version, where it is copy/pasted again further down, giving it a far stronger visual credence than it originally was or actually deserves.

The Balor is unrealistically incompetent even outside that. I have some minor nitpicks, like not using Summon (though maybe that was the marilith) and opening with greater dispel magic instead of blasphemy,
Which can be read as the DM actually unfairly metagaming to give their monster an edge, and yet still the dispelled Fly was a major reason the fight lasted as long as it did.

but the big issue is that it throws multiple spells into the spell immunity when that should not happen. When it sees the first spell fail, it should get a Spellcraft check (DC 28) to "Identify a spell that’s already in place and in effect". With the Balor's +30 to Spellcraft, that is impossible for it to fail.
Which as I recall was added to 3.5 after Tome and Blood used it- or in short, a rule not nearly as core as it looks at first glance. I'd be willing to bet almost zero monsters with piles of Spellcraft filling up their skill points were expected by their designers to be identifying spells. Assuming that your expectation of a spell failing to Spell Immunity even fulfills the skill's definition of "see or detect," which since Spell Immunity causes spells to fail via effectively infinite Spell Resistance, is pretty shaky to begin with since there are several core spells and items which provide SR.

But the fact that they do so because it is played incompetently is not the argument for quality of playtesting it was present as.
And that's kinda all you need to hear really. Once you start calling people incompetent it rather makes any other arguments fall flat. It is also tantamount to saying they're "playing the game wrong," with an extra bonus that it's aimed at the designers themselves.

137beth

2022-01-02, 11:58 PM

Disclaimer: I have not read the thread beyond the first page.

For me, the key selling point of 3.5 is mechanical diversity among PCs. The rules for playing a binder, warblade, and a dread necromancer are so wildly different that they don't even look like they belong in the same system. And yet, they can all play in a party together with something resembling game balance.

In my opinion, PF1 misses the mark on mechanically diverse PCs, at least if you are restricted only to Paizo content. Some non-Paizo PF1 content, particularly Interjection Games and Dreamscarred Press classes, bring the mechanical diversity I like to Pathfinder. I am disappointed that both of those companies have stopped releasing new content.

danielxcutter

2022-01-03, 12:26 AM

Raven777

2022-01-03, 01:07 AM

I'm the opposite, but I really do think this is an irreconcilable matter of personal preferences.

I think a big strenght of 3.PF is that two Wizards or two Clerics or two Sorcerers can play wildly different just by virtue of the ACF/Archetypes + Races + Feats + Spells + Gear they choose, thanks to being so versatile with so little restrictions. For me, compartmentalizing the casters into thematic niches still triggers the same gut feeling of "ewww MMO classes" that it did a decade and a half ago. I don't want to play a Beguiler, I want to play a Sorcerer who can beguile.

Batcathat

2022-01-03, 01:36 AM

RandomPeasant

2022-01-03, 07:40 AM

Dominate monster is a pretty bad choice. Most parties engaging any high level demon will routinely cast prot evil just to keep the summons from doing melee attacks. It's not going to work unless you stick a dispel.

But in this case the Balor did stick a dispel. And if the Balor suspects protection from evil, he can just teleport out and come back in 15 minutes when it's worn off.

By all means, show me the quotation that says the players are expected to defeat this encounter. Pretty sure you can't because it's not there, and the relevant lines directly contradict that stance.

No they don't. It says "a PC may die", not "the PCs are not expected to win". Similarly "tax the PCs to their limit" does not mean "the PCs will lose", it means "the PCs will win with no remaining resources". The text is clearly describing victory at a cost. Or, you know, exactly the thing I said it was.

The only characters that matter are those you personally find powerful enough, even when a supposedly weaker party gets the job done?

Playtesting that gets the result of "success" when the expected result is "success" is not very useful. A party of five characters of 16th and 17th level is powerful enough that, by strict guidelines, they have some cushion in their margin of victory. That resulting in a success does not prove very much. Especially when the Balor plays as poorly as this one did.

the NPC CR=level is an ease of use rule that is not the primary source.

And yet your citation that it is incorrect is "sometimes designers are wrong". In the absence of a conflicting source, the point stands.

Which can be read as the DM actually unfairly metagaming to give their monster an edge, and yet still the dispelled Fly was a major reason the fight lasted as long as it did.

The Balor flies faster than the flight from fly, and can engage at ranges that exceed that of a charge. Dispelling fly looks like it was important, but it was of relatively little real consequence.

Assuming that your expectation of a spell failing to Spell Immunity even fulfills the skill's definition of "see or detect," which since Spell Immunity causes spells to fail via effectively infinite Spell Resistance, is pretty shaky to begin with since there are several core spells and items which provide SR.

Yes, that's exactly what the use of Spellcraft is for. The ability to identify spells from their effects allows you to differentiate between different spells with similar effects.

Really, the game would have been a lot more balanced if the casters tended to be more like the fixed-list ones.

As always, I'm not convinced by this. The Beguiler and Dread Necromancer are T2. That's worse than the Wizard, but not by a lot. And a chunk of that is because the Wizard arbitrarily gets a half-level bump on spontaneous spellcasters. How big is the gap between a Dread Necromancer that gets new spells at odd levels and a Wizard? I'm sure it's something, but I think "a lot more balanced" is a hard sell for that margin.

danielxcutter

2022-01-03, 08:39 AM

Eh, I still find it weird that spellcasters that don’t have fixed lists often end up having a very weird combination of spells compared to a lot of fictional magic users.

RandomPeasant

2022-01-03, 08:56 AM

Eh, I still find it weird that spellcasters that don’t have fixed lists often end up having a very weird combination of spells compared to a lot of fictional magic users.

That's not really a balance concern though. I'm fully onboard with fixed-list casters on a thematic basis, but I see a lot of people pushing for them using arguments about balance I consider to be pretty dubious. And there are reason to have those kinds of broad casters that get weird lists. For one thing, that's not really inconsistent with the source material, as plenty of fantasy Wizards have completely incoherent spell lists (e.g. Harry Potter). It's also sort of a necessary evil from a game design perspective, as getting reasonable coverage in your core book is going to require the classes in it to be broad.

danielxcutter

2022-01-03, 08:59 AM

That's not really a balance concern though. I'm fully onboard with fixed-list casters on a thematic basis, but I see a lot of people pushing for them using arguments about balance I consider to be pretty dubious. And there are reason to have those kinds of broad casters that get weird lists. For one thing, that's not really inconsistent with the source material, as plenty of fantasy Wizards have completely incoherent spell lists (e.g. Harry Potter). It's also sort of a necessary evil from a game design perspective, as getting reasonable coverage in your core book is going to require the classes in it to be broad.

I guess it’s not a balance thing, but Sorcerer still feels kinda weird. It’s kinda hard to stick to a theme while staying effective. At least dragonblood-themed Sorcs have a bit of an easier time.

Batcathat

2022-01-03, 09:27 AM

That's not really a balance concern though. I'm fully onboard with fixed-list casters on a thematic basis, but I see a lot of people pushing for them using arguments about balance I consider to be pretty dubious.

While this thread probably isn't the right place for the debate, I feel like the basic idea is pretty simple: part of a caster's power compared to non-casters is being very versatile and having abilities for almost any situation. Limit their access to the total width of those abilities and you limit their power.

At least personally, I think there could also be generalist casters but they should in return not be as good in specific fields, just as a skill-monkey who tries to learn every skill won't be as good as the one who specializes.

Raven777

2022-01-03, 09:29 AM

Perhaps I'm missing something (I haven't played that many MMOs) but what's inherently MMO-ish about casters having to specialize?

Thematic and ability specialization and niche protection is often how MMO/CRPG classes are separated and balanced.

That's the difference of knowing that one session I can bind demons and raise the dead and the next I can do my best Loki impression with enchantments and illusions, vs. knowing that I'm locked into an archetype. Look at the 5e Sorcerer. Why are a bunch of the Wizard's spells barred to them? Why can't they easily get a familiar? Now look at a World of Warcraft Mage. Why can't they learn the Warlock's spells? Why can't they summon a demon too?

Batcathat

2022-01-03, 09:39 AM

Thematic and ability specialization and niche protection is often how MMO/CRPG classes are separated and balanced.

It's also how most real life "classes" work. Most doctors don't work with every kind of patient, most scientists don't do every kind of research, most detectives don't investigate every kind of crime, and so forth.

Not to mention that other D&D classes already works like that. Fighters aren't great at every single type of combat, rogues aren't good with every single skill. But casters need to be good with every kind of magic for... reasons?

That's the difference of knowing that one session I can bind demons and raise the dead and the next I can do my best Loki impression with enchantments and illusions, vs. knowing that I'm locked into an archetype. Look at the 5e Sorcerer. Why are a bunch of the Wizard's spells barred to them? Why can't they easily get a familiar? Now look at a World of Warcraft Mage. Why can't they learn the Warlock's spells? Why can't they summon a demon too?

Sure, I can agree that there should be a reason behind it (though an obvious choice is that learning different kinds of magic simply takes time and most casters don't bother studying every field) but considering how arbitrary and inconsistent most D&D magic already is, I'm not sure it would stand out much if it didn't.

RandomPeasant

2022-01-03, 09:55 AM

I guess it’s not a balance thing, but Sorcerer still feels kinda weird. It’s kinda hard to stick to a theme while staying effective. At least dragonblood-themed Sorcs have a bit of an easier time.

The Sorcerer is very much that "necessary evil" I mentioned. For any particular concept, the fixed-list version of that concept is better, but you can't put all the fixed-list casters in Core, so you need something that can specialize in a variety of questions so that people don't have to wait for your Jungle-themed splatbook to play a plant mage. I do think that if you made it pick domains (either instead of or in addition to) individual spells, that might work a bit better, but overall you do need something that can be "lightning mage", "storm mage", "necromancer", and "oracle" in your core book, and that requires allowing lightning-wielding oracles or storm necromaners.

While this thread probably isn't the right place for the debate, I feel like the basic idea is pretty simple: part of a caster's power compared to non-casters is being very versatile and having abilities for almost any situation. Limit their access to the total width of those abilities and you limit their power.

But does the data bear that out? It's not that getting to switch around your powers makes you good, the Incarnate gets to do that (more than the Wizard or the Cleric, even, since it has flexibility during the day too), and it's still T4. It's not that getting to pick from a broad range of powers makes you good, because the Beguiler and Dread Necromancer are both easily T2. It's not that getting a long list of powers makes you good, because the Core-Only Wizard is still probably T1 and T2 at the absolute worst. The reason the T1 casters are good is that there are spells (and it's really a pretty small subset of spells) that are extremely good, and they get the fastest progression with them.

At least personally, I think there could also be generalist casters but they should in return not be as good in specific fields, just as a skill-monkey who tries to learn every skill won't be as good as the one who specializes.

But that's the status quo. A War Weaver is better at buffing their party than a Wizard that happened to prepare some buff spells today. A Shadowcraft Mage has better Illusions than a generic Sorcerer. The game is replete with options that allow you to effectively specialize as a caster, it's just that the overall balance between casters and non-casters is such that a caster can often (particularly at high levels) outdo a martial without needing to specialize.

To put it numerically, if a Fighter is a 5 in melee combat, a generic Wizard is a 6, and a dedicated gish is an 8, the problem isn't that Wizards are too good without specializing, it's that there is a dramatic imbalance between Wizards and Fighters, to the point that the former can beat the latter in their nominal specialty without trying.

Raven777

2022-01-03, 09:59 AM

But casters need to be good with every kind of magic for... reasons?

I said higher up I really do think this is an irreconcilable matter of personal preferences. I respect and understand your point, but I think beyond that any discourse will boil down to "well I prefer it that way" or "well that way makes more sense to me". In my case, I have tasted 3.PF T1/T2 casters the fruit of the tree of knowledge and nothing else will ever compare. The thread is about why 3.5, and that... kink? Wrinkle? Peculiar approach? Is a big part of it.

As for casters with eclectic toolboxes, to me the absence of theme is always what differentiated Wizards from X-Men.

danielxcutter

2022-01-03, 10:01 AM

The Sorcerer is very much that "necessary evil" I mentioned. For any particular concept, the fixed-list version of that concept is better, but you can't put all the fixed-list casters in Core, so you need something that can specialize in a variety of questions so that people don't have to wait for your Jungle-themed splatbook to play a plant mage. I do think that if you made it pick domains (either instead of or in addition to) individual spells, that might work a bit better, but overall you do need something that can be "lightning mage", "storm mage", "necromancer", and "oracle" in your core book, and that requires allowing lightning-wielding oracles or storm necromaners.

Well, they did separate Cleric from Druid so I don’t think it’d be completely impossible.

But does the data bear that out? It's not that getting to switch around your powers makes you good, the Incarnate gets to do that (more than the Wizard or the Cleric, even, since it has flexibility during the day too), and it's still T4. It's not that getting to pick from a broad range of powers makes you good, because the Beguiler and Dread Necromancer are both easily T2. It's not that getting a long list of powers makes you good, because the Core-Only Wizard is still probably T1 and T2 at the absolute worst. The reason the T1 casters are good is that there are spells (and it's really a pretty small subset of spells) that are extremely good, and they get the fastest progression with them.

The problem with Wizard is that it gets literally all of those and then some.

But that's the status quo. A War Weaver is better at buffing their party than a Wizard that happened to prepare some buff spells today. A Shadowcraft Mage has better Illusions than a generic Sorcerer. The game is replete with options that allow you to effectively specialize as a caster, it's just that the overall balance between casters and non-casters is such that a caster can often (particularly at high levels) outdo a martial without needing to specialize.

To put it numerically, if a Fighter is a 5 in melee combat, a generic Wizard is a 6, and a dedicated gish is an 8, the problem isn't that Wizards are too good without specializing, it's that there is a dramatic imbalance between Wizards and Fighters, to the point that the former can beat the latter in their nominal specialty without trying.

…Generic Wizards beat Fighters in melee combat?

Batcathat

2022-01-03, 10:06 AM

But does the data bear that out? It's not that getting to switch around your powers makes you good, the Incarnate gets to do that (more than the Wizard or the Cleric, even, since it has flexibility during the day too), and it's still T4. It's not that getting to pick from a broad range of powers makes you good, because the Beguiler and Dread Necromancer are both easily T2. It's not that getting a long list of powers makes you good, because the Core-Only Wizard is still probably T1 and T2 at the absolute worst. The reason the T1 casters are good is that there are spells (and it's really a pretty small subset of spells) that are extremely good, and they get the fastest progression with them.

Haven't I already had this discussion with you? Or was that with someone else? Either way, the versatility I'm talking about isn't so much their ability to change their spells (though it helps, obviously) but how versatile the spells themselves are. A wizard could pick the same spells every single day and still be able to contribute in far more situations than most non-casters (assuming the wizard put a minimum of thought into their picks). I'd say getting a long list of powers is definitely part of what makes them good — and a core-only wizard still have a long list of powers (shorter than one that uses every book, obviously, but still quite long).

And yes, some spells are broken enough to unbalance the game even if they're the only spell the caster knows. Making casters specialize certainly won't fix the entire caster/non-caster divide, but I do think it would help.

danielxcutter

2022-01-03, 10:09 AM

Honestly most of the more OP spells are Core and half of the caster-focused supplement material is to provide players with fun options that aren’t as game-breaking.

Batcathat

2022-01-03, 10:13 AM

I said higher up I really do think this is an irreconcilable matter of personal preferences. I respect and understand your point, but I think beyond that any discourse will boil down to "well I prefer it that way" or "well that way makes more sense to me". In my case, I have tasted 3.PF T1/T2 casters the fruit of the tree of knowledge and nothing else will ever compare. The thread is about why 3.5, and that... kink? Wrinkle? Peculiar approach? Is a big part of it.

Fair enough, I suppose.

Out of curiosity, do the non-casters also give you MMO-vibes from the fact that they have to specialize?

As for casters with eclectic toolboxes, to me the absence of theme is always what differentiated Wizards from X-Men.

Yeah, wizards are probably more like Superman. Super-everything and – to some – super-boring.

RandomPeasant

2022-01-03, 10:35 AM

Well, they did separate Cleric from Druid so I don’t think it’d be completely impossible.

And they separated the Sorcerer from the Wizard. But those classes are incredibly broad. The Cleric is supposed to be able to represent characters who get their power from their philosophy and whose philosophies are exactly opposed on every relevant access. If your class can do "evil priest of darkness" and "good priest of light", it is not meaningfully specialized. The Druid is a bit more focused, but it still covers plant mage, animal mage, elemental mage, generic nature mage, shapeshifter, and beastmaster (and that's without getting into the things that got grafted on after core as ACFs).

The problem with Wizard is that it gets literally all of those and then some.

Is it? I submit that if you made a Wizard who got only the five best spells of each level, that character would be no lower than T2 and there would be people who argued for it being in T1.

…Generic Wizards beat Fighters in melee combat?

Depends on what you mean. If you count minions, yeah absolutely. If you count personal combat prowess, probably not until pretty high level. But I think the general point stands.

Either way, the versatility I'm talking about isn't so much their ability to change their spells (though it helps, obviously) but how versatile the spells themselves are.

Then why are you framing it as a problem with the Wizard? If the problem is planar binding, and I would agree that it is, why the endless "Wizards are too broad" complaints instead of the more accurate, and therefore more productive, "we need to nerf the ~ten spells per level that break the game". When you say "the problem is the Wizard", you get people proposing fixes like "what if we made the Wizard cast like a Bard" or "what if we brought back AD&D's anti-Wizard mechanics" or any number of other changes that serve only to push people harder towards broken spells.

Honestly most of the more OP spells are Core and half of the caster-focused supplement material is to provide players with fun options that aren’t as game-breaking.

And even within Core, the number of spells that break the game is pretty low. If 90% of your problem can be summarized as "the planar binding and polymorph lines are too good", I don't see how making things about the casting classes is productive. The d2 Crusader is broken, but you don't see people going on about how that means we need to fundamentally rethink martial classes.

Batcathat

2022-01-03, 10:44 AM

Then why are you framing it as a problem with the Wizard? If the problem is planar binding, and I would agree that it is, why the endless "Wizards are too broad" complaints instead of the more accurate, and therefore more productive, "we need to nerf the ~ten spells per level that break the game". When you say "the problem is the Wizard", you get people proposing fixes like "what if we made the Wizard cast like a Bard" or "what if we brought back AD&D's anti-Wizard mechanics" or any number of other changes that serve only to push people harder towards broken spells.

Perhaps I phrased myself poorly. My issue isn't with the versatility some extremely powerful/broken specific spells (they're a problem, obviously, but not the one I think specialization could fix) but with the versatility of magic in general (and – more importantly in this discussion – the fact that classes like the wizard can use so much of it). Even if we removed or nerfed every single spell considered overpowered, casters would still be far more versatile than most non-casters.

My issue can be summed up in two parts: D&D magic can do anything and D&D casters can do all the magic (Yes, there are some limitations, like wizards not using divine magic and what not). Nerfing or removing specific spells can help with the first part, forcing casters to specialize can help with the second part.

danielxcutter

2022-01-03, 10:45 AM

I recall someone saying something about the problem with 3.5e's balance not being that the casters can do things martials can't, but that if the casters aren't great at doing it the martials don't have jack.

Edit: Also, in the case of druids they literally have multiple class features stronger than some classes.

RandomPeasant

2022-01-03, 11:06 AM

My issue isn't with the versatility some extremely powerful/broken specific spells (they're a problem, obviously, but not the one I think specialization could fix) but with the versatility of magic in general (and – more importantly in this discussion – the fact that classes like the wizard can use so much of it).

But then we're back to the question of what the data supports. And I just don't see how it supports this sort of conclusion. There are a number of natural experiments we have, and some simple thought experiments, that seem to me to close out most of the avenues by which this can be argued.

Is the problem casters that can change their spells from day to day? The Incarnate and the Sorcerer suggest, from both ends, that this is not the issue.

Is the problem that casters have a wide range of magical effects to draw on? The Beguiler and the Dread Necromancer suggest that this is not the issue.

Is it that there is a large range of spells? There's not a good natural experiment to point to here, but you can think about a thought experiment like "what's the shortest list of Sorcerer/Wizard spells you'd need at each level to be T1", and I think you could probably do that in a single-digit number of spells at each level.

Now, it is certainly true that if you took spells away from spellcasters they would become less good. You're not wrong about that, I just think you're dramatically overstating the degree to which a case can be made that it's the range of spells on the Wizard list (rather than small numbers of outlier spells) that produce balance problems.

Even if we removed or nerfed every single spell considered overpowered, casters would still be far more versatile than most non-casters.

Certainly. But then we get into the "is that a bad thing" side of the equation. A Wizard has tools that let him contribute to most combat or non-combat encounters. How effective he is will depend on the specific encounter and the specific Wizard, but it seems to me quite difficult to argue that "there are some encounters where a character has no relevant abilities" is a desirable state of affairs. Do you enjoy playing a Rogue against a horde of zombies, or a Warmage with no social skills in an intrigue adventure? Is it desirable to make those sorts of experiences more common?

forcing casters to specialize can help with the second part.

But again, the specialization dynamic you want already exists. A Beguiler is better at Beguiler-ing than a Sorcerer or Wizard can be. The relative dynamic you're asking for is the status quo, the issue is the absolute dynamic between casters and non-casters.

I recall someone saying something about the problem with 3.5e's balance not being that the casters can do things martials can't, but that if the casters aren't great at doing it the martials don't have jack.

My view is that there are basically two problems. The first is the (relatively short) list of spells that are genuinely broken. The game does not function if you play with RAW planar binding. polymorph has gotten enough layers of changes and errata that I'm not even certain what the RAW version is, but it is almost certainly abusable. The second is that non-casters are just completely deficient across the board. Even the ones that are relatively competent in combat are completely deficient at everything else. Tome of Battle is the closest martials come to relevance, and the non-combat utility it provides amounts to "scent", "flight ten levels after casters get it", and "short range teleportation". IMO, it seems really hard to look at the way casters work and the way martials work and conclude "the big problem here is the characters who get abilities that influence the setting and advance the plot". That's not to say casters have no problems, but I find it hard to take any solution that doesn't start with "we need to buff the hell outta martials" seriously.

danielxcutter

2022-01-03, 11:16 AM

RandomPeasant

2022-01-03, 11:27 AM

Well, initiators do get access to useful non-combat skills. White Raven's key skill is Diplomacy, for one. That's not to say you're wrong, just that they basically got a better deal than more or less every other martial in terms of non-combat viability.

Eh. It's mostly "they get Diplomacy" (and the Swordsage doesn't even get that). Which, to be fair, is a top three skill. But they're still behind a Rogue, or even an Expert, in their skills. The big advantage they have is that they have a high enough level of native competence at fighting that they can justify spending more of their feats or wealth on non-combat stuff. And honestly, that's a pretty sorry state of affairs.

Batcathat

2022-01-03, 11:29 AM

Is the problem that casters have a wide range of magical effects to draw on? The Beguiler and the Dread Necromancer suggest that this is not the issue.

How do you figure that? You said yourself that they're typically ranked a little lower than wizards (if still miles ahead of the non-casters), which sounds a lot more like evidence in favor of "forced specialization makes casters less overpowered" than against it, I think. How much specialization would be enough is obviously a matter of experimentation and taste.

Now, it is certainly true that if you took spells away from spellcasters they would become less good. You're not wrong about that, I just think you're dramatically overstating the degree to which a case can be made that it's the range of spells on the Wizard list (rather than small numbers of outlier spells) that produce balance problems.

Again, I'm not saying it would fix all the balance problems, it might not even fix most of them. But I stand by my conviction that it'd help (preferably in combination with nerfing those outliers).

Certainly. But then we get into the "is that a bad thing" side of the equation. A Wizard has tools that let him contribute to most combat or non-combat encounters. How effective he is will depend on the specific encounter and the specific Wizard, but it seems to me quite difficult to argue that "there are some encounters where a character has no relevant abilities" is a desirable state of affairs. Do you enjoy playing a Rogue against a horde of zombies, or a Warmage with no social skills in an intrigue adventure? Is it desirable to make those sorts of experiences more common?

I suppose it's a matter of taste. Personally, yes, I do prefer such situations to arise on occasion. But in any case I'm not saying casters should be helpless outside of their specific specialty, just that they shouldn't have a tool for every single occasion, either having to rely on other party members or falling back and approaching the problem some other way. Let's say that a wizard can contribute in 9 out of 10 types of situations and a fighter in 2 out of 10 types of situations (the numbers are completely made up, but I think they aren't that off) while I would prefer if all classes could help in 7 out of 10 types of situations or whatever.

But again, the specialization dynamic you want already exists. A Beguiler is better at Beguiler-ing than a Sorcerer or Wizard can be. The relative dynamic you're asking for is the status quo, the issue is the absolute dynamic between casters and non-casters.

Sure, it exists to some degree but it's not really that impactful since a wizard is still good enough at beguiling that the choice between "be really good at everything" and "be even more really good at some things but worse at other things" isn't very hard from a power perspective.

Besides, dial the caster versatility down far enough (preferably while also dialing up non-casters) and it affects the absolute dynamic as well.

Raven777

2022-01-03, 11:33 AM

Fair enough, I suppose.

Out of curiosity, do the non-casters also give you MMO-vibes from the fact that they have to specialize?

Not at the time of playing them, no. But they were all less versatile, in hindsight. Less Skyrim and more WoW.

Gunslinger was super boring to play out of combat. Very limited toolkit. I sincerely hope no one has to suffer this much pigeon holing.
Alchemist (Vivisectionist/Beastmorph)? Super fun, thanks to being able to double dip as the stealth/skill/utility/butt monkey.
Archer Paladin? Super fun, thanks to being able to double dip as the party face (and the code roleplay bits inherent to Paladin, surprisingly).
Ranger? Fun so long as they're outdoors doing the tracking/survival schtick, not much to do outside combat when they're not in their element.
But I always had the most fun playing "what would Loki do?" every other game as Sorcerer, doing both the party face and the utility and my crafting/binding pet projects during downtime.

I sooooo wish I could mix and match Paladin and Ranger bits together plus a dash of stealth and make Batman, but alas, a mundane's class features can't be mix'd and match'd like the Sorcerer/Wizard spell list can. I think that's where 3.5's original sin lies: you really should have been able to customize a mundane's toolkit the same way you can customize a caster's.

Batcathat

2022-01-03, 11:58 AM

I sooooo wish I could mix and match Paladin and Ranger bits together plus a dash of stealth and make Batman, but alas, a mundane's class features can't be mix'd and match'd like the Sorcerer/Wizard spell list can. I think that's where 3.5's original sin lies: you really should have been able to customize a mundane's toolkit the same way you can customize a caster's.

On that we can probably agree. I do tend to prefer class-less systems (or systems where classes are variable enough to be basically class-less) for pretty similar reasons.

RandomPeasant

2022-01-03, 12:04 PM

How do you figure that? You said yourself that they're typically ranked a little lower than wizards (if still miles ahead of the non-casters), which sounds a lot more like evidence in favor of "forced specialization makes casters less overpowered" than against it, I think. How much specialization would be enough is obviously a matter of experimentation and taste.

But the difference between a Dread Necromancer and a Wizard isn't exclusively that the latter has a broader spell list. It's also that the latter gets a half-spell-level advantage on the former. But beyond that, saying "it would make them less overpowered" is a far cry from the original claim that simply making casters specialize would make the game meaningfully less imbalanced. Banning tenser's floating disk would make Wizards less powerful, but that doesn't mean it's desirable or appropriate solution to imbalance. A Fighter doesn't really have a meaningfully easier time arguing for his utility in a Beguiler/Dread Necromancer/Summoner (hypothetical fixed-list Conjurer)/Oracle (hypothetical fixed-list Diviner) party than a Wizard/Druid/Cleric/Artificer party.

say that a wizard can contribute in 9 out of 10 types of situations and a fighter in 2 out of 10 types of situations (the numbers are completely made up, but I think they aren't that off) while I would prefer if all classes could help in 7 out of 10 types of situations or whatever.

abs(7 - 9) = 2
abs(7 - 2) = 5

Why are you describing a goal that involves the Fighter moving two and a half times as much as the Wizard purely in terms of how we need to make casters worse? If your goal is, objectively, closer to the Wizard than the Fighter, why does this discussion always turn into "how do we make the Wizard worse" and never "how do we make the Fighter better"?

I sooooo wish I could mix and match Paladin and Ranger bits together plus a dash of stealth and make Batman, but alas, a mundane's class features can't be mix'd and match'd like the Sorcerer/Wizard spell list can. I think that's where 3.5's original sin lies: you really should have been able to customize a mundane's toolkit the same way you can customize a caster's.

Honestly, it's not even a matter of not mixing and matching, D&D (and this goes beyond 3e) has just been really bad at letting you play martial characters that are anywhere near as effective as they are in the source material. The Fighter not keeping up with the Wizard at 15th level is a problem, but the fact that the Fighter can't effectively be Aragorn at 5th level is also a problem.

Psyren

2022-01-03, 12:09 PM

The Balor is unrealistically incompetent even outside that. I have some minor nitpicks, like not using Summon (though maybe that was the marilith) and opening with greater dispel magic instead of blasphemy, but the big issue is that it throws multiple spells into the spell immunity when that should not happen. When it sees the first spell fail, it should get a Spellcraft check (DC 28) to "Identify a spell that’s already in place and in effect". With the Balor's +30 to Spellcraft, that is impossible for it to fail. So at that point it should switch to using 9th level SLAs like implosion and dominate monster immediately, rather than wasting additional rounds on actions it has good reason to believe cannot succeed. Then, for some reason, it throws away the rest of implosion to close to melee with a hard target. That said, the overall result of the fight is not especially surprising. Five 16th and 17th level characters should be able to defeat a Balor. But the fact that they do so because it is played incompetently is not the argument for quality of playtesting it was present as.

There is nothing stopping you from tossing out listed tactics for a Balor (or any other monster) and playing it as much more cunning or genre-savvy; just be sure to raise the CR/EL if you do. The disconnect happens when you deviate from what the designers had in mind when they assigned the listed CR, but expect the difficulty to stay unchanged.

Disclaimer: I have not read the thread beyond the first page.

For me, the key selling point of 3.5 is mechanical diversity among PCs. The rules for playing a binder, warblade, and a dread necromancer are so wildly different that they don't even look like they belong in the same system. And yet, they can all play in a party together with something resembling game balance.

In my opinion, PF1 misses the mark on mechanically diverse PCs, at least if you are restricted only to Paizo content. Some non-Paizo PF1 content, particularly Interjection Games and Dreamscarred Press classes, bring the mechanical diversity I like to Pathfinder. I am disappointed that both of those companies have stopped releasing new content.

Paizo intentionally avoided making their own versions of Incarnum, Binding, Initiating, Psionics (well, mostly) etc in order to leave fertile ground for 3PP designers to play in.

I sooooo wish I could mix and match Paladin and Ranger bits together plus a dash of stealth and make Batman, but alas, a mundane's class features can't be mix'd and match'd like the Sorcerer/Wizard spell list can. I think that's where 3.5's original sin lies: you really should have been able to customize a mundane's toolkit the same way you can customize a caster's.

The seeds for this exist, thanks to systems like PF's Variant Multiclassing. They were a bit too cautious in places but you could experiment with something like that in order to mix together a Ranger and Paladin.

You could also make a custom PrC if we're sticking to 3.5.

danielxcutter

2022-01-03, 12:13 PM

I do hear that 4e's got some good options for mixing abilities.

You know, it's amusing how many separate ways to do some kind of arcane gish exist in this edition. Possibly a major factor is due to most arcane casters being crap at it out of the box while divine casting has CoDzilla?

RandomPeasant

2022-01-03, 12:35 PM

There is nothing stopping you from tossing out listed tactics for a Balor (or any other monster) and playing it as much more cunning or genre-savvy; just be sure to raise the CR/EL if you do. The disconnect happens when you deviate from what the designers had in mind when they assigned the listed CR, but expect the difficulty to stay unchanged.

This was a bad argument every time you made it before now, but one thing the article demonstrates pretty absolutely is that even the designers didn't think the listed Balor tactics were an inherent part of the Balor. Because obviously they aren't, and there's no rule citation anywhere that says they are. The Balor can use whichever of its abilities are most effective for achieving its goals. Doing so does not, and has never, changed its CR.

You know, it's amusing how many separate ways to do some kind of arcane gish exist in this edition. Possibly a major factor is due to most arcane casters being crap at it out of the box while divine casting has CoDzilla?

I think that's just because there's no core option (like there is for Paladin or Ranger). But, yes, it's a huge list. Probably the single most obvious concept to add as a core class for a new edition.

danielxcutter

2022-01-03, 12:39 PM

I mean, I assume it has its abilities because it's expected to use them?

Batcathat

2022-01-03, 12:41 PM

But the difference between a Dread Necromancer and a Wizard isn't exclusively that the latter has a broader spell list. It's also that the latter gets a half-spell-level advantage on the former. But beyond that, saying "it would make them less overpowered" is a far cry from the original claim that simply making casters specialize would make the game meaningfully less imbalanced. Banning tenser's floating disk would make Wizards less powerful, but that doesn't mean it's desirable or appropriate solution to imbalance. A Fighter doesn't really have a meaningfully easier time arguing for his utility in a Beguiler/Dread Necromancer/Summoner (hypothetical fixed-list Conjurer)/Oracle (hypothetical fixed-list Diviner) party than a Wizard/Druid/Cleric/Artificer party.

Sure, the imbalance between the existing Dread Necromancer and the existing Fighter isn't that much smaller than between Wizard and Fighter, but as I've already said, my hypothetical dream system would both include boosting the Fighter and making Wizards more specialized than Dread Necromancer or Beguiler. Saying that the fact that a Beguiler isn't balanced with a Fighter seems a little like lowering the speed-limit from 100 to 95 and then saying that lowering the speed doesn't increase safety since people might still die while crashing at 95.

Why are you describing a goal that involves the Fighter moving two and a half times as much as the Wizard purely in terms of how we need to make casters worse?

Because that's the part we're talking about? If the topic had been "how should classes be better balanced" rather than "could caster specialization improve balance" I would've focused on different things.

If your goal is, objectively, closer to the Wizard than the Fighter, why does this discussion always turn into "how do we make the Wizard worse" and never "how do we make the Fighter better"?

I suppose it depends on one's own perspective on the discussion, because in my experience this discussion usually involve people saying precisely that. Yes, making the Fighter better is important but so is making the Wizard worse. (In my personal opinion, obviously.) Having a system where everyone can do everything is better than one where only some people can do everything, but I prefer one where no one can.

danielxcutter

2022-01-03, 12:44 PM

I suspect part of the reason "buff the Fighter" isn't as talked about as much is due to Warblade essentially being just that. Also Fighter has very little room to improve because it's basically nothing but Extra Feats: The Class.

RandomPeasant

2022-01-03, 01:13 PM

making Wizards more specialized than Dread Necromancer or Beguiler.

What exactly are you basing that on? Because those classes seem totally fine, power-wise, to me.

Because that's the part we're talking about? If the topic had been "how should classes be better balanced" rather than "could caster specialization improve balance" I would've focused on different things.

But that's the part we're talking about because someone's response to a post about the broad sweep of options available in 3e was focused exclusively on the value of specializing casters.

Having a system where everyone can do everything is better than one where only some people can do everything, but I prefer one where no one can.

The real question is whether it's better to have a system with some 2/10s and some 7/10s or some 7/10s and some 9/10s. The focus on nerfing casters seems to push towards the former, which seems a lot worse than the latter.

I suspect part of the reason "buff the Fighter" isn't as talked about as much is due to Warblade essentially being just that. Also Fighter has very little room to improve because it's basically nothing but Extra Feats: The Class.

The Warblade is a pretty mediocre buff to the Fighter. It's good enough that it's hard to make a caster that beats it as a frontliner without expending serious effort, but not so good as to be overall competitive. And it's still pretty abysmal outside combat. Even allowing for the much greater variation in what "non-combat encounter" means at different tables, I'd be hardpressed to imagine myself wanting a Warblade over even a Rogue, let alone a Cleric, Sorcerer, or Dread Necromancer.

Psyren

2022-01-03, 01:23 PM

I mean, I assume it has its abilities because it's expected to use them?

Of course, and the Monster Manual tells you the circumstances in which it is assumed to do so. For example: "If the balor does not deem itself seriously threatened, it conserves abilities usable only once per day and uses blasphemy instead."

You can deviate from that and have a Balor open with summoning backup or casting Implosion regardless of perceived threat, but then you're deviating from what the designers explicitly intended.

This was a bad argument every time you made it before now,

Declaring an argument you don't like to be bad is still not a refutation.

but one thing the article demonstrates pretty absolutely is that even the designers didn't think the listed Balor tactics were an inherent part of the Balor. Because obviously they aren't, and there's no rule citation anywhere that says they are. The Balor can use whichever of its abilities are most effective for achieving its goals. Doing so does not, and has never, changed its CR.

Tactics are themselves a rule citation. They are part of the "Combat" section of the monster entry for that reason.

CR is only the starting point for encounter difficulty. The final number, which I mentioned above, is Encounter Level (EL). That takes into account everything, from the base monster abilities and tactics to the features of the terrain and even the number and capabilities of the PCs. So even if you argue that the CR doesn't change by adjusting these variables, the EL still can (and in many cases will.)

RandomPeasant

2022-01-03, 01:29 PM

Tactics are themselves a rule citation. They are part of the "Combat" section of the monster entry for that reason.

And where is the rule that says deviating from the creature's tactics entry changes EL? I'll give you a hint, there's not one. If there was, you'd cite that, and you wouldn't need to complain that I called your non-argument bad.

Psyren

2022-01-03, 02:28 PM

And where is the rule that says deviating from the creature's tactics entry changes EL? I'll give you a hint, there's not one. If there was, you'd cite that, and you wouldn't need to complain that I called your non-argument bad.

DMG 39: "An orc warband that attacks the PCs by flying over them in primitive hang gliders and dropping large rocks is not the same encounter as one in which the orcs just charge in with spears. Sometimes, the circumstances give the characters' opponents a distinct advantage. Other times, the PCs have the advantage. Adjust the XP award and the EL depending on how greatly circumstances change the encounter's difficulty."

As explicitly shown in that quote, unexpected/superior tactics are considered a change in circumstance and you're expected to modify the EL accordingly.

Raven777

2022-01-03, 02:54 PM

The only thing I would posit for certain is that as an Int 24, Wis 24 being, any given Balor should have sufficient knowledge and common sense to take near optimal decisions relative to their own goals and circumstances for their unique encounter.

Elves

2022-01-03, 03:03 PM

RandomPeasant

2022-01-03, 03:20 PM

DMG 39: "An orc warband that attacks the PCs by flying over them in primitive hang gliders and dropping large rocks is not the same encounter as one in which the orcs just charge in with spears. Sometimes, the circumstances give the characters' opponents a distinct advantage. Other times, the PCs have the advantage. Adjust the XP award and the EL depending on how greatly circumstances change the encounter's difficulty."

You'll notice this mentions the "tactics" section of a monster entry exactly nowhere. Are we also to conclude that a fight with two Balors requires special EL adjustment, since that's not a listed value for their "organization" entry? You'll even note that it quite clearly says "circumstances", which is a different word from "tactics".

The only thing I would posit for certain is that as an Int 24, Wis 24 being, any given Balor should have sufficient knowledge and common sense to take near optimal decisions relative to their own goals and circumstances for their unique encounter.

The really weird thing is that the conclusion of this argument is that it's totally fine for a 5-Int Dretch to do whatever the DM wants with no adjustment to EL, but cheating for a Balor to do so, because the latter has a tactics section and the former does not. If Psyren were arguing about some specific set of tactics, he might have a point, but the blanket "only the listed tactics count", when that is demonstrably not the way the designers used the monster is just puzzling.

Also, remember this is 15-20 years ago. If you look at old threads, standards were lower in general then. We're sitting on 20 years of community knowledge.

That's only sort of true. The original Cleric Archer (the ancestor of CoDzilla) predates 3.5. Plenty of people understood how to play effectively from the beginning (the first 3.5 shapechange infinite loop predates the printing of 3.5 shapechange), it just took a long time to break through the people who strenuously insist the Fighter is fine to even the degree it's happened today.

Psyren

2022-01-03, 08:40 PM

If we're nitpicking that fight, DM seems to ignore its quickened telekinesis SLA which could disarm the melees in short order (just don't take the wizard's bow or he might start casting spells).

More telling is when the DM says he was impressed by the players' clever tactics. It's clear that many of the devs didn't have the strongest grasp on the system they created -- but if they did, they would have made a system that worked the way they wanted to play, which would be one with much less charm and depth (see 5e).

Also, remember this is 15-20 years ago. If you look at old threads, standards were lower in general then. We're sitting on 20 years of community knowledge.

Let's assume for a moment that this is correct, and the designers forgot about the suite of abilities they gave to a Balor when they were thinking through how a fight with it would go. If that's the case, why then are we treating the Challenge Rating assigned to that creature as absolute truth? Is the logic that WotC can't remember or utilize the abilities they gave the creature, but somehow got the CR perfectly accurate anyway? :smallconfused:

The only thing I would posit for certain is that as an Int 24, Wis 24 being, any given Balor should have sufficient knowledge and common sense to take near optimal decisions relative to their own goals and circumstances for their unique encounter.

I've never subscribed to the idea that "high Int/Wis means a monster can't be shortsighted, or suboptimal, or self-destructive, or make tactical/strategic errors."

This goes double for creatures like outsiders - a smart fiend is still a fiend. They have a mindset (and indeed, an entire metaphysical makeup) that is wholly alien to ours. In D&D, even the gods can be petty or foolish make mistakes, so of course a Balor can too. This isn't to say they're stupid or easy to outsmart, but their outlook consists of an overriding worldview, desires and cravings that can be exploited by flexible mortals.

You'll notice this mentions the "tactics" section of a monster entry exactly nowhere. Are we also to conclude that a fight with two Balors requires special EL adjustment, since that's not a listed value for their "organization" entry? You'll even note that it quite clearly says "circumstances", which is a different word from "tactics".

1) It doesn't have to - that passage is explicitly about the same set of creatures changing their EL by using different tactics.

2) So you're saying that two balors should have the same EL as one? I definitely don't understand what you're trying to convey here :smallconfused:

Bohandas

2022-01-03, 09:09 PM

I'm pretty sure the tactics section isn't "this is always how this creature fights" it's "these are tactics it often uses"

and before this discussion I don't think I've ever seen it even suggested that the tactics section was part of its challenge rating

So you're saying that two balors should have the same EL as one? I definitely don't understand what you're trying to convey here :smallconfused:

I think what they're saying is that if we treat things like the tactics, organization, and environment sections as part of the monster's CR calculation than 2 balors would not necessarily use the same calculation as 2 CR 20 monsters as it would constitute a special circumstance or possibly even a template

danielxcutter

2022-01-03, 09:39 PM

I’m fairly sure most modules have monsters using atypical tactics without adjusting the EL.

RandomPeasant

2022-01-03, 09:41 PM

If that's the case, why then are we treating the Challenge Rating assigned to that creature as absolute truth?

Things that might be wrong: the listed challenge ratings for monsters.
Things that are absolute fact that cannot be deviated from without fundamentally reevaluating the game: the tactics entries for monsters that have tactics entries.

This isn't to say they're stupid or easy to outsmart, but their outlook consists of an overriding worldview, desires and cravings that can be exploited by flexible mortals.

The "overriding worldview" of "following this exact list of tactical actions"? That seems ... implausible. Especially for a creature that is nominally aligned with Chaos.

1) It doesn't have to - that passage is explicitly about the same set of creatures changing their EL by using different tactics.

"Have a glider" is not a "tactic", it is a piece of equipment. If the standard Orc entry described them using gliders as improvised weapons, you might have a point, but as it is there's really no leg for you to stand on here. It says "circumstances" (which, again, is a different word from "tactics") and the thing it describes is equipment. There is exactly zero correlation between the source you cited and the point you are trying to make.

2) So you're saying that two balors should have the same EL as one? I definitely don't understand what you're trying to convey here :smallconfused:

Well, it turns out someone else understood it exactly:

I think what they're saying is that if we treat things like the tactics, organization, and environment sections as part of the monster's CR calculation than 2 balors would not necessarily use the same calculation as 2 CR 20 monsters as it would constitute a special circumstance or possibly even a template

Psyren

2022-01-03, 11:24 PM

I'm pretty sure the tactics section isn't "this is always how this creature fights" it's "these are tactics it often uses"

and before this discussion I don't think I've ever seen it even suggested that the tactics section was part of its challenge rating

I'm not saying that that section is inviolate law, or that any micro-deviation means you have to throw the listed CR out the window. But I am saying that there's only so far you can deviate from it before you've gone outside what the designers intended the creature to be doing in combat, when they came up with that number in the first place.

You might for example believe a Balor who uses hit and run tactics of teleporting in, stripping away all the party's buffs and teleporting away to heal up before it returns later until they run out of resources is more in line with its 24 Intelligence, but such an encounter is just not what the designers had in mind for those creatures, period.

Raven777

2022-01-03, 11:29 PM

I've never subscribed to the idea that "high Int/Wis means a monster can't be shortsighted, or suboptimal, or self-destructive, or make tactical/strategic errors."

This goes double for creatures like outsiders - a smart fiend is still a fiend. They have a mindset (and indeed, an entire metaphysical makeup) that is wholly alien to ours. In D&D, even the gods can be petty or foolish make mistakes, so of course a Balor can too. This isn't to say they're stupid or easy to outsmart, but their outlook consists of an overriding worldview, desires and cravings that can be exploited by flexible mortals.

I agree. The Balor can have goals and circumstances and personal drives and flaws that justify different tactics. Even ones that will eventually prove self-destructive. It can desire to conserve ressources because in the Abyss a depleted Balor is free real estate for rivals. Or it wants to test the party's mettle because it is bored out of its mind. Or it can want to pull its punches because while it is bound to defend the dungeon, it desires nothing more than being beaten and freed from its binding. On the other hand, it can want to alpha strike the party with its biggest guns because it's been bound as a secured temple's guardian and it knows that party is almost certainly the only threat it'll face all year.

But once those goals are decided, I still believe high mental attributes (especially in both Int and Wis) mean it will select and execute the right Most Effective Tactic Available to achieve them. Attributes are supposed to model the character's mental and physical ability. Therefore, a supremely rational and wise creature isn't supposed to plan itself into failing its own goals. By the definition of both attributes it is supposed to easily assess the situation through Wisdom and then through Intellect easily formulate the appropriate logical chain of actions and counteractions linking its available means to what it wants to accomplish (aka, its "gameplan").

I'm not saying a Balor can't fight suboptimally relative to the powers at its disposal. What I'm saying is that when it does, it should be because that's its actual plan spurred from external goals and circumstances and individual personality traits. But a Balor that's done fooling around should be played as close to META as a DM can manage.

But, for all that matters, since the way the Balor ends up being played depends most on factors external to its own stat block, I don't think CR matches either the Dumb Balor or the Perfect Balor. I think it just... roughly falls in the middle, and the DM must sort the rest. Which is the Balor's CR supposed to model, anyway? Dumb Balor, Average Balor or Perfect Balor? Or even "Balor by the tactics we wrote", considering not all monsters have these?

Seward

2022-01-03, 11:46 PM

But once those goals are decided, I still believe high mental attributes (especially in both Int and Wis) mean it will select and execute the right Most Effective Tactic Available to achieve them.[/I].

Sure. But no matter how smart it is, it can't base tactics on information it doesn't have, and parties can sometimes game that to positive effect, appearing to be something more obvious than what they're doing. Honestly if I was that Balor and had those outcomes I wouldn't immediately go to spell immunity as the most likely defense.

Although per your later comment about GM's influencing what happens, some of that is my lived experience off tactics against Balor-like threats at with ecl16 parties on both sides of the GM screen when playing Living Greyhawk. Spell immunity wasn't as popular as some other counters where I played. I agree with another poster that ignoring quickened tk doesn't jive with best tactics - TK is often a pretty useful std action for outsiders that have it, so not using it would imply from a in-world explanation unusual behavior and make you wonder if the Balor had been in other fights that day, or was conserving it against a future threat and that conservation was a bad call given the outcome.

In general yes. CR assumes imperfect information on both sides and often neither side able to prep, although as implemented it rewards parties that gather information before engaging (as you get full xp for the effort, but the fight itself is usually a lot easier than turning a corner and stumbling into a Balor and pulling out your "oh crap" tactics. OTOH, such scouting against an enemy like a Balor is nontrivial and generally expends resources and requires somebody in the party with a character build unusually good at information gathering, so that cost might show up in a party somewhat weaker than a bunch of optimized combat muscleheads that stumble into their fights and brute force their way out of trouble).

A Balor actually personally after the party is a much more dangerous proposition given the high int/wis and information resource available to it. its summoning capabilities alone and maybe some long range TK support could be incredibly dangerous to PCs either in a straight up ambush or worse, added in when they are engaged with some other threat. Such a Balor is usually the focus of an entire story arc though, not just one dangerous encounter.

danielxcutter

2022-01-04, 12:03 AM

Honestly, Blasphemy is a pretty good opener. But I’d expect it to break out the high level SLAs pretty quickly because… why wouldn’t it?

Seward

2022-01-04, 12:36 AM

Blasphemy is one of those spells that in 3.5 you have to just find a way around by L13 or so. Every Half-Fiend advanced with hit dice from a 3-4 hd/cr critter has a CL in the 20s and it will just TPK a party every time it is used.

We had an unfortunate period in Living Greyhawk where authors liked to do that, and players liked to abuse CL boosting cleric tricks to kick Holy Word into "end encounter" level effective caster levels too. In regions where this got especially bad, some GMs would basically let the players know that if they did holy word+boosted CL shenanigans, the GM would bust out every broken combination they could think of in response, in any encounter where it could apply. Writer guidelines started toning down the half-fiends (sometimes explicitly having the blasphemy already cast earlier that day, or similar).

But...enough stories remained with Blasphemy that parties with any expectation at all of facing evil outsiders or half fiends routinely at least had free movement on everybody (so you only have to contend with daze/weakness) Most such enemies can't spam it in the way a Balor can. But one common remedy is Silence. A lot of parties in that environment figured out how to work inside a silence field, or at least would routinely silence the beatsticks (useful vs enemy casters too) and try to scatter spellcasters out of the 40' radius so not too many could be dazed at once. Others did spell resistance or spell immunity to mitigate the damage.

In that kind of environment, opening with Blasphemy frequently resulted in a wasted action. Simply because it was so effective if not countered. If said Balor had intelligence that other critters who had fought heroes in this area often had counters to Blasphemy it might actually explain leading with a dispel, although that's always a risky call when only aimed at one target (you really need chain dispel or disjunction or something to strip enough defenses to inconvienence a CL16 party. Targeting only one enemy invites the rest to have a bunch of actions to mess with you for free, which might at minimum interrupt your followup blasphemy with a readied action.)

Basically the problem with anecdotes involving Balors or Dragons or Tier 1 classed BBEGs or similar "supposed to be super smart" enemies is that any anecdote that involves PCs winning, which will be nearly all of them, will be poo-pooed by a kibitzer claiming dumb tactics on the villain side. Which usually ignores the work the PCs put in to get that advantage, and also the BBEG's motivations, information limits, personality and potentially outside things PCs know nothing of, such as rivals, prior battles, etc. Many of those fights involve PCs choosing an approach that matches what they learned about the enemy. Not just Kn check vs monster weakness, but how they behaved prior to their final fatal encounter with the PCs.

danielxcutter

2022-01-04, 12:43 AM

I'm honestly not a fan of "instant-win" spells like that. At least most save-or-X spells well, actually have you roll a saving throw. Not that I'm particularly fond of save-or-die/lose spells either...

Fizban

2022-01-04, 02:00 AM

No they don't. It says "a PC may die", not "the PCs are not expected to win". Similarly "tax the PCs to their limit" does not mean "the PCs will lose", it means "the PCs will win with no remaining resources". The text is clearly describing victory at a cost. Or, you know, exactly the thing I said it was.
"The players might not realize they need to flee" is pretty clear that fleeing is a possible result. Fleeing is not overcoming the encounter, and while they may be able to flee and overcome it later, it does not say this is expected.

Playtesting that gets the result of "success" when the expected result is "success" is not very useful.
Ah, I see, you're only interested in playtesting results that have intentionally broken things (stress testing or bug testing). Unfortunately, as already mentioned, this was not called out as a "playtest" game. And considering how long it takes to run pen and paper DnD, I don't think the sort of thing you want is feasible for a very finite number of people playing in a very finite amount of time. The DM is already given authority to fix unexpected edge cases, and the designers are/were more concerned with making sure the expected use cases run as expected, or so I think and find more appropriate.

And yet your citation that it is incorrect is "sometimes designers are wrong". In the absence of a conflicting source, the point stands.
No, my citation (or rather, evidence) that it isn't correct is the easily seen proof that a 4th level core NPC Fighter does not compare to a Brown Bear, or a 12th level to a Purple Worm, or an X level Wizard to just about anything. It is exactly the same strength of evidence people use to claim the CR system is broken, because it is the same evidence, minus the skewed starting point. My citation is all of pages 48-50 (quoting entire pages of rulebooks is not allowed, however), where you can find no examples or mentions of classed NPCs, but continuous examples and mentions of monsters.

You have not provided a citation within pages 48-50, nor one from outside it that usurps its primacy in defining the encounter system. Your stance* that NPC CR=level is in any way a foundation of the CR system is not found within the primary source for that part of the rules, and is easily shown as inaccurate. Do you have anything that can uproot the primary definitions of CR and Encounters from outside their own section? If you have only the one line from a section which defines NPCs rather than the CR and Encounter system itself, you have nothing that overrides the initial definitions. The evidence thus shows that NPC CR does not actually equal their level for either practical use or initial definition (even if it is useful for rewarding xp or as a starting point in estimating practical challenge), and the evidence does not show that the CR system is broken by NPC CR because the system never uses that as part of its definitions (though the second assertion has not yet been made here, it is a common extension and a major reason I've studied this section).

*Carried by responding to and disagreeing with my response to danielxcutter's stance, which was stated in response to InvisibleBison describing one of the reasons LA and CR are valued differently by the system.

This is a topic which I find very important, because a vastly huge amount of forum-think is based on this exact misreading of the CR and Encounter system. People say it says things that it does not say, and draw up entire straw castles of justification for their own opinions which they claim are just extensions of the rules and insist are fundamental problems with "the game" which are always true, but are instead based on what is at best an extremely biased reading while those problems are a result of a set of expectations the game never endorsed. I have searched for the citations that would prove them right, and in not finding them discovered that the assertion was less hard fact and more opinion based on a chosen reading. Here there was a discussion comparing CR and LA and this reading was stated as a hard fact (directly contradicting the very existence of LA itself), and so I have explained why this reading is not only not the only one, but in my opinion a clear misreading.

Since danielxcutter seems to have declined to carry the argument and you have provided no new citations to support it, I have nothing more to add.

The Balor flies faster than the flight from fly, and can engage at ranges that exceed that of a charge. Dispelling fly looks like it was important, but it was of relatively little real consequence.
The person who ran the fight explicitly said it was of very real consequence, and it looks to have kept their best attacker out of nearly the entire fight. If you're simply going to reject anything but your own gameplay as evidence, consider why then anyone should accept yours.

Yes, that's exactly what the use of Spellcraft is for. The ability to identify spells from their effects allows you to differentiate between different spells with similar effects.
I'm not the only poster that immediately called out the wording of the skill:

Identify a spell that’s already in place and in effect. You must be able to see or detect the effects of the spell. No action required. No retry.
Spell Immunity has no visible effect. You do not "see or detect" that your spell fails, it simply fails, with the only direct feedback you can claim as "detecting" being that you rolled an SR check and failed. If you choose to give out more information than the skill says to, go ahead, but arguing about rules citations and then making a skill more powerful than the rules say it is, is applying a double standard.

The skill that would actually excuse this tactic would if anything be Knowledge, to know what sort of things could be causing a phenomenon in order to make an educated guess at which is most likely and respond accordingly. But since Spellcraft takes the place of nearly all rolls regarding spells, it kinda ruins that of its own accord: by bringing up that roll which doesn't actually give the information it only highlights the fact that there's no stated Knowledge DC to know about spells- only rolls to identify and learn them.

And of course, even "identifying" the spell doesn't necessarily mean you get to look it up- the skill doesn't actually say what that means.

Making absolute statements about RAW Knowledge and Spellcraft generally doesn't work out, as they're mostly left to the DM.

Paizo intentionally avoided making their own versions of Incarnum, Binding, Initiating, Psionics (well, mostly) etc in order to leave fertile ground for 3PP designers to play in.
Incidentally since you usually seem to know the PF stuff, if I may ask a quick side question: Why is it that the 3rd party PF publishers were able to re-make all that stuff? I was under the impression that the OGL did not allow that since those were non-OGL books, and yet some (though not all) of the 3PP versions use not only what are obviously the same mechanics but even some of the same terminology.

CR is only the starting point for encounter difficulty. The final number, which I mentioned above, is Encounter Level (EL). That takes into account everything, from the base monster abilities and tactics to the features of the terrain and even the number and capabilities of the PCs. So even if you argue that the CR doesn't change by adjusting these variables, the EL still can (and in many cases will.)
In fact, the EL itself doesn't actually do anything- as you said, the CR converted into initial EL is just the starting point. A module may state an EL that doesn't match the CRs of the given monsters, indicating the writer has attempted to judge the changes they've made. But there's actually no reason for a DM writing their own encounter to assign a numerical value as a modifier to EL. Lots of people like to just award XP based on the EL and might use that as their method of modifying the XP value, but the EL modifiers given on the table still only correspond to the DM's evaluation ranging from half as difficult to twice as difficult. And if you've already judged it as worth say half XP, you already have the XP modifier you need.

DMG 39: "An orc warband that attacks the PCs by flying over them in primitive hang gliders and dropping large rocks is not the same encounter as one in which the orcs just charge in with spears. Sometimes, the circumstances give the characters' opponents a distinct advantage. Other times, the PCs have the advantage. Adjust the XP award and the EL depending on how greatly circumstances change the encounter's difficulty."

As explicitly shown in that quote, unexpected/superior tactics are considered a change in circumstance and you're expected to modify the EL accordingly.
Also again on DMG 50: "Modifying Difficulty: Orcs with crossbows firing down at the PCs while the characters cross a narrow ledge over a pit full of spikes. . . Consider the sorts of factors, related to location or situation, that make an encounter more difficult, such as the following."

made a system that worked the way they wanted to play, which would be one with much less charm and depth (see 5e).

Also, remember this is 15-20 years ago. If you look at old threads, standards were lower in general then. We're sitting on 20 years of community knowledge.
Indeed. Years of uncountable "volunteer playtesters" intentionally stress-testing the game and pooling their knowledge online is going to result in vastly different expectations of the game. I started back in 3.0 reading the PHB and DMG, so my expectations were set before all of that (even if it took me years to realize why I always had that feeling in the back of my head that something was off even as I espoused viewpoints I now reject).

I’m fairly sure most modules have monsters using atypical tactics without adjusting the EL.
Depends on the module. A lot of early modules actually do give ELs higher than the component monsters and award extra xp, sometimes for things small enough I wouldn't even count them (or would count them as necessary). But a lot of later modules completely ignore this, DM-op'ing their encounters with favorable terrain, ambushes, inability to retreat, and no extra rewards. I found when evaluating the Fortress of the Yuan-Ti adventure that not only were all the encounters above the suggested party level, and one of the monsters was missing a CR increase from size due to HD advancement, but they've got a particular encounter people rated as killer where people just fall into a room full of multiple save or lose auras on top of an extra effect from the room itself, and it's treated as a perfectly normal fight. I've been making an example of it ever since.

I'm honestly not a fan of "instant-win" spells like that. At least most save-or-X spells well, actually have you roll a saving throw. Not that I'm particularly fond of save-or-die/lose spells either...
I've considered trying to cut save or dies, but the moment you do you realize that what you've got is. . . 5e. Part of what makes 3.x exciting is that yeah, there are spells and monsters that just straight up wreck you in a single roll, and other spells that don't even care about a roll, and those completely arbitrary "Magic is Powerful so deal with it" are a fundamental part of why 3.x feels the way it does- like Magic is Powerful. If you make a game where magic is completely fair, it's not very magical. Magic is the ancient wish-fulfillment trope, it's literally not supposed to be balanced, that's the whole point, and 3.x magic gets that. It can cause all sorts of problems, but the PCs are also supposed to be 1/2 magic users themselves, fighting magic and muscle with magic and steel. 3.x is not alone in having Powerful Magic, but this combines with the rest of the system being so simulation-first, and full of parallel advancement paths, and all that detail and customization and expression via mechanics large and small gets to go forth into a world full of Powerful Magic and Monsters which are dangerous, but also function on many of the same rules, and have been pre-ranked based on level (and indeed can often themselves be accessed by the PCs).

On the other hand you can make it easier to recover from those insta-fails than 3.5 would have it, when they raised the Raise costs by a factor of 10 for most of the game, which feels like an epiphany I should have had ages ago- increase death by reducing death costs so that players will actually end up dying less horribly (because they get practice).

danielxcutter

2022-01-04, 02:04 AM

Batcathat

2022-01-04, 02:18 AM

If you make a game where magic is completely fair, it's not very magical. Magic is the ancient wish-fulfillment trope, it's literally not supposed to be balanced, that's the whole point, and 3.x magic gets that.

This is very subjective. I've heard similar arguments against having actually consistant, non-arbitrary magic systems – "If you can understand it, it's not magic" – and while both that point and yours are certainly legit opinions, they're certainly not everyone's.

danielxcutter

2022-01-04, 02:25 AM

I'd say it's a problem when spellcasters are objectively superior to the point where pure martials are completely obsolete. Which... is kinda what's going on with 3.5e.

If you think it's fun to have such comprehensive, immense power that others don't have, think about how they'd feel. Not everyone enjoys being a glorified cohort at best.

Psyren

2022-01-04, 02:57 AM

But a Balor that's done fooling around should be played as close to META as a DM can manage.

That's honestly the rub for me. How does a functionally alien being, whose very biology and psychology are formed of Chaos and Evil and sadism even towards its allies, even define "done fooling around?" Is it the same way we would? Yeah, the tactically superlative option for a Balor would be to make sure no adventuring party has a hope of ever fighting it with a single buff active, and it has both the means and smarts to theoretically do so - but would every Balor find that fun? Even if the "fun" approach means a greater chance of losing the battle? It's down to the DM, and I don't think there is just one clear answer to that question.

Incidentally since you usually seem to know the PF stuff, if I may ask a quick side question: Why is it that the 3rd party PF publishers were able to re-make all that stuff? I was under the impression that the OGL did not allow that since those were non-OGL books, and yet some (though not all) of the 3PP versions use not only what are obviously the same mechanics but even some of the same terminology.

I can't safely answer that question in any kind of detail without running afoul of the forum rules against legal advice. Rather than do so, I'll make a couple of unrelated observations.

A PF class whose core concept is "guy gets supernatural powers by drawing elaborate symbols on the ground, and using said symbols to contact and make pacts with beings outside reality for a period of 24 hours, and depending on how well he does with his pacting roll he might have to act the way they want him to act for the duration of said pact" - all of that's a game mechanic.

If you wanted to write a book where that guy is called a "Binder" and the things he's pacting with are called "Vestiges" however... those names are not game mechanics.

If you want to know more, I suggest you reach out to the 3PP PF authors who've made and sold the books in question.

danielxcutter

2022-01-04, 03:02 AM

Does anyone have the specific run-down of the fight?

Lans

2022-01-04, 03:03 AM

As always, I'm not convinced by this. The Beguiler and Dread Necromancer are T2. That's worse than the Wizard, but not by a lot. And a chunk of that is because the Wizard arbitrarily gets a half-level bump on spontaneous spellcasters. How big is the gap between a Dread Necromancer that gets new spells at odd levels and a Wizard? I'm sure it's something, but I think "a lot more balanced" is a hard sell for that margin.

A portion of their T2ness had to do with how easily spells could be added to their list, and the Beguiler has an incredibly broad list of spells with illusions, time, conjuration, mind effecting and other spells.

Fizban

2022-01-04, 03:06 AM

3.5e balance being out of whack isn't a feature Fizban, it's a bug. Of course they're very entertaining bugs, so there's nothing wrong with enjoying them inherently, but when you must be a caster to approach anything resembling relevance without serious optimization and even then all you're good at is damage I wouldn't call that great design.
I didn't say the "balance was out of whack," that's all you. I said there's Powerful Magic, and that half the party is also meant to wield it. You could say that making some magic that Powerful* was unintended as evidenced by further changes in later editions, but I disagree. Magic had Powerful effects before 3.x, and its reduction later does not mean it was not meant to be so in 3.x.

*Note how I'm treating that as its own term- Powerful with a capital "P," as in significant, arbitrary, supreme within its domain. Not general statements of character "power."

You have a set of game expectations that makes your complaints about caster/non-caster relevance and optimization requirements true, but that is your expectations, and it's easy to see those do not match those of the designers because following those expectations results in greater problems than the designers anticipate and advise about in their guides to running the game they wrote. You should really not treat the results of your expectations as an absolute, universal, fundamental problem with the game. Tons of people have played the game without those problems simply by not playing that way, not having those expectations. They're not having fun in spite of "entertaining bugs"- there are in fact plenty of people to which your horrible balance woes are completely overblown personal problems you caused yourself.

Every time you say that the game is broken or unbalanced or some class isn't "relevant," with zero context to make that true, you're putting your version (or rather, your statement, see below) of the game first while ignoring anyone else's, without any visible acknowledgement that your opinion is an opinion. In a further post you even claim it's "objectively" true. It is not. There are no objective truths about the game as a whole, and barely any about even the smallest and most discrete readings of individual rules.

If you think it's fun to have such comprehensive, immense power that others don't have, think about how they'd feel. Not everyone enjoys being a glorified cohort at best.
So don't play or run the game that way.

And as a matter of fact, there is a whole other tabletop RPG where a certain portion of the players actually do play "glorified cohorts," in a deliberately asymmetrical combination with other players who are the uber magicians, as a fundamental part of the game. And hey look, DnD 3.x is so huge it can support multiple types of game. The one where you play as the designers expected, and the one where casters are "objectively" (contextually, in that particular type of game) so powerful that some of the players could be playing sidekicks- and also the game where everyone's character is that powerful and the DM dials up all the threats to match them, and. . .

You count yourself as savvy about this game. I'm pretty sure you don't actually play or run games where some of the players are stuck playing "glorified cohorts," unless they actually want to do that. Which means that the premise you're constantly hammering on as "objectively true," is actually a straw man. Because I don't play that way either. People try to run games that are fun. The DMG tells the DM to use and modify the rules however they need to in order to make the game fun. The default assumption is that people play the game because it's fun, and all you're saying is that running the game a way that isn't fun, is not fun. So if you're not running the game that way, and I'm not, and no one else has said they're having a problem, that means no one is actually playing that way.

To whose benefit is constant complaining about problems no one is having? This thread is literally about why people choose to play 3.5.

Does anyone have the specific run-down of the fight?
I linked the Balor fight when I first responded to you about it, here (http://archive.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/tt/20050809a) it is again.

This is very subjective. I've heard similar arguments against having actually consistant, non-arbitrary magic systems – "If you can understand it, it's not magic" – and while both that point and yours are certainly legit opinions, they're certainly not everyone's.
Sure, but it's my and plenty of others' take on it just as much, and I stated why I think it's a part of the original ancient trope even if there are many more branching interpretations of magic now (although if someone had a tracing of fantasy tropes back through history to the oldest stories we have which happened to refute that, I'd gladly eat the words to read it :smallbiggrin:). I never said anything about magic having to be mysterious though- I think the important part of the trope here is that magic can be arbitrary, with respect to those not doing the magic. A fair system that (for example) always gives you a roll to resist is fair, but it can never invoke the same gut response that you'd get from facing Powerful Magic against which you simply don't get to roll. That sort of magic can still be perfectly well understood and structured. 3.x's extremely structured magic (and even magitech) system already does both.

I can't safely answer that question in any kind of detail without running afoul of the forum rules against legal advice. Rather than do so, I'll make a couple of unrelated observations. . .
If you want to know more, I suggest you reach out to the 3PP PF authors who've made and sold the books in question.
Nah, I'll settle for "probably legal stuff more arcane than I'm equipped to handle," no need to bother anyone just for the curiosity. Thanks though.

Batcathat

2022-01-04, 03:13 AM

Sure, but it's my and plenty of others' take on it just as much, and I stated why I think it's a part of the original ancient trope even if there are many more branching interpretations of magic now. I never said anything about magic having to be mysterious though- I think the important part of the trope here is that magic can be arbitrary, with respect to those not doing the magic. A fair system that (for example) always gives you a roll to resist is fair, but it can never invoke the same gut response that you'd get from facing Powerful Magic against which you simply don't get to roll. That sort of magic can still be perfectly well understood and structured. 3.x's extremely structured magic (and even magitech) system already does both.

Sure, I don't mind magic seeming arbitrary from an outside perspective. It could be compared to something like real-life math that can seem completely random and arbitrary for someone who doesn't know enough of it. But seeming arbitrary and being arbitrary are different and I find a lot of magic systems (including D&D's) to be the latter (it's structured, yes, but without much internal logic, in my opinion).

I get that magic should invoke a sense of wonder, what I don't agree with is how it being unbalanced and arbitrary helps with that.

Fizban

2022-01-04, 03:50 AM

Sure, I don't mind magic seeming arbitrary from an outside perspective. It could be compared to something like real-life math that can seem completely random and arbitrary for someone who doesn't know enough of it. But seeming arbitrary and being arbitrary are different and I find a lot of magic systems (including D&D's) to be the latter (it's structured, yes, but without much internal logic, in my opinion).

I get that magic should invoke a sense of wonder, what I don't agree with is how it being unbalanced and arbitrary helps with that.

Well like I said, I think it's part of the ancient trope. Magic is power, wish-fulfillment. At it's core, it's not meant to be balanced. Either it's the power that gives the hero victory, or it's the overpowering threat that the hero must somehow defeat anyway. You can try to "balance" it, but if the gamers know it's well and truly balanced, it's just a different shade of "sword" or "bow" or "utility skills." There are a lot of people for which, even if they don't realize it, the defining feature of magic is that magic is the best, and if magic is weaker or even just balanced they'll feel it's a bad magic system. And the more rooted in stories where magic is Power, the more likely that is.

There's a similar root problem behind "pet" classes. Sure, logically you can balance them, but the whole point of a "pet" is inherently unbalanced. The pet is supposed to be a threat to the same foes you personally fight, and you're supposed to contribute against foes the pet fights. If you can't fight on your own, then you can't send the pet away to be in two places at once, you're really just a squishy the pet has to protect. If the pet can't fight on its own, it's a squishy you have to protect. This can all work fine narratively as these are two entities, but when you try to convert it into game mechanics where there are multiple players and one player has a character that is actually two characters, it doesn't work. If the "pet class" actually results in two bodies capable of competing with single-body character classes, it's overpowered. If the pet class has two bodies which are sufficiently weaker, then foes which other basic single-body combat party members can fight will be more difficult for the pet/owner, removing the fantasy of being a badass who also has a badass pet (because when isolated you're clearly not).

You can of course take a more balanced expectation that a "pet class" character should usually need to be focused in one spot and only has a situational advantage of being able to split up sometimes, but that's not the visceral, gut expectation the person drawn to the concept might be getting from stories with characters who have cool animal companions that can tag-team rescue them from monsters and such. The fantasy expects to be overpowered, because its a conflation of a story with two party members of similar power (one of which is a beast, the power actually coming from friendship with this extra beast character, or in short having a party), trying to turn that into a single character. What usually happens is that when someone writes a "pet" class, it's always on the stronger end or even obviously overpowered. Druid is a full caster, plus a pet. Necromancer builds are full casters, plus a horde or big minion. PF Summoner is a 2/3 caster, plus a pet which I'm told is quite overpowered. Even Paladin and Ranger maintain full BAB, minor casting, and extra abilities, on top of their pets (which are generally considered too weak as written). Add to this the fact that every 3.x character has a certain baseline combat skill and the game's expectations are not very much higher than basic attacks, and merely having one set of basic attacks plus a suitably animal/monstrous attack routine can easily be overpowered compared to some characters.

And if you actually thread the needle well enough to turn two characters into a balanced single character, well congrats. Still can have people complain that the pet is too weak, or that someone else's character is stronger than theirs because they're not using/thinking of the pet as strongly. I think it's actually easier to thread the needle on pets though, if you're very clear about figuring out your attack/damage/etc expectations for other characters and aren't afraid of making a "combat" character squishier to account for having a whole second body and hit points. You can thread the needle for magic too, but while video games (and MMOs in particular) have been presenting pet classes and magic users as balanced against everyone else, there's a lot more literature reinforcing the Powerful Magic trope to overcome.

And of course, I like that trope and its representation in 3.x, because I am one of those people who's read lots of Powerful Magic and wants it that way.

danielxcutter

2022-01-04, 03:54 AM

Hmm.

Okay, in a vacuum, the balor honestly didn't fight that bad? Greater Dispel Magic, Blasphemy, and Implosion are all solid spells, and the decision to use Fire Storm wasn't a terrible one since the party had no actual fire resistance and the balor noticed that.

That being said, wasting three rounds in a row on SLAs specifically blocked by Greater Spell Immunity? It kinda feels like the DM was going easy on them. I think I would have had the balor try the Implosion or another Greater Dispel Magic then, or ditch spells entirely at that point. And it really should have tried the quickened Telekinesis SLA, even if it hadn't worked.

The party... well, the combat medic cleric was weird but I guess it's an RP thing. The Barbarian and Hammer of Moradin hitting hard makes sense too. I really don't understand why the Wizard was using Quickened True Strike Multishots though, holy bow or not. I can't be sure without seeing a more detailed breakdown(which doesn't exist, I know) - maybe the Wizard was out of spells? The lack of a mention what the Wizard was doing before that could indicate that they were casting then. Still, that's only like... maybe thirty points of damage, if we're being generous?

I dunno, it'd make more sense if the wizard was a gish or at least was indicated to have roughly medium-ish BAB from prestige classes but there's no indication of that whatsoever.

Edit:

[snipped for length]

I kinda think you're missing the point, though? If two players can do all the cool stuff and the other two have nothing to do but do damage in combat - which is basically what happens without slanting the RP towards the non-casters or additional sourcebooks - plenty of people aren't going to find that fun at all.

Fizban

2022-01-04, 04:07 AM

I really don't understand why the Wizard was using Quickened True Strike Multishots though, holy bow or not. I can't be sure without seeing a more detailed breakdown(which doesn't exist, I know) - maybe the Wizard was out of spells? The lack of a mention what the Wizard was doing before that could indicate that they were casting then. Still, that's only like... maybe thirty points of damage, if we're being generous?
To be fair, I don't much get it either. Obviously they felt that was their best option, but they'd already taken Manyshot, so clearly they'd been planning on it. Maybe they'd done so specifically as a sort of gish-not-gish backup plan because there are foes that spells aren't great against, or maybe they just did it for the lulz. It's pretty comparable to and possibly more efficient than SR: No orbs would be, with few if any spells that could compete with the bow combo in reliability. If I had to guess, I'd say they took it as their backup for conserving spells- against enemies weak enough that say a Reserve feat would be fine, they could hit normal shots, and with True Strike they can upgrade that to Manyshots every other round, and Quickened up to every round, with the added bonus that they get to ignore SR and saves and resistances (while normal spells can already ignore DR).

I kinda think you're missing the point, though? If two players can do all the cool stuff and the other two have nothing to do but do damage in combat - which is basically what happens without slanting the RP towards the non-casters or additional sourcebooks - plenty of people aren't going to find that fun at all.
And clearly I kinda think you're the one missing the point. The other two players can do cool stuff, it's just not the same stuff (and it's stuff you don't think is cool)*. Taking a full attack from a big monster and surviving is cool. Hitting it back and knowing you can do that all day is cool, even if you consider that "just damage." Executing good tactical positioning to maximize actions and minimize party damage is cool. Having a bunch of skills you can use all day is cool. Plenty of people have/still do play the game and find it fun without massive modification, so clearly this is not an unavoidable problem. If someone doesn't think a build can do cool stuff, they usually won't make that character, problem avoided. If a group finds that the way they want to play makes certain classes less cool than others, they stop using those classes or fix them, but that doesn't mean the game is inherently broken.

There's a very narrow space where you can say that people new to the game might make certain characters and then play a certain way and find the game having certain problems, and that's a fine thing to point out. But it's a narrow space that people either don't fall into or notice pretty quickly.

*And I say this from experience. I'm traditionally a diehard caster player, and yet in the game where I was playing a special homebrew "spiker" class with a bunch of supernatural abilities to go with my magic, I was still plenty jealous of the tank build. Who "merely" did things like walk through a high level Blade Barrier to smash in the face of an enemy Cleric, in an Antimagic Field, and then walk back out, or wade into the friendly fire of a Black Tentacles and proceed to grapple and choke out a bunch of Trolls for fun (he had no Improved Grapple, just BAB/Str/Powerful Build). My build was effectively a hyper specialized Battle Sorcerer, but hey look- I wasn't playing an over-optimized "tier 1" and making everyone feel bad (of course, I was effectively playing an over-optimized "tier 2," and one player did feel bad despite having magic of their own, but anyway).

danielxcutter

2022-01-04, 04:22 AM

To be fair, I don't much get it either. Obviously they felt that was their best option, but they'd already taken Manyshot, so clearly they'd been planning on it. Maybe they'd done so specifically as a sort of gish-not-gish backup plan because there are foes that spells aren't great against, or maybe they just did it for the lulz. It's pretty comparable to and possibly more efficient than SR: No orbs would be, with few if any spells that could compete with the bow combo in reliability. If I had to guess, I'd say they took it as their backup for conserving spells- against enemies weak enough that say a Reserve feat would be fine, they could hit normal shots, and with True Strike they can upgrade that to Manyshots every other round, and Quickened up to every round, with the added bonus that they get to ignore SR and saves and resistances (while normal spells can already ignore DR).

That still feels really inefficient... I guess SR is still kind of a pain, but wouldn't it still be way more better to cast buffs or BFC spells even if they expected to fail all the SR checks?

Fizban

2022-01-04, 04:31 AM

That still feels really inefficient... I guess SR is still kind of a pain, but wouldn't it still be way more better to cast buffs or BFC spells even if they expected to fail all the SR checks?

The article said they'd already cast "standard buffs." You can name which spells they should have cast, but well- what mid-combat buffs or BFC spells should they have cast? You can probably dig something up, but what are the odds they had that particular spell? The most general unstoppable BFC I can think of is Solid Fog, which people love, except it doesn't do anything- this party was 3/5 melee characters, anything you throw at the Balor is going to get in their way too.

Batcathat

2022-01-04, 04:32 AM

Well like I said, I think it's part of the ancient trope. Magic is power, wish-fulfillment. At it's core, it's not meant to be balanced. Either it's the power that gives the hero victory, or it's the overpowering threat that the hero must somehow defeat anyway. You can try to "balance" it, but if the gamers know it's well and truly balanced, it's just a different shade of "sword" or "bow" or "utility skills." There are a lot of people for which, even if they don't realize it, the defining feature of magic is that magic is the best, and if magic is weaker or even just balanced they'll feel it's a bad magic system. And the more rooted in stories where magic is Power, the more likely that is.

Maybe (though the fact that plenty of people play and enjoy games where magic – if not perfectly balanced – is a lot less overpowered than D&D's makes me question it), but I think magic feeling... well, magical is less about it being Powerful and more about it feeling different. That is, that magic can do what non-magic can't. Which D&D magic certainly can, only it can also do what non-magic can do (and usually much better) which leads to imbalance.

danielxcutter

2022-01-04, 04:43 AM

The article said they'd already cast "standard buffs." You can name which spells they should have cast, but well- what mid-combat buffs or BFC spells should they have cast? You can probably dig something up, but what are the odds they had that particular spell? The most general unstoppable BFC I can think of is Solid Fog, which people love, except it doesn't do anything- this party was 3/5 melee characters, anything you throw at the Balor is going to get in their way too.

Probably Haste, that's a bit too short to cast before combat I'd say. And it's not like they had to cast at the Balor - they could have focused on locking down the troll or the marilith while the rest of the party caved its skull in.

Maybe (though the fact that plenty of people play and enjoy games where magic – if not perfectly balanced – is a lot less overpowered than D&D's makes me question it), but I think magic feeling... well, magical is less about it being Powerful and more about it feeling different. That is, that magic can do what non-magic can't. Which D&D magic certainly can, only it can also do what non-magic can do (and usually much better) which leads to imbalance.

tl;dr It's not that casters can do things martials can't, it's that martials don't really have things to do that the casters can't.

Scots Dragon

2022-01-04, 06:19 AM

Basically the problem with anecdotes involving Balors or Dragons or Tier 1 classed BBEGs or similar "supposed to be super smart" enemies is that any anecdote that involves PCs winning, which will be nearly all of them, will be poo-pooed by a kibitzer claiming dumb tactics on the villain side. Which usually ignores the work the PCs put in to get that advantage, and also the BBEG's motivations, information limits, personality and potentially outside things PCs know nothing of, such as rivals, prior battles, etc. Many of those fights involve PCs choosing an approach that matches what they learned about the enemy. Not just Kn check vs monster weakness, but how they behaved prior to their final fatal encounter with the PCs.

The Spherical Rothe effect hits D&D 3.5e fandom really hard.

danielxcutter

2022-01-04, 06:22 AM

The Spherical Rothe effect hits D&D 3.5e fandom really hard.

I'm sorry the what.

Scots Dragon

2022-01-04, 07:06 AM

I'm sorry the what.

Spherical cow effect (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spherical_cow), modified for fantasy cattle (https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Roth%C3%A9).

RandomPeasant

2022-01-04, 08:03 AM

Honestly, Blasphemy is a pretty good opener. But IÂ’d expect it to break out the high level SLAs pretty quickly becauseÂ… why wouldnÂ’t it?

You can talk all you want about attempting to conserve resources, but when you get down to it, the Balor's only limited resources are fire storm, implosion, the Summon, and Quickened uses of telekinesis. Even if you accept that the Balor is supposed to be conserving resources, there's no particular reason for it not to jump to blasphemy and dominate monster, as those are both at-will SLAs.

I'm honestly not a fan of "instant-win" spells like that. At least most save-or-X spells well, actually have you roll a saving throw. Not that I'm particularly fond of save-or-die/lose spells either...

blasphemy is fine if both CL and HD are tightly controlled, and it doesn't show up as an at-will SLA in the hands of boss monsters. The dynamic of "blow away minions, weaken the boss's lieutenants, do nothing to the boss" is fine, it's just that both CL and HD vary wildly.

"The players might not realize they need to flee" is pretty clear that fleeing is a possible result.

Fleeing is a possible result of any encounter. The language used is very clear about not taxing players past their limits, when it uses the phase "to their limits" instead of "past their limits".

And considering how long it takes to run pen and paper DnD, I don't think the sort of thing you want is feasible for a very finite number of people playing in a very finite amount of time.

People found and reported bugs in 3.5 while it was in playtest, and those bugs made it into the final product. It is entirely possible to do better than the designers did, insisting otherwise is FUD.

No, my citation (or rather, evidence) that it isn't correct is the easily seen proof that a 4th level core NPC Fighter does not compare to a Brown Bear, or a 12th level to a Purple Worm, or an X level Wizard to just about anything.

Do all the other CR 4 creatures compare to the brown bear? What about all the other CR 12 creatures and the Purple Worm? What about the templated monsters, that are derived from CR == Level, then modified by a fixed value. Are all templates somehow capable of smoothing out all the issues with converting levels to CR, or is every single template CR entry also a designer error?

You have not provided a citation within pages 48-50, nor one from outside it that usurps its primacy in defining the encounter system.

So what? You haven't provided a source in there that conflicts with the claim. You haven't provided a source that conflicts with the claim at all. Your argument is just "designers can be wrong" and "if you look at the data, I'm pretty sure they're wrong". My argument is that the rules say that, in most cases, CR == Level. Until you produce rules that say that is not the case, that is what the rules say, and it makes you wrong.

The person who ran the fight explicitly said it was of very real consequence, and it looks to have kept their best attacker out of nearly the entire fight. If you're simply going to reject anything but your own gameplay as evidence, consider why then anyone should accept yours.

So because they made analysis, that analysis must be correct?

Spell Immunity has no visible effect. You do not "see or detect" that your spell fails, it simply fails, with the only direct feedback you can claim as "detecting" being that you rolled an SR check and failed. If you choose to give out more information than the skill says to, go ahead, but arguing about rules citations and then making a skill more powerful than the rules say it is, is applying a double standard.

When you cast fire storm, and you see that people take no damage, that is seeing something. When you detect that a spell fails because of infinite SR, that is detecting something. Just because you don't want to admit the possibility that the designers might not understand the game doesn't mean the skill doesn't do anything. That usage is for exactly this situation -- observing an effect that could be caused by multiple spells and determining which caused it.

Making absolute statements about RAW Knowledge and Spellcraft generally doesn't work out, as they're mostly left to the DM.

Oh, and we're once again back to "it doesn't matter what the rules say, the DM should just tune it to what they want", which is still a concession of the point rather than an argument.

Also again on DMG 50: "Modifying Difficulty: Orcs with crossbows firing down at the PCs while the characters cross a narrow ledge over a pit full of spikes. . . Consider the sorts of factors, related to location or situation, that make an encounter more difficult, such as the following."

Also says absolutely nothing about tactics. I will grant you that something like "Balors engage inside a labyrinth of permanent illusions only they can see through" would be unfair. "Balors use their abilities effectively" is completely fair, and no amount of complaining will change that. Produce a citation that agrees with you, don't just pull random quotes.

A portion of their T2ness had to do with how easily spells could be added to their list, and the Beguiler has an incredibly broad list of spells with illusions, time, conjuration, mind effecting and other spells.

The list extension stuff matters at the high end of optimization. The stock Beguiler or Dread Necromancer is still firmly T2 when compared against similarly-unoptimized characters. And the Beguiler's list is somewhat broad, but it's nowhere near the Wizard. You are still primarily relying on Will saves for your offensive spells, even if you do have other options.

I kinda think you're missing the point, though? If two players can do all the cool stuff and the other two have nothing to do but do damage in combat - which is basically what happens without slanting the RP towards the non-casters or additional sourcebooks - plenty of people aren't going to find that fun at all.

And more than that, the practical effect of the Fighter being ineffective isn't "the Fighter is a cohort" but "the DM constructs adventures so the Cleric's and Wizard's abilities are trivialized". Imbalance lowers the game to the lowest common denominator. You don't get "more game" by adding character classes that suck, you get less. We already have a mechanism for making some characters worse than others. It's called level and it works very well. All the "imbalance is a feature" talk is from people who don't understand the game they're talking about.

Tzardok

2022-01-04, 08:11 AM

And as a matter of fact, there is a whole other tabletop RPG where a certain portion of the players actually do play "glorified cohorts," in a deliberately asymmetrical combination with other players who are the uber magicians, as a fundamental part of the game. And hey look, DnD 3.x is so huge it can support multiple types of game. The one where you play as the designers expected, and the one where casters are "objectively" (contextually, in that particular type of game) so powerful that some of the players could be playing sidekicks- and also the game where everyone's character is that powerful and the DM dials up all the threats to match them, and. . .

Oh? Which game is that? That sounds interesting. And like it could be the base for a Fate/Stay Night-like game...

*And I say this from experience. I'm traditionally a diehard caster player, and yet in the game where I was playing a special homebrew "spiker" class with a bunch of supernatural abilities to go with my magic, I was still plenty jealous of the tank build. Who "merely" did things like walk through a high level Blade Barrier to smash in the face of an enemy Cleric, in an Antimagic Field, and then walk back out, or wade into the friendly fire of a Black Tentacles and proceed to grapple and choke out a bunch of Trolls for fun (he had no Improved Grapple, just BAB/Str/Powerful Build). My build was effectively a hyper specialized Battle Sorcerer, but hey look- I wasn't playing an over-optimized "tier 1" and making everyone feel bad (of course, I was effectively playing an over-optimized "tier 2," and one player did feel bad despite having magic of their own, but anyway).

I know what you mean. I used to play a lot of low level games and was a caster nearly every time. And nearly everytime I got jealous at the other characters for having things like "hit points" or "good initiative". What use is being an oh-so-powerful wizard if the fight is nearly over before you get to act? :smallannoyed::smallbiggrin:

Seward

2022-01-04, 08:59 AM

Oh? Which game is that? That sounds interesting. And like it could be the base for a Fate/Stay Night-like game...

Ars Magica.

And if you think D&D has bookkeeping for your character, you've seen nothing on that game. Both for characters and their dwelling, which is basically a character in itself. Plots span decades and your servants have kids that continue to serve the wizards, all getting stranger and stranger over time as everybody, wizard and mundane, get exposed to whatever high magic area you set up your home in. Also longevity potions and magical accidents tend to make wizards strange too, over time. You start out playing a just graduated apprentice. If you don't die violently, your main character has 80-100 years of play time, and while they don't tend to have kids, they do tend to take apprentices, which mean you are running a lot of characters in a mature campaign.

Not a beer and pretzel game. More the tabletop equivalent of one of those conquer the world wargames that require you to have a board set up in the basement for a year and very dedicated players showing up every weekend to make a move, while doing paperwork between sessions.

We had fun with it when me and all my housemates were mostly unemployed in the early 1990s but could never sustain it under more normal circumstances. You can do decent one-offs for a convention-type adventure if all the players understand the system and world though. Part of what makes it work is everybody makes a wizard, a "companion" (mundane with specialized skills) and several "grogs" (straight up bodyguards, of the "armed rabble" variety mostly - a highly skilled martial like an armored horseman or English Longbowman would tend to be a companion). Most of the time wizards are doing research or arcane projects, so a given adventure-style mission will have only 1-2 wizard characters, mostly younger ones, with the rest of the party filled out with grogs and maybe a companion or two.

Lans

2022-01-04, 09:45 AM

The list extension stuff matters at the high end of optimization. The stock Beguiler or Dread Necromancer is still firmly T2 when compared against similarly-unoptimized characters. And the Beguiler's list is somewhat broad, but it's nowhere near the Wizard. You are still primarily relying on Will saves for your offensive spells, even if you do have other options.

I'm pretty sure the list extension stuff matters at all levels of optimization, and with out it they are much reduced in the T2 role. The Beguilers spell list is broader than it should be and has plenty of no save battlefield control for offense as well as buffs like haste that I think are outside the purview of what the Beguiler should have that can be cut as part of a rebalance.

danielxcutter

2022-01-04, 09:49 AM

It does kinda feel like they got all the spells Warmage and Dread Necromancer didn’t except for the Conjuration spells.

Xervous

2022-01-04, 10:09 AM

Mobile giving me a headache I can’t easily nab the portion of Fizban’s essay that I’d like to quote.

>3.5 D&D without save or die/no save spells is just 5e

I’m not buying this one bit. In order to get from 3.5 to 5e you need to also:
strip the skill system down to an unmoving collection of die nudges that never promise competency.
compact the math of the system to the point that 5e martials make the 3.5e fighter look quadratic when you measure against chaff like low level goblins, among other things.
Eliminate most lasting consequences from hazards and creatures
Eliminate most options for playing actual large or small characters, or otherwise monstrous characters

The list goes on. 3.5e is very much itself without no save just lose, or SoD. This is not also removing “nat 20 or die”/“nat 1 or you die”/“save or take lethal damage” scenarios being delivered by effect or attack, which are features of the system players could bumble their way into.

Darg

2022-01-04, 10:17 AM

tl;dr It's not that casters can do things martials can't, it's that martials don't really have things to do that the casters can't.

This is an argument said a lot and is inherently untrue. A wizard focuses on skills wholly different than the martials/mundanes. Characters themselves build rapport with locals and if someone catches you casting charm the gig is up. A commander might be more inclined to trust the fighter with the charm of a cactus over a gangly wizard who has the charm of an eel. We can argue all about mechanics, that martials can't do anything the wizard can do (be an HP sponge, use combat maneuvers all day long, have higher BAB so they need less buffing to hit targets, less likely to die or be taken out of a fight from fortitude saves, don't need to rely on temporary spells to function as a frontliner, have connections the wizard could not, don't have to split a focus to fill a role, be an always present barrier to keep enemies from reaching backliners easily, etc.) There are a lot of things that martials can do that casters can't. If a wizard would rather spend a polymorph on themselves instead of a fighter that has more natural toughness and BAB, it is going to be worse than just using polymorph on the fighter.

The focus is so much on what the casters can do that everyone forgets it's a 24hr world out there where casting a spell for every little thing makes the game unbearably tedious. Casters can do everything, just at the expense of a smooth running world because it bogs down into an extra complicated chess match.

danielxcutter

2022-01-04, 10:21 AM

Ignoring that a core Wizard can snap a campaign over their knee despite having like 6 Str before racial and age modifiers if they try hard enough, what about the divine casters? CoDzilla isn’t just because the Druid actually can turn into a gigantic scaled lizard, y’know.

Batcathat

2022-01-04, 10:30 AM

This is an argument said a lot and is inherently untrue. A wizard focuses on skills wholly different than the martials/mundanes. Characters themselves build rapport with locals and if someone catches you casting charm the gig is up. A commander might be more inclined to trust the fighter with the charm of a cactus over a gangly wizard who has the charm of an eel. We can argue all about mechanics, that martials can't do anything the wizard can do (be an HP sponge, use combat maneuvers all day long, have higher BAB so they need less buffing to hit targets, less likely to die or be taken out of a fight from fortitude saves, don't need to rely on temporary spells to function as a frontliner, have connections the wizard could not, don't have to split a focus to fill a role, be an always present barrier to keep enemies from reaching backliners easily, etc.) There are a lot of things that martials can do that casters can't. If a wizard would rather spend a polymorph on themselves instead of a fighter that has more natural toughness and BAB, it is going to be worse than just using polymorph on the fighter.

Sure, if we're looking at very specific things, there are things non-casters can do but casters can't. But I think it's more meaningful to look at slightly broader situations. Wizards might not be as good at taking a sword to the face or sticking it in someone else's as the figher – but they have plenty of spells to withstand or inflict damage. Wizards might not be as good at sneaking around as a rogue – but they have plenty of spells to handle stealth. Wizards might be not be as charming as a bard – but they have plenty of spells to change someone's mind. And so on and so on.

And yes, martials doing things all day long while casters run out of spells is supposed to balance the two, but it typically doesn't work great in practice (even without extremes like a 15 minute adventuring day).

Stuff like bonding with the locals is very situational and hardly something that helps with class balance, especially since you could just as easily run into people more prone to trusting wizards as the opposite.

EDIT: It occurs to me that bard might be a bad choice to represent non-casters, so let's just say it's a stand-in for characters using non-magical persuasion.

danielxcutter

2022-01-04, 10:35 AM

Also, Cleric and Druid both have Diplomacy as a class skill. And Fighter and Barbarian don’t.

Raven777

2022-01-04, 11:11 AM

Also, Cleric and Druid both have Diplomacy as a class skill. And Fighter and Barbarian don’t.

I can't speak for 3.5's side of the fence, but Pathfinder has plenty of ways to nab pretty much any class skill one desires through Alternate Racial Traits and Traits without sacrificing away Class power. For exemple, you can whip up a Half-Elf and snipe Diplomacy, Perception and Sense Motive super easily (Fey Thoughts plus any one of Princess or Extremely Fashionable).

I will also add that the spotlight hogging in social or skill challenges is better adressed as a player issue than a mechanics one. I played with an Half-Ogre Barbarian player who dominated any conversation that ever came up in the campaign because that was that player's style to take charge and be the party's face regardless of whatever he was actually playing. The whole group's door bashing style also consistently nullified the Rogue. No feelings were hurt because the Diplomacy invested Sorcerer and the Stealth invested Rogue were content blasting and backstabbing respectively. That campaign had the Sorcerer, Wizard, Cleric, Druid, Rogue and Barbarian all operating at similar levels of effectiveness (by virtue of often tripping over each other, but still). Any grievance would have been 100% on style and tactics, but in the end everyone had fun for a year.

Now I expect the argument that "yeah but an unoptimized or dysfunctional party is not representative of blablabla" but when the games I played all had merry bands of misfits that were varying degrees of dysfunctional hobos had martials and casters having fun at the table, I wonder if those balance woes actual manifestations at real tables ain't more related to unicorns and spherical cows that we'd like to admit.

Silva Stormrage

2022-01-04, 01:26 PM

I can't speak for 3.5's side of the fence, but Pathfinder has plenty of ways to nab pretty much any class skill one desires through Alternate Racial Traits and Traits without sacrificing away Class power. For exemple, you can whip up a Half-Elf and snipe Diplomacy, Perception and Sense Motive super easily (Fey Thoughts plus any one of Princess or Extremely Fashionable).

I will also add that the spotlight hogging in social or skill challenges is better adressed as a player issue than a mechanics one. I played with an Half-Ogre Barbarian player who dominated any conversation that ever came up in the campaign because that was that player's style to take charge and be the party's face regardless of whatever he was actually playing. The whole group's door bashing style also consistently nullified the Rogue. No feelings were hurt because the Diplomacy invested Sorcerer and the Stealth invested Rogue were content blasting and backstabbing respectively. That campaign had the Sorcerer, Wizard, Cleric, Druid, Rogue and Barbarian all operating at similar levels of effectiveness (by virtue of often tripping over each other, but still). Any grievance would have been 100% on style and tactics, but in the end everyone had fun for a year.

Now I expect the argument that "yeah but an unoptimized or dysfunctional party is not representative of blablabla" but when the games I played all had merry bands of misfits that were varying degrees of dysfunctional hobos had martials and casters having fun at the table, I wonder if those balance woes actual manifestations at real tables ain't more related to unicorns and spherical cows that we'd like to admit.

It can be a pain to do so for 3.5 often costing a feat that does little else but grant such a class skill, in 3.5 you spend twice as many skill points on cross class skills as well so it is a significantly more painful situation than PF.

Raven777

2022-01-04, 01:38 PM

Thank you for the reminder. Yes, making Skills easier to work with is one of Pathfinder's good ideas.

Seward

2022-01-04, 02:00 PM

Also, Cleric and Druid both have Diplomacy as a class skill. And Fighter and Barbarian don’t.

Intimidate works about as well as most charm spells. Fighter and barbarian often mean you don't have to prep fly or spider climb or whatever to avoid a mundane obstacle (or you cast fly and maybe enlarge on said martial and they carry the whole party for one spell). Plus they can just smash an obstacle instead of something like knock or disintegrate with 2gp items like crowbars.

I've done the all arcane party. It works better at L16 than at L1. I've been the only martial in a group of divine casters at tiers 4, 6 12 and 14. My character got all the best buffs that could be cast on others because they just worked better on me.

It's a team game. A martial is usually a better chasse for buffs, or to conserve party resources to overcome easier challenges. A martial after the baby levels (where low attack mods and usually only 1 attack make their offensive efforts vulnerable to the whim of the d20) is also the single most reliable way to eliminate an enemy before it can act again, assuming it is in position to act.

System mastery in a group can deeply influence how useful each party member is, and that can warp views of how useful martials are. Whether I'm playing support, primary caster arcane in more "batman" style, a more martial divine caster or a pure or nearly pure martial, I look at party dynamics first before the first encounter. Is the druid somebody who took a "pet" class and doesn't know how to do anything but order her wolf to attack, even at L12? Is the cleric a jerkass who spends 3 rounds buffing before deigning to participate, by which time the fight is over? Is the wizard somebody who confidently has spells prepared or slows everything up dithering, before chosing a spell selection that most sorcerers run by a 10 year old could easily outdo? Did the martial forget to buy strength, without an ability that substitutes another attribute for strength? (monks and archers are especially prone to this sin, but I've seen AC-oriented "tanks" that also fail this way).

With the casters, I try to learn what they see their role as, and after the first fight I know whether they can fill that role. With the martials, I try to learn what conditions they need to be effective. Then I adjust my own play to make the party function better. Even if it is something like "ok, that's a low AC barbarian who always charges alone into danger. Maybe my martial who is built better for that needs to try to get in front of him and go first..."

RandomPeasant

2022-01-04, 06:06 PM

I'm pretty sure the list extension stuff matters at all levels of optimization, and with out it they are much reduced in the T2 role. The Beguilers spell list is broader than it should be and has plenty of no save battlefield control for offense as well as buffs like haste that I think are outside the purview of what the Beguiler should have that can be cut as part of a rebalance.

A Sorcerer that picks only spells off the Beguiler list is a low-op T2, and they are strictly worse than a Beguiler. The list expansion shows up at low levels of optimization, because some of it is very easy (though a lot of the easy stuff applies as much to a Sorcerer), but it's not necessary to hit the T2 power level. And while their list is not bad, it does have limits, and more than that, the core of their offensive spells is responsible for a lot of their power. For all that people will bring up protection from evil in any discussion about charm and dominate spells, those effects are overwhelmingly powerful in the vast majority of campaigns. That's why people go to such efforts to combat them.

It does kinda feel like they got all the spells Warmage and Dread Necromancer didnÂ’t except for the Conjuration spells.

That's just ... not true. The Beguiler gets a couple of Abjuration and Divination spells, but most of those schools are still up for grabs (though admittedly, they include relatively few splashy options you could hang a character on). They also don't get Transmutation, which has enough in it to cover a "Transmute X to Y" grab bag, a shapechanger, and a buff-bot. The Beguiler gets a much larger pile of off-theme goodies than either of the other fixed-list casters (though the fact that the Dread Necromancer is still T2 despite that rather moots the proximate point), but the pile they don't get is larger still by an impressive margin.

don't have to split a focus to fill a role

Many of your arguments are bad, but this one is particularly egregious. Being able to fill a role while splitting your focus is a good thing. It means the party gets that role filled, and also gets whatever stuff you have left over. A 10th level Cleric has 27 spells, two domain powers, and a pool of turning attempts to his name. If he spends anything less than all of those to fill the frontline combatant role in place of a Fighter, his party is coming out ahead. In fact, even if he spends all of those resources on frontline fighting during adventuring days, he provides downtime utility the Fighter cannot.

If a wizard would rather spend a polymorph on themselves instead of a fighter that has more natural toughness and BAB, it is going to be worse than just using polymorph on the fighter.

But is it worse than spending it on a tricked-out Gish or a DMM'd up Cleric? Because that's the question you have to answer. The opportunity cost of casting a buff on a Fighter isn't "I can't cast this buff on myself", it's "I can't cast this buff on a more effective frontliner". This is the same error of analysis that leads to you talking about "split focus" as a bad thing.

And yes, martials doing things all day long while casters run out of spells is supposed to balance the two, but it typically doesn't work great in practice (even without extremes like a 15 minute adventuring day).

It also only really holds at pretty low levels. By mid levels, the existence of minions, Wild Shape, Persistent Spell, and various ways of stretching out your spell slots mean that casters can build to be just as effective as martials over an extended adventuring day. While still being dramatically more powerful when allowed to nova. I would much rather have a Cleric Archer with a wall of undead minions from animate dead than a Fighter or even a Warblade.

Also, Cleric and Druid both have Diplomacy as a class skill. And Fighter and Barbarian donÂ’t.

The contention seems to be that if you focus on non-mechanical aspects of the game, and arbitrarily declare that the non-mechanical traits the Fighter happens to have are the ones that cause you to win, the Fighter is good. It's one of those arguments that's true, but about as relevant as the price of tea in China. Certainly we can imagine the militia captain being impressed by the martial skill of the gruff Fighter and ignoring the effete Wizard. But we can also imagine the militia captain liking the Wizard because he remembers his squad's support mage saving him when he was in the army and ignoring a Fighter who is a prancing duelist. Which prevails is a question of mechanics.

A martial is usually a better chasse for buffs, or to conserve party resources to overcome easier challenges.

I suspect that comes from the same error of analysis as Darg was making. A Fighter has a nicer chassis than any caster, but they don't come with any buffs of their own. And unlike the expendable minions casters can produce by droves from fairly early on (e.g. animal companion at 1st, animate dead at 5th for the Cleric), it matters if he dies. I am suspicious that an overall analysis of the value proposition of spending a party slot for one meat shield you need to keep alive versus having passive class features produce several you can let (re-)die coming down in favor of the martial.

Fizban

2022-01-04, 07:28 PM

Probably Haste, that's a bit too short to cast before combat I'd say. And it's not like they had to cast at the Balor - they could have focused on locking down the troll or the marilith while the rest of the party caved its skull in.
I'd expect they'd already have Haste running from the previous fight, it lasts long enough.

Ars Magica.
Ah thanks, I would have had to google it. And yes, the not-so-secret flipside of that example is that the game has players using both types of characters, though if you had a group with both people that always wanted to be the power and some that always wanted to be the sidekick, you could probably juggle control of each character to let them do that anyway. Naturally, a game with deliberately asymmetrical characters ought to default to players switching roles, which this does.

I'm pretty sure the list extension stuff matters at all levels of optimization, and with out it they are much reduced in the T2 role. The Beguilers spell list is broader than it should be and has plenty of no save battlefield control for offense as well as buffs like haste that I think are outside the purview of what the Beguiler should have that can be cut as part of a rebalance.

It does kinda feel like they got all the spells Warmage and Dread Necromancer didn’t except for the Conjuration spells.
This is why I hate the Beguiler as an example, particularly compared to the Warmage- it's from PHB2, the book where you can see the designers splitting in both directions, and written years later. The Warmage was designed with a specific shtick, and not given anything outside that on purpose because that's the whole point. The Beguiler was pretty clearly designed to be useful even when their shtick doesn't work (and their shtick of mind control and illusions was already massively broad). Two different design philosophies, apples and oranges.

The Dread Necro is. . . actually written earlier, huh. With a narrower spell list (in number, IIRC) that nonetheless incorporates a wide range of effects (save or lose, no-save, summoning, less efficient damage, even a BFC, and of course permanent minions) as long as they're sufficiently necromancy/undead themed, as well as Dispel Magic.

>3.5 D&D without save or die/no save spells is just 5e
That's what I get for not including a bunch of qualifiers. It's 5e in the sense that 5e looks kinda like 3.x on the surface, and one of the major things to notice is that there's no save or die and almost everything ties back into damage (an effective system but not what I want). I am perfectly aware of all the other things you list that 5e lacks, which are also reasons I dislike it, but that response was about Powerful Magic and save-or-die/don't even bother rolling spells in particular.

Seward

2022-01-04, 09:21 PM

I suspect that comes from the same error of analysis as Darg was making. A Fighter has a nicer chassis than any caster, but they don't come with any buffs of their own.

It isn't an error, it is a disagreement in what the result means.

I see D&D as a team game. I've done "solo challenge" stuff for fun, but the very nature of saving throws and action economy means that the game is not built for that, it is built for a team of 4-6 and as such, somebody who is an ideal chasse to receive buffs can be a major contributor.

It matters because sometimes you get an enemy with defenses that are just too high, where spells are ineffectual and AC is sky high (or sometimes something with so much offense you can't let it get an action and it MUST go down before it counterattacks). If the beatsticks are relying on buffs to perform at the same level as an unbuffed fighter, the party might lose. If the party responds by supercharging its already EL-appropriate-with-just-gear beatsticks the encounter is often is a matter of just positioning said buffed beatstick to succeed, instead of needing something like, I dunno, truestrike+multishot every other round to do any damage at all.

I'm reminded of one encounter where the BBEG was tied up with just enough battlefield control to prevent it from escaping via tree-stride...it got into the tree but didn't have enough actions left to shift to a new tree and was still in there when we all had our actions. "Does anybody know how many hitpoints a tree has?" (there is actually a rule, I think it is 150) "Can anybody kill that tree in one round" (fighter with adamantine axe...."probably..if I don't roll poorly").

Everybody else spent an action to either give the fighter more offense or to transport him in position to full attack (slightly more complicated than usual due to our own battlefield control...I think one action was dismissing or dispelling something). The BBEG died by the "if the tree is chopped down while you are in it you die" rule. Something like that has always been there for that spell or similar spells in various editions but it took me about 30 years of playing D&D to see it matter.

RandomPeasant

2022-01-04, 09:38 PM

The Beguiler was pretty clearly designed to be useful even when their shtick doesn't work (and their shtick of mind control and illusions was already massively broad).

There's not really a time when the shtick of "mind control" doesn't work, because even when you're fighting something you can't mind control, you have all your previously mind-controlled stuff to boss around. haste and the like are a QoL feature, not really a power increase.

The Dread Necro is. . . actually written earlier, huh. With a narrower spell list (in number, IIRC) that nonetheless incorporates a wide range of effects (save or lose, no-save, summoning, less efficient damage, even a BFC, and of course permanent minions) as long as they're sufficiently necromancy/undead themed, as well as Dispel Magic.

That reveals one of the issues with the whole "just make them focused" thing. The Dread Necromancer has all those things, because those are the things you expect a Necromancer to do. If your Necromancer can't inflict terrible curses, command undead hordes, spread foul plagues, and blast people with dark power, it's not doing the job of a Necromancer. At a certain point, limitations start hurting your ability to create characters people want to play.

I see D&D as a team game.

And I never said I didn't. The point is that the tradeoff is not "the Wizard casts buffs on themselves" versus "the Wizard casts buffs on the Fighter", but "we have a Fighter as a beatstick" versus "we have a Cleric as a beatstick".

somebody who is an ideal chasse to receive buffs can be a major contributor.

What abilities does a Fighter have that make him particularly good at receiving buffs? Seriously, what is the force multiplier here that justifies giving up a full caster's worth of spells? Because people say this all the time, and it always seems to be "unspecified bonus feats" or "full BAB (but ignore divine power because DMM: Persistent is shenanigans)", and I don't find either of those persuasive.

If the beatsticks are relying on buffs to perform at the same level as an unbuffed fighter, the party might lose.

But that's the point, they don't. The Cleric Archer doesn't need to cast a buff routine at the start of combat, they just passively have buffs up that make them better than a Fighter. And then they get various combat and utility spells on top of that, and the swarm of undead minions that animate dead gives them just for being a Cleric at all.

instead of needing something like, I dunno, truestrike+multishot every other round to do any damage at all.

Yes, I agree that the Wizard in the example is built very poorly as a replacement for a Fighter. That doesn't mean that an optimized Cleric or Druid performs just as badly. Hell, even a Gish-ed up Wizard is perfectly capable of hitting a Balor consistently without needing to burn spells on a round-by-round basis.

danielxcutter

2022-01-04, 09:52 PM

There’s a reason people say that Wizard/Wizard/Cleric/Druid works better than most parties you know. Or something on those lines, I honestly don’t remember the specifics.

RandomPeasant

2022-01-04, 10:25 PM

I will say, in the interest of fairness, that the all caster party does require a certain amount of effort to ensure all roles are filled, particularly at low levels. There's not really a niche you can't fill with a caster, but if you say to four people "build a caster", there's a decent chance you get something like Wizard/Sorcerer/Beguiler/Archivist, and that party is going to feel their lack of a frontline combatant for the first few levels.

petermcleod117

2022-01-04, 10:47 PM

Scots Dragon

2022-01-05, 04:09 AM

I feel the fact that it has the best system reference document helps a bit.

It's so easy to reference core material — save a couple of monsters — just by pulling up a website.

Seward

2022-01-05, 10:34 AM

I feel the fact that it has the best system reference document helps a bit.

It's so easy to reference core material — save a couple of monsters — just by pulling up a website.

d20pfsrd does the same thing only better. Of course without the d20srd, there would be no Pathfinder, so there is that.

I agree though, the existence of the SRD pretty much ensures there will be some d20 stuff in perpetuity, long after it starts getting players that weren't born when 3.5 was really active.

Psyren

2022-01-05, 11:25 AM

The other reason I haven't moved on from 3.P - there's still a bunch of classes and builds I haven't gotten to try yet. (I still haven't played a Divine Hunter for example.)

Also says absolutely nothing about tactics. I will grant you that something like "Balors engage inside a labyrinth of permanent illusions only they can see through" would be unfair. "Balors use their abilities effectively" is completely fair, and no amount of complaining will change that. Produce a citation that agrees with you, don't just pull random quotes.

Both citations are about tactics altering encounter difficulty. No amount of complaining will change that.

But if your PCs are optimized, there's nothing wrong with throwing a harder-than-expected encounter at them. Indeed, you should be doing that more often in such a case.

Maybe (though the fact that plenty of people play and enjoy games where magic – if not perfectly balanced – is a lot less overpowered than D&D's makes me question it), but I think magic feeling... well, magical is less about it being Powerful and more about it feeling different. That is, that magic can do what non-magic can't. Which D&D magic certainly can, only it can also do what non-magic can do (and usually much better) which leads to imbalance.

I don't buy the "much better" argument here. Generally when magic is emulating something a non-mage can do, there are factors like components, dispellability, limited uses/duration, and above all else opportunity cost to consider before determining which approach is "better." And if none of those things ever matter, I'd be more inclined to blame the GM's encounter design leaving tools on the table than the magic system as a whole.

This is not to say caster/martial balance can't be improved. In fact, I think 5e did exactly that, and I think some of the lessons from that system can be brought back to 3.P as well.

danielxcutter

2022-01-05, 11:31 AM

Didn’t 5e largely do that by having all 20 levels be more or less the first 7 or so of 3.5e?

Darg

2022-01-05, 11:35 AM

What abilities does a Fighter have that make him particularly good at receiving buffs? Seriously, what is the force multiplier here that justifies giving up a full caster's worth of spells? Because people say this all the time, and it always seems to be "unspecified bonus feats" or "full BAB (but ignore divine power because DMM: Persistent is shenanigans)", and I don't find either of those persuasive.

But that's the point, they don't. The Cleric Archer doesn't need to cast a buff routine at the start of combat, they just passively have buffs up that make them better than a Fighter. And then they get various combat and utility spells on top of that, and the swarm of undead minions that animate dead gives them just for being a Cleric at all.

Yes, I agree that the Wizard in the example is built very poorly as a replacement for a Fighter. That doesn't mean that an optimized Cleric or Druid performs just as badly. Hell, even a Gish-ed up Wizard is perfectly capable of hitting a Balor consistently without needing to burn spells on a round-by-round basis.

DMM isn't a core feat. It is not something inherent to the class itself. Nor can clerics always rely on it being there. The assumption it's there is wrong because it isn't always there. Imagine a world where DMM wasn't a given for every scenario (reality) and you can see that the cleric would be spending spell slots and actions to perform at the same level a fighter can.

"Swarm of undead minions".... so every cleric is evil?

Wizard gish, sure. The problem being that PRCs are never a given and should never be assumed to exist when talking about individual base classes.

RandomPeasant

2022-01-05, 11:42 AM

Both citations are about tactics altering encounter difficulty. No amount of complaining will change that.

The first citation is "if monsters have gear that is the equivalent of an expensive magical item, the fight is more difficult". The second is "if monsters have a tactical advantage their abilities give them no way to secure, the fight is more difficult". Neither of them says "if monsters use their abilities intelligently, EL goes up" because that isn't true. In fact, the opposite is true. If a Balor has no personal or operational reason not to use teleport harassment to defeat the PCs, and nevertheless does not use it, the EL for that encounter should be less than 20.

Didn’t 5e largely do that by having all 20 levels be more or less the first 7 or so of 3.5e?

Basically. 5e is the part of 3e that already worked well, over more levels. This is not really an advantage, as it doesn't do any additional stuff, you just have to wait longer to do the same stuff.

DMM isn't a core feat.

So what? We didn't say "core only". If you want to say "the Fighter is good in a core only game" (and then subsequently "the Fighter is good if you ban or nerf planar binding"), you can say that, but it's a much less compelling argument.

"Swarm of undead minions".... so every cleric is evil?

Again, if you want to say "the Cleric has to be Good", you can say that, but you're not helping your case. The more constraints you have to put on the problem to make your argument work, the less compelling of an argument it is.

Wizard gish, sure. The problem being that PRCs are never a given and should never be assumed to exist when talking about individual base classes.

It's interesting to me that literally none of the arguments you made here are about how the Fighter is good. It's all "that thing that makes the Fighter feel bad is unfair". Maybe if that's the approach you need to take to argue that the Fighter is good, the Fighter isn't really all that good.

Raven777

2022-01-05, 11:44 AM

and I think some of the lessons from that system can be brought back to 3.P as well.

If you feel like it I'm interested in details! Any idea we can crib to make a better 3.PF is a welcome idea, since Paizo abandoned me since there's no new content being made.

I already mentioned I'm a big fan of democratrizing martial feat chains (https://michaeliantorno.com/feat-taxes-in-pathfinder/). Stuff like giving martials more toys to play with (like giving extra features to Rangers based on their favored enemies (https://dnd-wiki.org/wiki/Ranger,_Tome_(3.5e_Class))). Or democratizing a lot of the utility magic through rituals anyone can attempt. I tend to hoard any link to these ideas I can get my hands on.

(Except nerfing core casters, for preference reasons as already stated :smalltongue: )

RandomPeasant

2022-01-05, 12:00 PM

If you're looking for stuff to improve your 3.PF experience, but don't want to nerf core casters, I strongly recommend looking at the various stuff under the Tome (http://www.tgdmb.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=48453) umbrella. It's written with the goal of balancing 3e with as few nerfs as possible, and while it was written with 3.5 in mind, most of it is as compatible with PF as any 3e material is.

Seward

2022-01-05, 12:12 PM

DMM isn't a core feat.

Nor is persistent spell. The only campaign I played in that allowed DMM banned Nightsticks and Persistent spell. You would see a bit of DMM quicken, and martial clerics using normal quickened divine favor+divine power for a single round buff sequence but many, many encounters they didn't go down that road (as the martials were doing fine already and they had other options to provide instead that didn't involve wasting their first combat action).

Most divine casters who switch-hit as melees reliably either weren't full casters (dipped into martial classes, so were divine gishes, basically) or it was just that - switch hitting to pretend to be a martial when the party lacked any, or when the party martials were playing up (underleveled for encounter) or just badly designed or played. (tables had a different set of players each time you gamed).

Those that were divine gishes would sometimes pretend to be a divine caster for a party that lacked any. My own pouncekitty spent much of RHOD providing druidic support for overland travel, but would switch her spells back to her usual mix when assaulting hard targets and play as pure light infantry (didn't have natural spell yet, fought wildshaped)

It's interesting to me that literally none of the arguments you made here are about how the Fighter is good. It's all "that thing that makes the Fighter feel bad is unfair". Maybe if that's the approach you need to take to argue that the Fighter is good, the Fighter isn't really all that good.

Um...I quoted YOU agreeing that a fighter had a better chasse for buffs. I figured you understood the dynamic and it didn't need to be spelled out.

A typical fighter will have a higher strength investment both in statbumps and items than a typical full caster
A typical fighter will have full bab 24x7, not relying on several feats, a spell and possibly items to achieve that (as with a DMM persistent cleric).
Full BAB means you hit more often, you sometimes get more attacks and you qualify for martial feats faster
A typical fighter will have FAR more martial feats than a full caster, much sooner

to pick a basic example.

Attributes
He gives no crap about anything but strength, dex, con, so he's likely to have a decent str mod on his bow. If he wants more str and dex, he can drop con to 10 and still have similar hitpoints/fort save to a cleric of same level, especially once he's able to buy amulet of health when the cleric is putting same item slot into periapt of wisdom. The cleric-archer will have less strength until he can pull off divine metamagic persistent divine power, and by that time the fighter will have a belt+4 or dropping 16k on his bow. Under no circumstance with the cleric be able to match the fighter in dex assuming same point buy.

A fighter archer of any race will have point blank, precise and rapid shot by level 2.

A cleric, bard or wizard archer of any race but human won't get that together till level 6. By which time the fighter also has weapon focus, weapon spec and, if we're sticking to core, probably quickdraw so he can go from not expecting a fight to a full attack (with 3 attacks, not the mere 2 of the caster class).

By level 12, again only with the core feat list, the fighter will have 3 iterative attacks, improved precise shot, +2 to hit and +4 damage from weapon spec feats and STILL have more feats to play with than the L12 cleric, who at minimum blew 2 feats on persistent spell and divine metamagic, which means, he's still creeping along with just point blank, precise, rapid as his entire archery feat mix, although divine power helps on the hitting things front and iterative attacks, and maybe his str bow is a bit higher, although by L12 a +6 belt of str on the fighter if he really cares enough to spend his cash that way isn't entirely unlikely. The fighter will have it before L16, as it'll be cheaper than another bow enhancement.

The cleric MIGHT make up the weapon spec loss with GMW on his bow, but of course any party with an arcane or divine caster at L12 unwilling to GMW the superior Fighter's bow is being idiotic. Fighter is a better chasse for the GMW buff. Or Inspire Courage. Or Righteous Wrath of the Faithful. Or Prayer or Recitation or any other buff of that sort. More likely the cleric will invest in another persistent or quickened Divine Favor to close the gap, but that won't stack with Recitation or Prayer so...not as good a chasse for buffs.

Going noncore, the fighter has plenty of feats to keep going. Ranged Weapon Mastery, Woodland Archer, Weapon Supremacy, blah blah. The cleric archer will never catch up as a chasse.

I can do the same thing for a bunch of other martials built with single class or multiclass. Hell even a monk with greater flurry can usually be a better buff chasse than a full caster.

I do grant the gish and divine gish approaches to martials can be very, very strong and many can keep it up all day (certainly the wildshape mixes can without DMM shenanigans). But they do tend to relly on self-buffs that won't stack with other buffs. A buffed-to-the-gills straight martial can generally outperform them.

danielxcutter

2022-01-05, 12:19 PM

I still think you're drastically underestimating the capabilities of a serious Cleric beatstick, especially since they're still full casters on top of that. Also it's hard to outdamage a seriously optimized martial, but the thing is that martials don't really have much to do outside of damage in combat.

Seward

2022-01-05, 12:44 PM

but the thing is that martials don't really have much to do outside of damage in combat.

People keep saying that. While they can't normally teleport the party or commune with a deity they an generally fill a skill-based role pretty well. One of those roles is "crane". Drink a potion of enlarge and fly and they can move the whole party (although of course it is much cheaper if the party arcane caster pops those spells on him instead, with scrolls if they didn't prep or have those as spells known). In lower levels they do the same with climb, swim, jump and rope perhaps.

A number of martials do quite well at scouting, can manage high spot/listen/hide/move silent and can receive the same invis/silence spells as the casters but also defeat true seeing by just hiding in the fog or a dragon's sharp ears when he stumbles into the antimagic trap the dragon set up to defeat magical intrusion.

There is no face role a martial can't do in theory (plenty of fullbab classes have interesting face skills) although they can't mind control, most parties don't use that any more than they would intimidation if they care about long term consequences. Martials can get good enough at intimidation to get most of the benefits of mind reading when interrogating prisoners.

Ditto trapfinding/intrusion, although the approach may not resemble a rogue. My monk used to just go into rooms and touch everything, then start slicing open anything locked with his adamantine kama. He was immune to poison and disease, had hitpoints etc to survive a rare saving throw failure (and improved evasion), was strong enough to simply bend bars or shove open stuck doors or lift a heavy sarcaphogus lid off etc. All with zero resources spent barring occasional healing or perhaps resurgence on a non-hp trap, and usually wholeness of body handled that. Sometimes a comical amount of traps went off - one thieves guild we were searching had things like the Privy trapped. The only real issue with that approach was the rare trap designed to destroy loot.

Or you know. You can just roleplay. My wife played a spaced out barbarian-dwarf-stonelord who just liked to talk to rocks and wanted to turn into stone. (this was a "last day of convention" character designed to be played when tired and silly). She did plenty in noncombat encounters that entertained the table. Sometimes she was even useful (she could craft stone, and stonelord gives stuff helpful with that). Her "rage" was her actually getting focused. That was when it was time to run.

danielxcutter

2022-01-05, 12:48 PM

I still don't see ANYTHING that a caster can't do as well. And not all martials are high-Str types.

Seward

2022-01-05, 01:00 PM

I still don't see ANYTHING that a caster can't do as well. And not all martials are high-Str types.

Not anything a caster can't do. I agree with that. I've played full caster divine and arcane that had to fill in for physical combat and did fine, although resource expenditure was unduly high.

As well? My cleric archer vs fighter archer example will have the fighter outperforming the cleric with same WBL from 1-20 in attack mod and damage, full stop, and the gap will increase as party buffs are layered on. Archers are a pure DPS class, their only metric that matters is damage/round and, in later levels, generally only missing on a natural 1 (and some will have reroll feats or items)

Good enough? Perhaps. Well designed martials tend to overkill EL appropriate encounters whenever they can manage a full attack.

A martial gish (divine or arcane) might keep up with that fighter, depending on situation and exact build. If you can manage to lose only 1 bab by L12 and have a feat free for improved precise shot, it helps a lot and there are ways to do that and if you don't blow as many feats as DMM cleric has to, you might fit in ranged weapon mastery on schedule etc. Such characters can be very close in usual 24x7 role, but the gap opens up a bit when party buffs are layered on for tough fights. Not much, but a bit. Might not matter in most play.

Where I used to play, you would advertise your role when forming parties and introducing yourself.

Tank was somebody who needed no support vs melee threats and often had good saves but usually only had middling damage output (hopefully not useless damage output, but not everybody designs well)

Heavy infantry could dish out and take melee damage but couldn't fight an entire room by themselves forever like a tank might be able to.

Light infantry tended to be mobile and dish out melee damage but needed protection if the victim survived to counterattack.

Archers did ranged damage, reliably, usually physical damage, although some ray-casters qualify.

Artillery did ranged area damage best, but usually had some single target options too.

Divine Casters and Arcane Casters were full casters of their type who did combat with spells primarily.

Medic/Support was what it says on the tin, although some were more medics than support, some the reverse. Your typical healing cleric or buff-oriented bard falls in this category.

Rogue was a catchall for skillmonkeys who needed help in combat to achieve damage potential. Most weren't actually rogues, many had some schtick other than sneak attack and were either great or useless in combat depending on whether they got that support from the party.

This way expectations were set properly, no matter how you went about it. If you filled your role well, you were well designed. It was an exercise for the players to turn a mostly light-infantry party into an effective engine of destruction. If the party had a gap, yes, the casters were usually tapped to fill holes although sometimes skill-oriented characters with consumables could manage instead.

One thing I learned is almost any party can work. The all offense guys, well 6 of them will obliterate most encounters, although bad luck can result in somebody surviving to wreck a party member. The all defense/buff party struggles more, combats last a lot longer, but they tend to pull through, healing or undoing enough enemy actions until their buffs come online or they whittle opposition down. When you got a rare all-stealth/ambush party, or one that could fake it, it was often a fun change off pace, as was the party with unusually good overall social skills in most city adventures, or something like a festival or ball setting.

Raven777

2022-01-05, 01:09 PM

I still don't see ANYTHING that a caster can't do as well.

So what? At your table if the fighter starts checking a room or talking to the mayor is the wizard player just gonna shove him aside to do it himself?

RandomPeasant

2022-01-05, 01:16 PM

Um...I quoted YOU agreeing that a fighter had a better chasse for buffs. I figured you understood the dynamic and it didn't need to be spelled out.

You'll have to explain where you think I said that, because that's not something I agree with. The Fighter has a marginally stronger base-level chassis, but that is more than swamped by the buffs a Cleric or Druid provide for themselves.

A typical fighter will have a higher strength investment both in statbumps and items than a typical full caster

And a Druid will have Wild Shape giving him a much higher Strength score.

A typical fighter will have full bab 24x7, not relying on several feats, a spell and possibly items to achieve that (as with a DMM persistent cleric).

He will have full BAB instead of 3/4 BAB. This is not a particularly dramatic advantage. In fact, it scales slower than greater magic weapon.

If he wants more str and dex, he can drop con to 10 and still have similar hitpoints/fort save to a cleric of same level

If you're going to claim that, it goes the other way too, and it doesn't matter much that the Cleric might have a 14 Con instead of 16.

The cleric-archer will have less strength until he can pull off divine metamagic persistent divine power

The Cleric Archer will have Zen Archery, meaning he needs 0 Dex investment. Of course, I suppose we'll argue that Zen Archery is banned at any table worth considering.

A cleric, bard or wizard archer of any race but human won't get that together till level 6. By which time the fighter also has weapon focus, weapon spec and, if we're sticking to core, probably quickdraw so he can go from not expecting a fight to a full attack (with 3 attacks, not the mere 2 of the caster class).

By which point the Cleric Archer will have access to animate dead, allowing them to fulfill the "back line damage dealer" and "front line meatwall" roles simultaneously. And having a pile of skeletons makes the Wizard's haste substantially more impactful, because it grants a bonus attack per target. Plus you don't care if the skeletons get destroyed.

The cleric MIGHT make up the weapon spec loss with GMW on his bow, but of course any party with an arcane or divine caster at L12 unwilling to GMW the superior Fighter's bow is being idiotic.

And we're right back to the same mistake from the beginning. The Fighter isn't free. He comes at the cost of a character's worth of spell slots to use on things like greater magic weapon. Is Precise Shot worth losing greater magic weapon, haste, and prayer? Because that's the sort of tradeoff you need to look to, and I don't think it is.

I still think you're drastically underestimating the capabilities of a serious Cleric beatstick, especially since they're still full casters on top of that. Also it's hard to outdamage a seriously optimized martial, but the thing is that martials don't really have much to do outside of damage in combat.

The argument seems to be that a "serious Cleric beatstick" counts as "shenanigans"*, but the optimized Fighter is fine. Which is not an unreasonable argument to make in certain contexts (most tables carefully avoid intraparty imbalances), but it's not really relevant to the question of "is a Cleric better than a Fighter", because that question has to be answered without thumbs on the scale.

*: Which would be fair if we were talking about the absolute top end of Cleric Archer builds, where you're doing things like Persisting arcane spellsurge, giant size, and sadism on top of all your baseline buffs. But what we're talking about here is the standard divine power, righteous might, divine favor package that is a long way from broken, just better than a Fighter.

A number of martials do quite well at scouting, can manage high spot/listen/hide/move silent and can receive the same invis/silence spells as the casters but also defeat true seeing by just hiding in the fog or a dragon's sharp ears when he stumbles into the antimagic trap the dragon set up to defeat magical intrusion.

And a Beguiler can do all those things while providing a net surplus of spell slots to the party rather than a net deficit. Martial characters have skills on their lists, but so does an Expert.

danielxcutter

2022-01-05, 01:27 PM

Nitpick: I don't think Persisting an Arcane Spellsurge helps Clerics at all, unless there's some UltracheeseTM that lets you treat Cleric spells as arcane.

Seward

2022-01-05, 01:33 PM

You'll have to explain where you think I said that, because that's not something I agree with.

I suspect that comes from the same error of analysis as Darg was making. A Fighter has a nicer chassis than any caster, but they don't come with any buffs of their own.

I LITERALLY quoted you saying this which started this current derail of this conversation.

If you think the game is so badly balanced why do you play it? That's supposed to be the question.

I say that I have played and seen played literally hundreds of martials of all different types, and a similar number of full casters. (Living Greyhawk for a half dozen years played in many regions gives you a much broader view of what works in this game than any single home campaign. Pathfinder Society for another half dozen years only reinforced that).

The campaign ranges were 1-16 for 3.5 and 1-12 for Pathfinder (ok a little 13-15 content too). I was both GM and player. I was a playtester, involved in the games played before conventions to train all the judges there in how to run the game, even an author once who had to scale a single adventure to EL2 4 6 8 10 12 and 14.

Martials NEVER had any trouble contributing to the party. Full casters who tried to be martials were almost always outperformed unless the team dynamic was completely dysfunctional or unless the party had no real martial capability outside the full caster. Prepared casters frequently made bad choices of which spells to prep, and parties routinely had to deal with things like being ambushed on the road, in campsites, in inns, and those enemies often had intel on them. Some days had a lot of encounters, others you could nova everything, but you rarely knew what sort of day it might be.

I play this game still if given the opportunity because it really does support a lot of stuff, and while there are all kinds of weird edge condition imbalances, most of the time it delivers a good experience for all players in a party, where nobody feels useless and everybody gets a chance to shine.

It is a tabletop RPG. To get a good outcome, it is on the players and GM to help the game system out a little to ensure folks have fun, no game system does that for free. This one errs on the side of "a zillion options, some of which objectively suck, some of which are too powerful for the cost and some of which the GM has to consider if the game is expected to pass level 10 or so". It's also D&D, so power level goes from peasant to god with the same set of characters if you play long enough, most RPGs don't allow that level of growth.

Beyond the gameplay, which is fine for a game of its type, there is a character creation minigame that doesn't require other players, but does require a referee or ground rules, and which about half the threads on this forum are about. That's entertaining in its own way.

That's why I play it. I never found 3.0/3.5/pathfinder to actually be dominated by the prepared caster tier 1 classes in game, and I have never found the despised tier 4 classes to actually be unfun to play. Perhaps the problem might be in the person who thinks a class sucks or is amazing, rather than in the actual game.

Actually the Iron Chef challenges are making me re-evaluate even tier 5 type stuff. I kinda like the Peregrin Runner character I wrote up last time, and the new one I created for the latest challenge, and found a lot of the (150+?) threads on other marginal PRCs fascinating. I could see forming a campaign around some of them.

RandomPeasant

2022-01-05, 01:54 PM

Nitpick: I don't think Persisting an Arcane Spellsurge helps Clerics at all, unless there's some UltracheeseTM that lets you treat Cleric spells as arcane.

Alternative Spell Source does exactly that. It's a very pushed build.

I LITERALLY quoted you saying this which started this current derail of this conversation.

The Fighter has a better class chassis. That does not make him a better target for buffs.

Gnaeus

2022-01-05, 02:01 PM

So what? We didn't say "core only". If you want to say "the Fighter is good in a core only game" (and then subsequently "the Fighter is good if you ban or nerf planar binding"), you can say that, but it's a much less compelling argument.

More than that, the fighter doesn't actually have enough really good core feats to make his class features worth it. A core cleric can take every fighter feat that is really worth having, and still have an army of skeletons and all the other stuff. That's why people talk about horizon tripper as the height of core martial optimization. And that's not even talking about the degree to which non core gear helps fighters solve basic melee issues which clerics can nope with a spell. Yeah, the non core cleric gets DMM, but the non core fighter gets basic functionality and can use his level 20 bonus feat on something better than "oh well, I guess I'll take weapon focus on my backup bow". If you tell me I have to play a fighter and give me choice of whether the group is core or not, I'll ALWAYS IMMEDIATELY take non-core so at least I can make a real trip or charge build.

Psyren

2022-01-05, 02:34 PM

The first citation is "if monsters have gear that is the equivalent of an expensive magical item, the fight is more difficult". The second is "if monsters have a tactical advantage their abilities give them no way to secure, the fight is more difficult".

You're reading way too far into the DMG's examples :smallconfused: by no sane reading is a "primitive hang glider" or "standing on a wall" the equivalent of an "expensive magical item."

The commonality in both examples that you're missing for the trees is that in both cases, the atypical tactic is "attack the PCs from higher elevation using projectile weapons." Whether they do that with gliders, trees, a wall, a cliff etc, the DMG's point is that the encounter difficulty may not align with that orc warband's listed or base CR. And that's a much, much simpler example of this phenomenon than a teleport-spam-ambushing Balor.

If a Balor has no personal or operational reason not to use teleport harassment to defeat the PCs, and nevertheless does not use it, the EL for that encounter should be less than 20.

Where is your support for this claim? Because a Balor is one of the examples they've provided of explicit round-by-round combat behavior and it doesn't include anything remotely close to this tactic at all. If they intended the listed behavior to come out to less than CR 20, that's what they would have done.

If you feel like it I'm interested in details! Any idea we can crib to make a better 3.PF is a welcome idea, since Paizo abandoned me since there's no new content being made.

I already mentioned I'm a big fan of democratrizing martial feat chains (https://michaeliantorno.com/feat-taxes-in-pathfinder/). Stuff like giving martials more toys to play with (like giving extra features to Rangers based on their favored enemies (https://dnd-wiki.org/wiki/Ranger,_Tome_(3.5e_Class))). Or democratizing a lot of the utility magic through rituals anyone can attempt. I tend to hoard any link to these ideas I can get my hands on.

(Except nerfing core casters, for preference reasons as already stated :smalltongue: )

Three of the big ones are:

1) Nerfing spellcasting in general - spells are by and large weaker than they were in 3.P and do less things. Some got nerfed through the floor (compare 3.5e and 5e Gate for instance) and others are still good but much weaker (see 3.5e vs. 5e Haste.)

2) Greatly reduced buff stacking thanks to the concentration and attunement mechanics. Characters quite simply cannot be christmas trees decked out in items and buffs anymore. Admittedly, that works much better in a bounded accuracy system like 5e's, but I can definitely see ways to bring 3.P closer to that.

3) Less ammunition for casters in general. Bonus slots are nonexistent now, you get what you get. Consumables like wands, scrolls, and pearls of power still exist but are much weaker, rarer and more situational. No tapping everyone 8 times with one of our many Cure Light Wounds wands before bed for instance. To compensate for this, cantrips are at-will and scale much better.

Wildstag

2022-01-05, 02:41 PM

d20pfsrd does the same thing only better. Of course without the d20srd, there would be no Pathfinder, so there is that.

I agree though, the existence of the SRD pretty much ensures there will be some d20 stuff in perpetuity, long after it starts getting players that weren't born when 3.5 was really active.

D20PFSRD isn’t really a good srd, and moreso isn’t an approved srd per Paizo. AoNPRD however, is. Otoh, d20pfsrd is setting-neutral (kinda has to be though).

A fun example is the divine fighting style feats being divorced from setting specific deities.

Psyren

2022-01-05, 02:57 PM

D20PFSRD isn’t really a good srd, and moreso isn’t an approved srd per Paizo. AoNPRD however, is. Otoh, d20pfsrd is setting-neutral (kinda has to be though).

A fun example is the divine fighting style feats being divorced from setting specific deities.

I think that's a bit harsh. Yes, PFSRD has some bloat due to the third-party content and it can be a little confusing to navigate since they have to use setting-neutral versions of everything. But they have great tools too like the Spells DB and Monsters DB, and it's nice to be able to browse everything within a category in one place regardless of book, like every single Style Feat or every single Animal Companion or Familiar option. I actively use both sites depending on the specific thing I'm looking for.

Seward

2022-01-05, 03:10 PM

I am also a fan of Archives of Nethys as an alternative to PFSRD when it gets annoying as it has strengths, especially in customized searches and filters that the basic site lacks. The 3.5 go-to similar to Archives of Nethys is D&D tools, but that, while pretty comprehensive, has a lot of features that sometimes don't play well with my browser.

But basically "online resources for all the weird stuff" is pretty strong in d20, 3.5 and its successors, in a way you really don't see for other games, including other D&D editions.

Of course you may need all those resources because d20 is made of splatbooks and weird web enhancements and magazine articles and such, made worse by Wizards getting eaten by Hasbro and all their web resources removed.

Seward

2022-01-05, 03:25 PM

More than that, the fighter doesn't actually have enough really good core feats to make his class features worth it. A core cleric can take every fighter feat that is really worth having, and still have an army of skeletons and all the other stuff.

Eh...I find not having anything but rapid shot going for it until the second half of the game missing some rather useful archer feats even in 3.5.

A core cleric needs quicken divine favor to keep up with the weapon focus/weapon spec/greater weapon focus/greater weapon spec fighter progression, and can't do it till level 9.

A core cleric needs divine power to keep up with accuracy and iterative attacks, which costs a standard action and round/level duration limits how often its opportunity cost is worth it. And can't do until level 7.

A core cleric needs to somehow muster a dex of 19 and wait till level15 to get improved precise shot. If you don't think that feat isn't a game changer, well, I've played archers with and without it, and it can be a massive swing in how often you hit at all.

The core fighter by L12 will also have quickdraw and improved crit, which granted aren't incredible feats, but in terms of rocket tag, going from sheathed bow to full attack means in real play he'll vastly outperform any archer that doesn't have the bow in hand before combat starts. Which isn't any social situation and is a surprising amount of other situations too if you add it up. The core cleric, unless human (and thus lower dex and/or str even aside from MAD for needing wisdom) has its feats tied up in point blank, precise, rapid and quicken spell until level 12. The fighter takes quickdraw about level 6, maybe also far shot the same level just out of boredom while waiting for improved weapon focus and improved crit to come online.

Quickdraw also lets you throw blunt and slashing throwing weapons, for that rare case where it's better than just shooting through DR (eg, plant DR/slashing10 can come pretty early on). At some tables it also lets you toss a bunch of holy water vials or alchemist fire etc, if stored in some weaponlike way.

Basically a core cleric has exactly 2 feats before level 20 not tied up in either stuff a fighter gets by level 2, making up for not having improved weapon spec with quickened divine favor and assuming he can get improved precise shot by L15 when his bab catches up and he can afford a big dex item to get to 19 dex. That leaves only his L12 and 18 feat. quickdraw and improved crit sure. By 18 he's pretty close to what a fighter archer can do at level 12 if he casts quickened divine favor every fight and can't match what the fighter is actually doing without fitting in divine power somewhere (std action, round/level, although granted at L18, 18 rounds increases the odds off prebuffing it).

He's still more MAD, he still needs to spend some WBL advancing his cleric role, etc. In no way shape or form will a core cleric ever truly catch up to a core fighter in archery without assuming prebuffing of some kind that the fighter doesn't also get, and he's only in shouting range in combats where he can prebuff with divine power, or maybe some situation where his better will save means he isn't taken out of action early.

That core cleric WILL be providing many other benefits to the party. Nobody is arguing that. If evil, that benefit will include weak but disposable controlled undead. But as early as level 1 and as late as level 18, in core, he's got nothing the fighter doesn't have, and the fighter gets it a lot sooner, in spite of the absolutely true fact that the fighter has no more archery useful feats to buy after L12. Likely he'll use those feats on something else, probably to cover one of archery's various issues (loss of visibility, underwater, difficulty with move+full attack, wind attacks etc). Being a fullbab class with all armor and weapon proficiencies, getting some chops with mounted combat and perhaps buying a griffin egg might be attractive, or a cloak of manta ray and investing in weapon spec for armor spikes might be interesting, or just power attack and blind fight for pulling out a greatsword in that fog cloud, or just be a bit more effecting when switching to hammer and beating up a nearby lich.

Feldar

2022-01-05, 03:38 PM

The core fighter by L12 will also have quickdraw and improved crit, which granted aren't incredible feats, but in terms of rocket tag, going from sheathed bow to full attack means in real play he'll vastly outperform any archer that doesn't have the bow in hand before combat starts. Which isn't any social situation and is a surprising amount of other situations too if you add it up. The core cleric, unless human (and thus lower dex and/or str even aside from MAD for needing wisdom) has its feats tied up in point blank, precise, rapid and quicken spell until level 12. The fighter takes quickdraw about level 6, maybe also far shot the same level just out of boredom while waiting for improved weapon focus and improved crit to come online.

Quickdraw also lets you throw blunt and slashing throwing weapons, for that rare case where it's better than just shooting through DR (eg, plant DR/slashing10 can come pretty early on). At some tables it also lets you toss a bunch of holy water vials or alchemist fire etc, if stored in some weaponlike way.

Any archer is probably going to be carrying multiple quivers of Ehlonna, which does not specify that getting an item from the quiver is any particular type of action. Drawing an arrow from a quiver must be a free action, or otherwise archers would never get more than two shots per round. Since the quiver of Ehlonna also specifies it can store "objects in the same general size and shape as a bow" (DMG pg 265), it's not an unreasonable conclusion to say that the cleric archer could retrieve the bow from the quiver as a free action as well. And since there are precisely ZERO rules for bows needing to be strung before use, we can conclude that the bow is essentially always strung (which BTW is very, very bad for a real bow).

Of course, this is RAI. RAW is quiet on all these matters.

LecternOfJasper

2022-01-05, 03:56 PM

I find having multiple unique magic systems interesting. That's really the main draw. Later systems having 1 system for everyone or only Vancian casting makes me sad, and makes me want to fix them.

3.5 power sources are a pretty good jam.

Seward

2022-01-05, 04:03 PM

Any archer is probably going to be carrying multiple quivers of Ehlonna,.

I've never played at a table that didn't consider the Javelins and Bow slots in the quiver to be basically identical to a sheathed weapon. It was never free without quickdraw. Thus also no magic wands or staves or rods being pulled free by the casters either. The ammo slots are free, cause ammo is free.

I don't rule out that some tables might play differently. Just never saw it, or even anybody who advanced the idea that it might be possible (and we had plenty of rules lawyers).

The lack of a need to string a bow is bizzare, I agree, although past level 3 the archer will have a magic bow, and magic, at least, might mean you can keep it strung. IRL, bows are a lot more awkward. I've seen some youtube videos trying to replicate the "golfbag of weapons" and you really can do a fairly typical layout (blunt, slashing, piercing, light and heavy weapons, even a shield) but you can maybe sling 1 polearm or bow over your back and draw it, but either works far better as something you hold, then drop if you switch to another weapon. That axefighter who switches to a bow mid-fight kinda doesn't work without a magic items similar to the Quiver involved.

Interestingly real world melee fighters sometimes did have several weapons. What works on mail (chain) isn't the same as what works on a buff coat or on something like a breastplate or worse full plate, and what works on a more or less unarmored or lightly armored target is also different. The Incan swords (made of wood with obsidian fragments on cutting blade or similar) were absolutely devastating against their typical targets - other folks either fighting unarmored or in woven cloth type armor. They were absolutely useless against a typical conquistatdor armor setup, and had a hard time even getting through to hurt horses. European and Asian warriors would look at their opponent and draw the appropriate weapon, which also served as a backup in case their go-to weapon got damaged or maybe stuck in an enemy or otherwise lost.

Feldar

2022-01-05, 04:12 PM

I've never played at a table that didn't consider the Javelins and Bow slots in the quiver to be basically identical to a sheathed weapon. It was never free without quickdraw. Thus also no magic wands or staves or rods being pulled free by the casters either. The ammo slots are free, cause ammo is free.

If my judge ruled that way I would be okay with it.

RandomPeasant

2022-01-05, 04:44 PM

The commonality in both examples that you're missing for the trees is that in both cases, the atypical tactic is "attack the PCs from higher elevation using projectile weapons."

The commonality is that the Orcs are gaining an advantage that their abilities do not provide. A creature using its abilities, by definition, is not doing so. Unless you can show me where "owns hang glider" or "lives on top of a cliff" appears in the Orc stat block, you're no closer to proving your claim than you were when we started.

Where is your support for this claim?

Why do you expect the rules to need to explicitly state "creatures using their abilities does not increase EL"? I can cite the thing where it talks about summoned creatures not increasing EL if you want, but the burden of proof is on you to produce the place where the rules make an affirmative statement that supports your claim.

Because a Balor is one of the examples they've provided of explicit round-by-round combat behavior and it doesn't include anything remotely close to this tactic at all.

And again, this is a terrible argument. Because it implies things like "the 5-Int Dretch has greater tactical flexibility than the 24-Int Balor" or "if WotC prints new tactics for Aboleths in Lords of Madness, that invalidates the ELs of existing Aboleth encounters" or "any implementation of a Great Wyrm Red Dragon was CR 26 when the Monster Manual came out, but when Draconomicon was released only the one printed there was". Those conclusions are entirely unreasonable, but they are also unavoidable if we accept your position. So, as your sig suggests, let's just not accept your completely unsupported position so that the rest of the game can continue making sense.

A core cleric needs quicken divine favor to keep up with the weapon focus/weapon spec/greater weapon focus/greater weapon spec fighter progression, and can't do it till level 9.

Or greater magic weapon. That frees up half your WBL at 9th and lasts all day, and you can do things like handing out individual arrows or crossbow bolts to undead archers.

A core cleric needs divine power to keep up with accuracy and iterative attacks, which costs a standard action and round/level duration limits how often its opportunity cost is worth it. And can't do until level 7.

The Cleric's army of undead makes substantially more attacks than the Fighter does, and disproportionately benefits from many group buffs. I'd rather cast haste on a Cleric and a couple big skeletons or a Druid and an animal companion than a Fighter.

But as early as level 1 and as late as level 18, in core, he's got nothing the fighter doesn't have

Except, you know, full Cleric spellcasting. You have to consider the full tradeoff space or you're just not doing useful analysis.

I find having multiple unique magic systems interesting. That's really the main draw. Later systems having 1 system for everyone or only Vancian casting makes me sad, and makes me want to fix them.

3.5 power sources are a pretty good jam.

I'm a big fan of that as well. 3e has a very greater degree of legitimate variety in characters than any other edition of D&D, and I'm shocked that it was not embraced moving forward.