Talk me into Half-Casters

[Drakevarg]

Hello all, and welcome to another episode of "Drake tries to use the Playground to settle their own internal debates."

So, after the campaign I'm currently running, I intend to switch back to 3.Pathfinder. I have a class greenlist, which covers most martial classes as well as most 6-level casters (I think Magus and Summoner are the only ones I dropped, not counting hybrid classes (because I don't own ACG)). "Special" casters (evokers, other spellcasting-adjacent classes, classes with spell levels other than 4, 6 or 9) are out, as are full-casters. And with the exception of Ranger archetypes that remove casting, so are half-casters. Which is what I want to talk about.

My initial logic with dropping half-casters was that there just weren't enough of them to bother with (six in total, that I know of), since they existed in sort of an awkward middle ground between martials and 3/4 casters (themselves previously an awkward outlier until Pathfinder made a bunch of them). But I've been somewhat leaning back from that assertion, or at least reconsidering it.

Here's the thing, though: I'm a believer in design-by-subtraction. I know that's not a particularly popular take, but I'd rather have a few extremely flexible ideas than a hundred inflexible ones. So for instance, Paladin feels somewhat redundant to me when one could simply cross-class Cavalier and Inquisitor and express basically the same concept. So for now, I'm inclined to stick to martials and 6-level casters.

But maybe there's something I missed, so here I am expressing the contemplation to you all. Do half-casters have something to offer to my campaign that couldn't be readily expressed with the elements already in play? Unique archetypes, thematic opportunities, whatever. Persuade me. I'm a stubborn sort, so I can't promise to budge, but I'm happy to listen.

[AvatarVecna]

Hello all, and welcome to another episode of "Drake tries to use the Playground to settle their own internal debates."

So, after the campaign I'm currently running, I intend to switch back to 3.Pathfinder. I have a class greenlist, which covers most martial classes as well as most 6-level casters (I think Magus and Summoner are the only ones I dropped, not counting hybrid classes (because I don't own ACG)). "Special" casters (evokers, other spellcasting-adjacent classes, classes with spell levels other than 4, 6 or 9) are out, as are full-casters. And with the exception of Ranger archetypes that remove casting, so are half-casters. Which is what I want to talk about.

My initial logic with dropping half-casters was that there just weren't enough of them to bother with (six in total, that I know of), since they existed in sort of an awkward middle ground between martials and 3/4 casters (themselves previously an awkward outlier until Pathfinder made a bunch of them). But I've been somewhat leaning back from that assertion, or at least reconsidering it.

Here's the thing, though: I'm a believer in design-by-subtraction. I know that's not a particularly popular take, but I'd rather have a few extremely flexible ideas than a hundred inflexible ones. So for instance, Paladin feels somewhat redundant to me when one could simply cross-class Cavalier and Inquisitor and express basically the same concept. So for now, I'm inclined to stick to martials and 6-level casters.

But maybe there's something I missed, so here I am expressing the contemplation to you all. Do half-casters have something to offer to my campaign that couldn't be readily expressed with the elements already in play? Unique archetypes, thematic opportunities, whatever. Persuade me. I'm a stubborn sort, so I can't promise to budge, but I'm happy to listen.

I've not played many PF paladins, and while I'm sure there's some really fun archetypes, I can't necessarily speak to whether or not they're definitely worth playing over some weird multiclass. But also, have a comic exerpt:


Elan: "What? Oh, I'm a bard, that kind of stuff comes naturally."

Nale: "A bard, huh? My father taught me that bards were underpowered."

Elan: "Really? So what class are you?"

Nale: "I'm a multiclass fighter/rogue/sorcerer who specializes in enchantment spells."

[beat]

Elan: "And that never struck you as needlessly complicated?"

Nale: "Not until this moment, no."

Like...yeah you could probably make some combination of cleric/fighter/cavalier/inquisitor/whatever with levels arranged in just such a way that you could make a better paladin than paladin. But also like...you could just play a paladin. A tenth of the effort, for more than a tenth of the capability of whatever nonsense you were gonna throw together. Yeah you could squeeze every drop of capability out of this concept, but it's kinda like playing a cheesed out arcanist/VMC sorcerer build with the eldritch heritage feat tree, instead of a straightforward generalist wizard. Oh no, what a nightmare!

If the character concept you have in mind is "paladin", there's a lot of mechanical ways to pull that off. Which one you go with depends on what particular capabilities you're envisioning. It's possible that nothing will satisfy you except a 3.5 style DMM Persist cleric self-buffing their way into being an LG Warrior Of God. That will give you more power and versatility than basically anything else a given "thematically a paladin" build could give you. But regardless of which of those "paladin" builds you make, as long as it's not a actually-a-Paladin build, you're reinventing the wheel. Maybe you think the wheel is insufficient for your needs, that's a perfectly viable argument. But before you go reinventing the wheel, maybe check to see if the wheel can work well enough for you to be happy with it, before you increase effort by possibly as much as 1000% to increase effectiveness by possibly as low as 10%.

[Kurald Galain]

(I think Magus and Summoner are the only ones I dropped
So you're looking for half-casters but you're banning all arcane half-casters except for the bard... maybe you could specify why? So that leaves only the Inquisitor, and several psychic half-casters (since warpriest and hunter are hybrids). That's a lot of options you're dropping, and I'm not sure why you're doing that.

(also, all hybrid classes are available for free on d20pfsrd.com and aonprd.com)

[Maat Mons]

Personally, I’d only take options away from players if there’s reason to believe those options would cause problems. So instead of “disallow a class unless there’s a compelling reason to allow it,” it’d be “allow a class unless there’s a compelling reason to disallow it.”

I’m also confused by your use of fractions in denoting spellcasting progression. Bard and Paladin both settle into a pattern of gaining access to a new level of spells every three character levels. That’s 2/3rds the rate of full casters. So in that sense, they’re both 2/3rds casters. Or if you look at final spell level access instead of rate of change, Bard is a 6/9ths = 2/3rds caster, and Paladin is a 4/9ths caster. I don’t know what a 3/4ths or 1/2 caster is supposed to be.

I’ll also say that the idea of multiclassing as a way to implement concepts not covered by a single class is flawed. For one thing, if your character concept can’t be realized by one class, you can’t start playing that character concept until at least 2nd level. Additionally, multiclass characters are predisposed to being weaker than single-classed characters. A character with build X 10 / Y 10 has class features befitting a 10th-level character, just twice as many of them. A character with build Z 20 has class features befitting a 20th-level character. Those could only be comparable if 20th-level class features were of similar value to 10th-level class features, which is only the case for poorly-designed classes.

[pabelfly]

Why ban things that aren't a problem though? If Paladin can be done better by combining a few other classes, then players can do that and the existence of Paladin is ignored and isn't an issue. If it can't be replaced properly, then people have Paladin they can play. In either case, banning Paladin adds pointless complexity to your home rules for no discernable benefit.

[Fizban]

My initial logic with dropping half-casters was that there just weren't enough of them to bother with (six in total, that I know of), since they existed in sort of an awkward middle ground between martials and 3/4 casters (themselves previously an awkward outlier until Pathfinder made a bunch of them). . .

Here's the thing, though: I'm a believer in design-by-subtraction. I know that's not a particularly popular take, but I'd rather have a few extremely flexible ideas than a hundred inflexible ones. So for instance, Paladin feels somewhat redundant to me when one could simply cross-class Cavalier and Inquisitor and express basically the same concept. So for now, I'm inclined to stick to martials and 6-level casters.
So you want a small number of flexible classes, but got rid of an entire category of classes because there were too few of them. This seems at least half self-contradictory, so it's no surprise you're finding yourself conflicted. Also, I don't know off the top of my head how many 6th casters there are, but if you dumped six "half" casters because that was *too few*, me thinks you have a giant list of classes which are all variations on the same thing.

There's no arguing that Pathfinder's huge array of list-based and list+6th level casting classes aren't more "flexible" in terms of class X having Y individual choices, but I look at that avalanche and instead see a bunch of specifically blurred combinations that themselves exclude anything that doesn't want to combine X+Y+Z. As said if someone wants to be a Paladin, then the easiest thing to do is be a Paladin- and the avalanche of very not-Paladin classes is never going to match.

Now mechanically, deciding to cleave only to specific amounts of casting is, particularly when the removal of 9th casters makes it seem likely you've decided all characters should be "equal," a good idea. If all "martials" are equal and all 6th casters are equal, all you have to do is make sure those two are also equal and you can say everything's "balanced." Indeed, Pathfinder already did this with a bunch of their non-casters with their big class feature menus- if all non-casters have big class feature menus which are equal, then they're all equal. And if you've only got to balance standard class feature menu vs 6th casting, that's only one major balancing problem to solve.

So no, I don't think I should be trying to convince you to bring back BAB+4th casters. If you don't like asymmetrical/role based parties, then the more different "chassis" you bring in, the harder the exponential balancing becomes, when you've already addressed that problem.

I do have to say I find it amusing that you say you ascribe to design by subtraction, whilst using Pathfinder classes which are all about design by addition. You're definitely defining your game by not using *all* printed content, but you're specifically allowing classes that have as many options as possible, and not just that but a huge number of them which all intentionally have huge numbers of options. Classes designed based on subtraction would have tight class spell lists with less overall spells and fewer or no menu features- classes that have had the fat removed until they're just one thing. Like a 3.x Paladin.


Do half-casters have something to offer to my campaign that couldn't be readily expressed with the elements already in play? Unique archetypes, thematic opportunities, whatever. Persuade me. I'm a stubborn sort, so I can't promise to budge, but I'm happy to listen.
I don't recall- does PF give 6th casting to full BAB classes? 'Cause that's the main thing, delayed 4th "half" casting exists entirely to allow single-classed characters with full BAB to eventually get some versatile daily resources- back when spells were the only limited/versatile resource, at the cost of having fewer class features such as bonus feats or rage uses*. When people wanted more than the given PHB spells, they started printing more class-uniuque spells, and combat tricks as spells. If you've pushed the game in a direction where all full BAB characters are expected to have a full menu of things that are better than those spells already, then no, the BAB+4th half casters don't provide anything particularly useful- they might have provided a good benchmark for designing those menus, but if you're already taking the new classes as written, who cares? In a game where 6th casters are the norm for "partial" casting, and martial maneuvers or big class feature menus are the norm for combat focus, the original half-measure of the half-caster design is obsolete. Removing them makes sense**

The main thing that adding these classes back in will give you is just that, those classes back in. If you have players that have been annoyed by not being able to play a class you removed because the classes you allow just don't do the thing, then you will benefit. If you don't have players that want to play the classes, whether they're just not interested or they've specifically evaluated them as insufficiently powerful, then no one will be playing them and it won't matter. If you have a very specific idea of player character balance, having people playing classes that are dissimilar from the rest only makes that harder (the only question is how loose you're willing to fudge similarities, from "everyone must play Clerics" to "no-completely-mundanes," your current "6th caster is standard" is at least pretty clear).

*And only later would PrCs actually move more towards (but never fully) replicating the effect with more non-evil Blackguard style options, while never fully supplanting the base classes. Because they're in the PHB and lots, maybe even most, of people want to be able to say what they are at 1st level and always be that.

**Indeed, at first glance 5th edition did exactly this: no huge class feature menus and even the entire parallel feat system removed, with only two main spell progressions: Paladin/Ranger and full caster. At second glance one will then notice the Eldritch Knight/Arcane Trickster progressions which are still delayed max 4th casting, making them a true parallel advancement track, and IIRC they were considered some of the most powerful options.

[Kurald Galain]

A decent approach for casters is:

Prepared 6/9 - Magus (arcane), warpriest (divine), n/a (primal), alchemist (other)
Spontaneous 6/9 - Bard (arcane), inquisitor (divine), hunter (primal), mesmerist (other)
4/9 casters - Bloodrager (arcane), paladin (divine), ranger (primal), medium (other)

This should cover all your bases and concepts without substantial overlap. If you want, substitute investigator for alchemist, and/or skald for bard, and/or occultist for mesmerist.

[Rynjin]

Paladins and Mediums are two of the most fun classes in the game and Ranger is a strong contender for THE most new player friendly class in the game.

Don't really need more reasons than that.

[Drakevarg]

Personally, I’d only take options away from players if there’s reason to believe those options would cause problems. So instead of “disallow a class unless there’s a compelling reason to allow it,” it’d be “allow a class unless there’s a compelling reason to disallow it.”

Why ban things that aren't a problem though? If Paladin can be done better by combining a few other classes, then players can do that and the existence of Paladin is ignored and isn't an issue. If it can't be replaced properly, then people have Paladin they can play. In either case, banning Paladin adds pointless complexity to your home rules for no discernable benefit.

I knew this would be a point of contention so let me take this part of the argument aside so I can address it cleanly: as I said in the OP, I am a believer in design-by-subtraction. I don't care to debate this philosophy, it is what it is. You look at it as singling out half-casters and telling them they can't come in, in creating my greenlist I looked at it as banning everything and from there only letting in things that I felt suited my campaign.

So it's not that these classes were banned, it's that all the casters were banned until I looked through them and decided I was okay with (most) 6-level casters.


I’m also confused by your use of fractions in denoting spellcasting progression. Bard and Paladin both settle into a pattern of gaining access to a new level of spells every three character levels. That’s 2/3rds the rate of full casters. So in that sense, they’re both 2/3rds casters. Or if you look at final spell level access instead of rate of change, Bard is a 6/9ths = 2/3rds caster, and Paladin is a 4/9ths caster. I don’t know what a 3/4ths or 1/2 caster is supposed to be.

Nitpicking. Full caster = 9 spell levels. Half-caster = 4 spell levels, a little less than half of what a full caster gets. 3/4 or 2/3rds caster = 6 spell levels, in between 4 and 9. I don't care about what the progression is.

Most of the responses were very wordy, so gimme a minute to look through the rest.


So you're looking for half-casters but you're banning all arcane half-casters except for the bard... maybe you could specify why? So that leaves only the Inquisitor, and several psychic half-casters (since warpriest and hunter are hybrids). That's a lot of options you're dropping, and I'm not sure why you're doing that.

I don't even look at divine/arcane/whatever, it's not really relevant to my campaign setting. I was only looking at thematic archetypes, and Summoner and Magus both felt unsuitable (Summoner because they felt too overtly high-magic with the eidolon following them around, Magus because their power didn't really come from anything besides "I did me some book-learnin' and also swords.").


(also, all hybrid classes are available for free on d20pfsrd.com and aonprd.com)

I have a policy of only using content from books I own in meatspace. If I did own ACG, Skald and Warpriest would still be banned, Hunter would be allowed, and Investigator would be treated as an alternate class of Alchemist.


So you want a small number of flexible classes, but got rid of an entire category of classes because there were too few of them. This seems at least half self-contradictory, so it's no surprise you're finding yourself conflicted. Also, I don't know off the top of my head how many 6th casters there are, but if you dumped six "half" casters because that was *too few*, me thinks you have a giant list of classes which are all variations on the same thing.

Spellthief kinda sucks (it just uses the Sorc/Wiz spell list), Hexblade is underfed both conceptually and content-wise, and Bloodrager is out because I don't have ACG. Which effectively leaves three appropriately robust half-casters left. As for the 6-level casters:

Bard - magic from music
Alchemist - magic from alchemy
Inquisitor - magic from the divine
Mesmerist - magic through hypnosis
Occultist - magic from trinkets and ritual (closest thing to a generalist caster I want)
Spiritualist - magic from channeling spirits

All pretty flavorful in my opinion. Bard was almost on the chopping block as well until I contemplated storytelling precedent on the matter and discerned to my satisfaction that its spell list was suitably different from the Mesmerist's.


I do have to say I find it amusing that you say you ascribe to design by subtraction, whilst using Pathfinder classes which are all about design by addition. You're definitely defining your game by not using *all* printed content, but you're specifically allowing classes that have as many options as possible, and not just that but a huge number of them which all intentionally have huge numbers of options. Classes designed based on subtraction would have tight class spell lists with less overall spells and fewer or no menu features- classes that have had the fat removed until they're just one thing. Like a 3.x Paladin.

I find it easier to study and judge the various archetypes and options of a single class than I do the suite of options of several classes. So to me, one class with a lot of options > ten classes with no options.

[pabelfly]

I knew this would be a point of contention so let me take this part of the argument aside so I can address it cleanly: as I said in the OP, I am a believer in design-by-subtraction. I don't care to debate this philosophy, it is what it is. You look at it as singling out half-casters and telling them they can't come in, in creating my greenlist I looked at it as banning everything and from there only letting in things that I felt suited my campaign.

So it's not that these classes were banned, it's that all the casters were banned until I looked through them and decided I was okay with (most) 6-level casters.

Have you considered that you've subtracted too much? You say you subtracted everything and didn't add Paladin back, but what does not adding Paladin back achieve when you clearly want a way to create a Paladin-style character in your game and you believe your players want a way to play a Paladin-style character?

[Drakevarg]

Have you considered that you've subtracted too much? You say you subtracted everything and didn't add Paladin back, but what does not adding Paladin back achieve when you clearly want a way to create a Paladin-style character in your game and you believe your players want a way to play a Paladin-style character?

I didn't actually say as much, just put it forth as an example. My view on it is that if you want to play a knight in shining armor... play Cavalier. If you want to play a magical agent of the church... play Inquisitor. If you really wanna be both at the same time... cross-class.

So, unless the paladin can offer something to that concept besides mechanical convenience and there are enough other half-casters to keep them from being a total outlier in the design philosophy... no paladin.

And asking "what does not adding it back achieve" is still looking at it from the wrong direction. You're seeing a blank space on the page where the Paladin "should" be and asking why it's missing. I'm trying to articulate that from the point of view of my game, the Paladin does not exist, and functionally never existed, unless the outcome of this discussion is that I decide otherwise. So for the purposes of this conversation, half-casters are not something I've removed, but a new thing I'm debating whether or not to add.

[Eldonauran]

Eh, I see the half-casters as merely a bridge between the mundane and the more magically inclined 6th level casters. For the players that want a taste of magic without the hassle and bookwork that comes with being a full on casting class. You'd probably be just fine with cutting them out of the campaign entirely, as there are more than enough archtypes with the other classes that can fill the same roles.

There really isn't really a solid defense if you come to the table with a design-by-subtraction focus. Some people are just untrained (or incapable) of suspending their current reasoning ability to approach the idea from your perspective. The half-casting classes are really just niche fillers.

[Kurald Galain]

All pretty flavorful in my opinion. Bard was almost on the chopping block as well until I contemplated storytelling precedent on the matter
If you want storytelling precedent, them I'm actually surprised that you've overlooked the Paladin, which comes straight from Arthurian mythology and is "magic from code of honor". And, well, paladin powers are highly distinct.

For that matter, there's also "magic from bloodline" which is either Bloodrager or one particular Magus archetype (Eldritch Scion), or sorcerer of course. This one is also from classic literature.

[Drakevarg]

If you want storytelling precedent, them I'm actually surprised that you've overlooked the Paladin, which comes straight from Arthurian mythology and is "magic from code of honor". And, well, paladin powers are highly distinct.

:smallconfused: Do any of the knights in Arthurian myth (not counting that one Fae bloke) actually have any magical powers? AFAIK they're all effectively Cavaliers, give or take a magic item or two.


For that matter, there's also "magic from bloodline" which is either Bloodrager or one particular Magus archetype (Eldritch Scion), or sorcerer of course. This one is also from classic literature.

Well with sorcerer, full-casters are out and unlike half-casters that position is not up for debate. Bloodrager, don't have ACG (otherwise might be viable if the half-caster category in general is), and I'm not sure which book Eldritch Scion is.

[Kurald Galain]

:smallconfused: Do any of the knights in Arthurian myth (not counting that one Fae bloke) actually have any magical powers?Yes, specifically Sir Galahad. More to the point, "magic from code of honor" is a common literary archetype, hence my surprise that you've overlooked it.


I'm not sure which book Eldritch Scion is.From the ACG.

[Maat Mons]

If this is the standard a class must meet to be allowed, why is Cavalier allowed? What character concepts can Cavalier fulfil that couldn’t be adequately filled by a Fighter with the Animal Ally feat?

If Ranger archetypes that remove spellcasting are allowed, why aren’t Paladin archetypes that remove spellcasting also allowed?

Personally, the only thing I find mechanically appealing about Paladin is Divine Grace. That might not seem like an endorsement of the class, but that still puts it well ahead of Cavalier and Ranger, which I don’t find appealing on any level, mechanical or otherwise.

[Drakevarg]

Yes, specifically Sir Galahad. More to the point, "magic from code of honor" is a common literary archetype, hence my surprise that you've overlooked it.

Aside from Galahad (who, now that my memory is refreshed, was the most Sue-ish of the Arthurian knights, and there's some competition in that regard), I can't really think of that many examples. Knights who are magic, sure, but not that many characters I can think of who are magical because they're honorable.


From the ACG.

Yeah, just found it. Looks like spontaneous Magus with Bloodrager powers. I guess if I got the ACG but still decided half-casters were nixed, this would be a decent back door to the concept.


If this is the standard a class must meet to be allowed, why is Cavalier allowed? What character concepts can Cavalier fulfil that couldn’t be adequately filled by a Fighter with the Animal Ally feat?

Cavalier orders express the concept of a mounted knight on a much more nuanced and expressive level than "Fighter with horse" is capable of. I'm not convinced that the Paladin does the same for its own archetype, though I'm willing to be persuaded otherwise.


If Ranger archetypes that remove spellcasting are allowed, why aren’t Paladin archetypes that remove spellcasting also allowed?

I mean... can you name any? The only way I know of to take spellcasting away from a Paladin is to use the CWar version, and that still leaves a distinctly magical knight. And for that I say, I've already got Cavalier.

[Rynjin]

I didn't actually say as much, just put it forth as an example. My view on it is that if you want to play a knight in shining armor... play Cavalier. If you want to play a magical agent of the church... play Inquisitor. If you really wanna be both at the same time... cross-class.

So, unless the paladin can offer something to that concept besides mechanical convenience and there are enough other half-casters to keep them from being a total outlier in the design philosophy... no paladin.

It's not just mechanical "convenience", it's that there is almost literally zero mechanical overlap between Inquisitors and Paladins or Cavaliers and Paladins. They're nothing alike as classes.

If you're going to "design by subtraction" it would be best to ensure you know what the numbers are first.

[Drakevarg]

It's not just mechanical "convenience", it's that there is almost literally zero mechanical overlap between Inquisitors and Paladins or Cavaliers and Paladins. They're nothing alike as classes.

If you're going to "design by subtraction" it would be best to ensure you know what the numbers are first.

The mechanics are just there to express a narrative concept, in my mind. Conceptually, a Paladin is somewhere between a Cavalier and an Inquisitor. Mechanically... I don't care.

I don't need to know what the numbers are, because all the numbers are zero until I decide otherwise. You see it as taking the Paladin away, I'm saying there is no Paladin until I'm convinced the Paladin is worth adding. That's what I mean by design-by-subtraction. Things aren't in until I decide they're out, they're out until I decide they're in.

[Rynjin]

The mechanics are just there to express a narrative concept, in my mind. Conceptually, a Paladin is somewhere between a Cavalier and an Inquisitor. Mechanically... I don't care.

Conceptually a Paladin is nothing like either, and predates both.




I don't need to know what the numbers are, because all the numbers are zero until I decide otherwise. You see it as taking the Paladin away, I'm saying there is no Paladin until I'm convinced the Paladin is worth adding. That's what I mean by design-by-subtraction. Things aren't in until I decide they're out, they're out until I decide they're in.

Frankly, it sounds more like you've already made up your mind (that's really the only visible purpose the concept serves) and won't be swayed, so I don't understand the purpose of the thread. You've already decided they're out on your own, and are post hoc justifying leaving them out because of what you arbitrarily have already decided to leave in.

[Drakevarg]

Conceptually a Paladin is nothing like either, and predates both.

You're still looking at it backwards. We are starting at zero. Paladin isn't being booted out of its own house, it's just not being let into mine. How old it is doesn't matter, I'm not adding the OD&D Thief either.

A paladin is a holy knight. You want knight? We have Cavalier. You want magical agent of a god? We have Inquisitor. You want both at the same time? Cross-class. Pretend here that Paladin is a homebrew class you made yourself, not something that inherently "belongs" in the game. You want it in, convince me to add it, don't tell me I'm taking it away because it was never in to begin with.


Frankly, it sounds more like you've already made up your mind (that's really the only visible purpose the concept serves) and won't be swayed, so I don't understand the purpose of the thread. You've already decided they're out on your own, and are post hoc justifying leaving them out because of what you arbitrarily have already decided to leave in.

If I already made up my mind, I wouldn't have posted. I don't need the Playground's permission to do anything, so I don't need to "justify" leaving anything out. Just because your arguments have been completely unconvincing and based entirely on "but the Paladin does exist!" doesn't mean I'm not willing to listen to arguments that actually approach from a compatible point of view.

[Rynjin]

You're still looking at it backwards. We are starting at zero. Paladin isn't being booted out of its own house, it's just not being let into mine. How old it is doesn't matter, I'm not adding the OD&D Thief either.

A paladin is a holy knight. You want knight? We have Cavalier. You want magical agent of a god? We have Inquisitor. You want both at the same time? Cross-class. Pretend here that Paladin is a homebrew class you made yourself, not something that inherently "belongs" in the game. You want it in, convince me to add it, don't tell me I'm taking it away because it was never in to begin with.

Read above edit response to your edit. I don't think it's possible to convince you, and I'm not personally invested enough in your game to try to do so.

Try asking your players?

[ciopo]

Well, within scope, the half caster occupy the niche of "have full BAB but also some limited casting" and no combination of multiclass will get that if you exclude a priori those classes that are full BAB and have some spellcasting.

I am a mechanical mind person, calling a paladin a paladin or a cavalier/inquisitor a paladin is window dressing.

I suppose "those don't exists" same as full casters, it just feels weird since they are closer to martials than caster as presemted/flavored.

I don't actually remember what the half casters are, is it just paladin and ranger? "Full BAB but still have some limited magic"

I'm not much well versed in pf, does the figther have an archetype that gives it some limited casting? Top of my head there's the mutagen warrior somethiing something, but that's no casting I think

[Rynjin]

I don't actually remember what the half casters are, is it just paladin and ranger? "Full BAB but still have some limited magic"

Medium and Bloodrager are the ones you're missing.


I'm not much well versed in pf, does the figther have an archetype that gives it some limited casting? Top of my head there's the mutagen warrior somethiing something, but that's no casting I think

Child of Acavna and Amazen (https://www.d20pfsrd.com/classes/core-classes/fighter/archetypes/paizo-fighter-archetypes/child-of-war-fighter-archetype/) gets specllcasting BTW.

[Maat Mons]

In Pathfinder, the Paladin archetypes I’m aware of that give up spellcasting are Stonelord (https://www.d20pfsrd.com/races/core-races/dwarf/stonelord-paladin-dwarf), Tempered Champion (https://www.d20pfsrd.com/classes/core-classes/paladin/archetypes/paizo-paladin-archetypes/temple-champion-paladin-archetype/), Temple Champion (https://www.d20pfsrd.com/classes/core-classes/paladin/archetypes/paizo-paladin-archetypes/temple-champion), and Virtuous Bravo (https://www.d20pfsrd.com/classes/core-classes/paladin/archetypes/paizo-paladin-archetypes/virtuous-bravo-paladin-archetype/).

In 3.5, the Paladin ACFs I’m aware of that give up spellcasting are Holy Warrior (Complete Champion, p49) and Spell-Less Paladin (Complete Warrior, p13).



Edit:

The Medium class sometimes caps out at 4th-level spells and sometimes caps out at 6th-level spells. On any day when you channel the Archmage spirit, your spell progression is one that caps out at 6th-level spells. On any other day, your spell progression is one that caps out at 4th-level spells.


In addition to the classes already mentioned, Antipaladin and Vampire Hunter have spell progressions that cap out at 4th level. I believe that brings the final list to Antipaladin, Bloodrager, Child of Acavna and Amaznen Fighter, Mediums not currently channeling the Archmage spirit, Paladin, and Ranger for Pathfinder. For 3.5, I can think of Paladin, Ranger, Sohei, Spellthief, and Hexblade. Adept, Duskblade, and Magewright are the classes I can think of that cap out at 5th-level spells.

[Kurald Galain]

Conceptually a Paladin is nothing like either, and predates both.

Rynjin is absolutely correct in that a Paladin has nothing to do with either a cavalier or an inquisitor.

[Drakevarg]

In Pathfinder, the Paladin archetypes I’m aware of that give up spellcasting are Stonelord (https://www.d20pfsrd.com/races/core-races/dwarf/stonelord-paladin-dwarf), Tempered Champion (https://www.d20pfsrd.com/classes/core-classes/paladin/archetypes/paizo-paladin-archetypes/temple-champion-paladin-archetype/), Temple Champion (https://www.d20pfsrd.com/classes/core-classes/paladin/archetypes/paizo-paladin-archetypes/temple-champion), and Virtuous Bravo (https://www.d20pfsrd.com/classes/core-classes/paladin/archetypes/paizo-paladin-archetypes/virtuous-bravo-paladin-archetype/).

In 3.5, the Paladin ACFs I’m aware of that give up spellcasting are Holy Warrior (Complete Champion, p49) and Spell-Less Paladin (Complete Warrior, p13).

Don't have Complete Champion, and of the PF archetypes you listed I think only the Temple Champion wasn't from an actual splat and not one of those obscure side-books.


In addition to the classes already mentioned, Antipaladin and Vampire Hunter have spell progressions that cap out at 4th level. I believe that brings the final list to Antipaladin, Bloodrager, Child of Acavna and Amaznen Fighter, Mediums not currently channeling the Archmage spirit, Paladin, and Ranger for Pathfinder. For 3.5, I can think of Paladin, Ranger, Sohei, Spellthief, and Hexblade. Adept, Duskblade, and Magewright are the classes I can think of that cap out at 5th-level spells.

Oh, I totally forgot about the Sohei. The Child-of-Whatever thing I've never heard of and it sounds like a PrC in archetype clothes. What's the Vampire Hunter from?


Rynjin is absolutely correct in that a Paladin has nothing to do with either a cavalier or an inquisitor.

Explain to me how a Paladin isn't a knight or an agent of divine power, and what's left if you take both those traits from it.

[AvatarVecna]

Ignoring the obvious No True Scotsman going on here, my last word on this subject is that there is nobody who can logic you out of a position you didn't logic yourself into.

[Drakevarg]

Ignoring the obvious No True Scotsman going on here, my last word on this subject is that there is nobody who can logic you out of a position you didn't logic yourself into.

I logic'd myself into the position just fine, thanks. I just started from the standpoint of "no casters," reconsidered that position and continued from there. If I'm starting from "no casters unless I say otherwise," then you debate that from the starting position of "all casters except the ones I block," then we're not really even discussing the same subject.

[Rynjin]

Explain to me how a Paladin isn't a knight or an agent of divine power, and what's left if you take both those traits from it.

They're not a knight, because they're not associated with ANY mortal government inherently. Paladins are also not inherently agents of divine power, period. Paladins do not have to worship a god and gain few benefits from doing so.

Paladins are the mortal conduits of the fundamental universal constants of Law and Good, and are similar fundamentally opposed to all powers of Evil and to a lesser extent Chaos.

A Cavalier, or other knight, is beholden to a mortal power by default. Knights Errant (or Ronin, for the Samurai equivalent) are considered exceptions, not the rule.

Inquisitors are explicitly the "wetwork" operatives of a specific god. Ultra-zealots of a specific god who are given explicit permission to break the tenets of their god in service of their greater overall goals. There's a reason Inquisitors have different wording in their Code of Conduct than Clerics do. It's not an accident. Inquisitors can explicitly break ANY law or tenet set down by their god without falling, where a Cleric who "grossly" violates their god's tenets will fall immediately. The ONLY thing that can make an Inquisitor fall is shifting alignment so far from their deity they no longer count as a valid worshiper.

For example, a Cleric of Pharasma who summons an undead instantly loses their abilities. An Inquisitor could justify doing it in certain circumstances and get away with it.

Paladins are rigid and inflexible agents of a power even higher than the gods. There is no wiggle room in interpretation of their Code.

Neither Cavalier or Inquisitor represent this either thematically or mechanically.

[Drakevarg]

They're not a knight, because they're not associated with ANY mortal government inherently. Paladins are also not inherently agents of divine power, period. Paladins do not have to worship a god and gain few benefits from doing so.

Paladins are the mortal conduits of the fundamental universal constants of Law and Good, and are similar fundamentally opposed to all powers of Evil and to a lesser extent Chaos.

A Cavalier, or other knight, is beholden to a mortal power by default. Knights Errant (or Ronin, for the Samurai equivalent) are considered exceptions, not the rule.

Inquisitors are explicitly the "wetwork" operatives of a specific god. Ultra-zealots of a specific god who are given explicit permission to break the tenets of their god in service of their greater overall goals. There's a reason Inquisitors have different wording in their Code of Conduct than Clerics do. It's not an accident.

Paladins are rigid and inflexible agents of a power even higher than the gods. There is no wiggle room in interpretation of their Code.

Neither Cavalier or Inquisitor represent this either thematically or mechanically.

That is a highly setting-specific interpretation of what a Paladin is, not one applicable to broad fiction. And definitely not one relevant to my game, where good and evil are largely meaningless in a cosmic sense. So, if that's the definition of a Paladin as you see it, it's not an archetype important for me to make space for.

And no, this isn't goalpost-moving, the setting is written with a gothic horror-fantasy tone in mind, something like Thief or Bloodborne. I just didn't bring it up before now because it's not relevant to the overall conversation unless you define paladins specifically as agents of the fundamental cosmic concepts of Law and Good, an idea that's meaningless to my setting.

[Rynjin]

That is a highly setting-specific interpretation of what a Paladin is, not one applicable to broad fiction. And definitely not one relevant to my game, where good and evil are largely meaningless in a cosmic sense. So, if that's the definition of a Paladin as you see it, it's not an archetype important for me to make space for.

And no, this isn't goalpost-moving, the setting is written with a gothic horror-fantasy tone in mind, something like Thief or Bloodborne. I just didn't bring it up before now because it's not relevant to the overall conversation unless you define paladins specifically as agents of the fundamental cosmic concepts of Law and Good, an idea that's meaningless to my setting.

Okay. Anyway, then I go back to my previous answer: nobody's going to change your mind, you have an answer for everything and your mind is made up. Ask your players, they're the only ones likely to know all the nitpicky details needed to form a proper response.

[Drakevarg]

Okay. Anyway, then I go back to my previous answer: nobody's going to change your mind, you have an answer for everything and your mind is made up. Ask your players, they're the only ones likely to know all the nitpicky details needed to form a proper response.

Is it really that surprising that I would have an answer for the most obvious counterpoints when I specifically came in saying I needed to settle a question I've been deliberating on privately for some time?

Here's some suggestions of things that might convince me:
- A solid character archetype that isn't highly specific to D&D, that I can't really express with the classes already in play.
- Some kind of mechanical niche that can only be serviced by half-casters (only one I can think of is "magic with full BAB," which isn't very convincing).
- A way in which even a small selection of half-casters can flesh out the world in a way cross-classing doesn't.

I've yet to hear any of these arguments broached, only repeated iterations on "but they're already in the game, why are you blocking them?"

Also as an aside I just took another look at Sohei. Looks like a sort of... Lawful ki barb-adin thing? It's certainly an idea I guess but not really one I'm gonna lose any sleep over not supporting.

[Rynjin]

Is it really that surprising that I would have an answer for the most obvious counterpoints

Not surprising, simply tiresome. Nobody is here to have a formal debate with you, and having "counterpoints" specifically drawn up and ready to go for an inherently opinion-based topic isn't conducive to maintaining a casual conversation.

More to the point, if you HAVE specific points you want people to argue against, they should be posted up front rather than sprung in the middle of the conversation. If you know WHY you don't want Paladins in your game, post "I don't want Paladins in my game, here's why, is there anything wrong with this logic/something I overlooked" instead of "I don't want Paladins in my game. Convince me otherwise.".

The latter is not a particularly good conversation starter and will ultimately just lead to frustration as people begin to argue with you rather than converse with you, because that is the vibe you're bringing to the table.

That's my general experience with forums and RPG topics in general. The usefulness of a given topic is usually determined pretty quickly by the thread starter. The more specific the better, because it's impossible to properly discuss vagueries.

If you'd like to properly quantify all the variables at this point, it'd probably go a long way toward getting you more useful results instead of being frustrating for all involved.

[Drakevarg]

If you'd like to properly quantify all the variables at this point, it'd probably go a long way toward getting you more useful results instead of being frustrating for all involved.

That's a much more difficult ask than it sounds. Internal debates are inherently nonlinear and what is and is not a factor isn't necessarily consciously understood until it's put directly in front of you. That's why, argumentative and frustrating as they might seem, I actually do get something out of these threads, even if it's merely calcifying a position I already held. Sometimes you don't know which pillars are solid until you invite someone to come up and try whackin' 'em with a stick.

But, for transparency, I can take a stab at it.

Why I don't want half-casters:

- 3.x half-casters are extremely underwhelming. Hexplade, Spellthief and Sohei are all fairly underwhelming classes IMO, particularly given their lack of support after their introduction.
- With those three missing, you have four half-casters left: Paladin, Ranger, Medium and Bloodrager. Bloodrager is from ACG, which I don't own so it's off the table at least for now. That leaves just three half-casters in play, compared to six - I dunno, can we call them "mid-casters" or something? 3/4 or 2/3s feels clunky and saying "six 6-level casters" is annoying - and seven (maybe six if you stop counting Ranger) martials (not counting alternate classes). Half-casters feel like an awkward outlier in that bunch.
- Of the half-casters you have left, Ranger works so easily without spells that the magic feels like an afterthought and Paladin just feels like Cavalier in shinier pants. Only Medium really needs its magic to make sense as an archetype, and it's basically just a weird Occultist-Spiritualist blend with worse casting than both.

Why I might want half-casters:
- While half of them suck, there are at least seven half-casters to be found if you dig around a bit, which is hypothetically enough to feel like it fits with the other two categories. Maybe someone could point out a solid resource for Hexblades that makes them more viable, then I could get ACG and figure out how it all fits together.
- Maybe there are half-casting archetypes out there that really can't be adequately expressed with a cross-classed martial/mid-caster. I don't really care about the mechanical disadvantage, only how troublesome it is to express a character concept.
- I generally prefer low-magic, so why am I taking an issue with classes that have less magic?
- Without Ranger (or Hunter from the ACG) I don't really have any casters that fit a 'nature magic' archetype despite that being a fairly strong theme in my inspiration material.

[Rynjin]

Thanks a bunch, I can work with this.



But, for transparency, I can take a stab at it.

Why I don't want half-casters:

- 3.x half-casters are extremely underwhelming. Hexplade, Spellthief and Sohei are all fairly underwhelming classes IMO, particularly given their lack of support after their introduction.
- With those three missing, you have four half-casters left: Paladin, Ranger, Medium and Bloodrager. Bloodrager is from ACG, which I don't own so it's off the table at least for now. That leaves just three half-casters in play, compared to six - I dunno, can we call them "mid-casters" or something? 3/4 or 2/3s feels clunky and saying "six 6-level casters" is annoying - and seven (maybe six if you stop counting Ranger) martials (not counting alternate classes). Half-casters feel like an awkward outlier in that bunch.

Hrrrm, I don't really understand the logic TBH. "There aren't very many of them" isn't really a compelling reason not to allow any. Conceptually, they fill the role of "dabblers". They're martial characters with a few magical tricks, most limited to their very specific niche; Ranger spells usually make them better at tracking or fighting and not much else for instance.


- Of the half-casters you have left, Ranger works so easily without spells that the magic feels like an afterthought and Paladin just feels like Cavalier in shinier pants. Only Medium really needs its magic to make sense as an archetype, and it's basically just a weird Occultist-Spiritualist blend with worse casting than both.

Even without the Law/Good matters that Paladin primarily deals with, quite frankly the Paladin simply has a better conceptual reason to exist than the Cavalier. Cavalier is literally "Fighter with a horse" while Paladin has its own conceptual identity that can be adapted to any setting.

They are the knight in literal shining armor, and conceptually still uphold a strict code of honor, representing nobility (in both senses) and opposing the wicked. It's a much more distinct and noticeable character archetype than "a mounted knight" which is something that can be achieved by any class with the right Feats.

[Drakevarg]

Hrrrm, I don't really understand the logic TBH. "There aren't very many of them" isn't really a compelling reason not to allow any. Conceptually, they fill the role of "dabblers". They're martial characters with a few magical tricks, most limited to their very specific niche; Ranger spells usually make them better at tracking or fighting and not much else for instance.

I like cohesion of design. Maybe it's just a spectrum thing, but patterns appeal to me. I don't use evokers for the same reason. They're a neat concept, I guess, but they don't really fit into the overall "puzzle" of the other classes I'm working with. So if they aren't representing a meaty enough chunk of the play space they just feel incongruous to me.


Even without the Law/Good matters that Paladin primarily deals with, quite frankly the Paladin simply has a better conceptual reason to exist than the Cavalier. Cavalier is literally "Fighter with a horse" while Paladin has its own conceptual identity that can be adapted to any setting.

They are the knight in literal shining armor, and conceptually still uphold a strict code of honor, representing nobility (in both senses) and opposing the wicked. It's a much more distinct and noticeable character archetype than "a mounted knight" which is something that can be achieved by any class with the right Feats.

Funny thing is, I could say most of that about the Cavalier too. Between the two, I prefer the Cavalier's low/non-magical take on knightly virtues, and their various Orders allow them a degree of flexibility and personality in that role that the Paladin can't really match when having the sun shine out their backside is baked into the concept.

[Particle_Man]

Does this policy extend to prestige classes? Which prestige classes would you allow in your world (presumably not all of them since your policy seems to be “not allowed without a reason that fits my setting and sensibilities”).

Similarly, does this policy extend to archetypes? If so, which are allowed?

Going sideways, does this policy extend to pc races? Does it extend to monsters? If so, which are allowed?

[Drakevarg]

Does this policy extend to prestige classes? Which prestige classes would you allow in your world (presumably not all of them since your policy seems to be “not allowed without a reason that fits my setting and sensibilities”).

I dropped PrCs pretty much the day I discovered archetypes and never really looked back. Unless I have some idea for implementing a PrC into the story somehow, I have no real intention of using them.


Similarly, does this policy extend to archetypes? If so, which are allowed?

Case-by-case basis. There's a lot to dig through. Of the ones I've specifically singled out as unacceptable so far:

- Cavalier's Order of the Shroud. A universal DR bypass for undead is ridiculous IMO.
- Rogue Survivalist. I have simply never liked endure elements and ban it whenever I see it.
- All Vigilante archetypes that give the class spellcasting. Just bloody cross-class.


Going sideways, does this policy extend to pc races? Does it extend to monsters? If so, which are allowed?

I specifically wrote the setting's race options to be open-ended as possible, so most things are allowed unless I specifically think they're unsuitable. I tried making a comprehensive race list once, but it quickly got ridiculously bloated and I settled for just defining them by broad umbrellas... which still left me with like 18 categories. If a player somehow managed to find a race that managed to not fit under any of those 18 categories (which frankly I can't think of any)... well chances are it's not gonna be balanced for PC use, and even if it was I'd have to nix it for being wildly outlandish.

[Zanos]

I think half-casters(as defined by OP) are interesting because they are primarily martials who have a few tricks they can bring out when hitting people with a sword isn't relevant, rather than the 6th level casters who tend to be "i put the magic ON the sword", and most of their combat power comes from mixing spell attacks into combat or having some other action advantage while both attacking and casting. Or the other flavor of PF "6th level caster", which just gets 3/4th BAB for some reason and a selection of 7th-9th level spells that are heavily discounted.

I also don't think they're as bad mechanically as often made out, the Paladin and Ranger are the ones I've most familiar with and both lists, at least in 3.5 got a lot of support in splats and therefore have many useful options, on top of being divine casters who can prepare any spells from their list without having to go out of their way to learn it. The Ranger for example is a much better tracker than almost any other class in the game because of unique spells.

As for the other argument I don't really think Cavalier embodies the Paladin concept very well, most Cavalier features center around mounted combat. The Paladin gets options for having a mount, but the class is specifically about being a Holy Knight who Smites Evil and upholds Law and Good. If that is a concept that isn't relevant in your setting then I guess it's not important. But being able to call on minor miracles is fairly potent theming.



- Cavalier's Order of the Shroud. A universal DR bypass for undead is ridiculous IMO.
- Rogue Survivalist. I have simply never liked endure elements and ban it whenever I see it.
I think I'm beginning to understand why this thread is so contentious. Frankly, you have some pretty different opinions about how the game is played.

[Drakevarg]

As for the other argument I don't really think Cavalier embodies the Paladin concept very well, most Cavalier features center around mounted combat. The Paladin gets options for having a mount, but the class is specifically about being a Holy Knight who Smites Evil and upholds Law and Good. If that is a concept that isn't relevant in your setting then I guess it's not important. But being able to call on minor miracles is fairly potent theming.

I suppose so, I'm just not convinced that it's theming that can't be suitably replicated by giving a Cavalier a dip into Inquisitor. Paladin has always felt like a hybrid class to me, though, even back before I picked up Pathfinder. Unearthed Arcana kind of agrees with me on that one, given the Paladin PrC.

Goodness isn't a cosmic force in my setting, but there's definitely still a place for the archetype of the light in the dark. I'm just as of yet unconvinced we need Paladin to express that idea. I'm gonna go do a quick skim of the Paladin archetypes and see if anything jumps out at me.


I think I'm beginning to understand why this thread is so contentious. Frankly, you have some pretty different opinions about how the game is played.

I'm not how to respond to that besides offer up my most indifferent of shrugs.

Edit: Paladin Archetype skim didn't take long.

While I did find one Paladin archetype without spellcasting (Warrior of the Holy Light, APG), I think you'd be hard-pressed to call any paladin archetype a "martial" character. So we're back at "make half-casters seem like a worthwhile niche or drop the whole thing." Other than that, most of the archetypes were just builds, nothing particularly interesting.

One exception to that, though, that I did find interesting was UM's Oathbound Paladin. Nicely shakes up the paladin's generic "good guy what does good things" into a specific focus in a similar vein to a Cavalier's Orders or an Inquisitor's... well, Inquisitions. Not enough to make them stand out IMO, but maybe enough to make them fit nicely between the two.

[Elvensilver]

Conceptually, they fill the role of "dabblers". They're martial characters with a few magical tricks, most limited to their very specific niche; Ranger spells usually make them better at tracking or fighting and not much else for instance.
I would like to argue this point, too. (Mostly for Ranger and Paladin as these are the half-casters I'm most familiar with)

Conceptually, what we see is are people that are so in tune with their deity+law+good/nature/their inherent magic blood/etc., that eventually they begin to really understand it and connect with it on a deeper level (through spells).

I think this concept gets mechanically represented in the Ranger, who gets their Hunter's bond the same level they get their first spell.

That there are fewer of them than full martials or 3/4-Casters is not a bug, its a feature due to their nature - some people study the art of music or artefacts etc. until they can use their inherent power themselves, while a lot of people take up the sword - out of these, only very few are so devoted to nature/a deity that they eventually get (as these are divine classes, their power is granted) from it, while not getting worse in fighting because of that (different from multi-classing). This devotion and expertise should be rare!

Also, these classes make for a good learning curve due to them starting as martials and only later getting some spells.

As you yourself have mentioned, Ranger also fills a definite conceptual niche - nature's warrior, a tracker, scout, hunter, survivalist. Be it with or without spells, this is in my opinion a niche that should be filled, how else can you play Aragorn?

[Fizban]

Spellthief kinda sucks (it just uses the Sorc/Wiz spell list), Hexblade is underfed both conceptually and content-wise, and Bloodrager is out because I don't have ACG. Which effectively leaves three appropriately robust half-casters left. As for the 6-level casters:
So Paladin, Ranger, and one other. Spellthief is a very specific combo-tool sort of thing from early 3.5, Hexblade is also from early 3.5, and both are arcane from when arcane stuff was given tons of armor etc restrictions because arcane. Sounds to me like they're being left out because they're old and weak compared to PF stuff, and dragging the other ones with them.


I find it easier to study and judge the various archetypes and options of a single class than I do the suite of options of several classes. So to me, one class with a lot of options > ten classes with no options.
Fair enough.


The mechanics are just there to express a narrative concept, in my mind. Conceptually, a Paladin is somewhere between a Cavalier and an Inquisitor. Mechanically... I don't care.
As noted, conceptually they are in fact very different, and mechanics are never divorced from narrative concept. That's the game part of the roleplaying game. If the mechanics don't actually match the narrative, or the narrative doesn't match the mechanics, the game isn't working.


I just started from the standpoint of "no casters," reconsidered that position and continued from there. If I'm starting from "no casters unless I say otherwise,"
This is interesting, because the partial list you provided which focused on the 6th casters after removing 9ths, reads more like "these casters are the epitome of balance." If you wanted no casters then why not just go no casters? This is also a clearly mechanically motivated decision- I do not think you added the PF 6th casters because they were interesting narrative things you had no have in the world. You started with no casters, then reconsidered almost certainly because of the problems that would be caused by no casters, and so returned the 6th casters (it then feeling like you're taking their distinct flavors as a post-hoc justification).

I also disagree with highly specific base classes that happen to have a bunch options turning them into slightly different specific classes as being good versatile blocks for realizing varied characters, but that's more a matter of taste. If you actually have a narrative first list of stuff you need, and fill out that list with base classes and archetypes, great. But this does not look like that, because you have not presented it as setting narrative first. You've presented a list of published classes and have yet to state any desire to directly fix or add something yourself, though you have solicited for possible fixes- to existing published classes. So you're clearly working from a published mechanical material first standpoint, accepting whatever cool pre-defined narrative concepts already have mechanics that happen to fall within certain parameters. Paladin seems to be the only class with a narrative that doesn't fit.


That is a highly setting-specific interpretation of what a Paladin is, not one applicable to broad fiction.
No, it's not? It's the most generic version possible, for any setting where there exists cosmic good and evil. Such as standard DnD, both 3.x and Pathfinder offshoots. The Paladin is a concept basically created by DnD in the first place (taking DnD mechanics and modern concepts of Good)- from there spreading to videogames/feeding back into other media, so of course the primary definition comes from DnD. Doesn't mean it's any less beloved or important just because literature from hundreds of years ago doesn't match it exactly, especially when you're playing a game that includes it in the default rules. Both thematically and mechanically, Good guy who fights with weapon and armor and a bit of non-offensive magic and follows a code of conduct fits basically anywhere.


And definitely not one relevant to my game, where good and evil are largely meaningless in a cosmic sense. So, if that's the definition of a Paladin as you see it, it's not an archetype important for me to make space for.
So your game is the one with the highly specific setting that removes concepts of cosmic Good and Evil. That's fine, but you are the one that removed the Paladin because you narrowed the setting, it did not remove itself for being too specific.


And no, this isn't goalpost-moving, the setting is written with a gothic horror-fantasy tone in mind, something like Thief or Bloodborne. I just didn't bring it up before now because it's not relevant to the overall conversation unless you define paladins specifically as agents of the fundamental cosmic concepts of Law and Good, an idea that's meaningless to my setting.
It's extremely relevant when you're saying that a class needs to have a good narrative reason to exist (since you apparently don't consider the Paladin's unique mechanics sufficient), and you're using a specific setting where Paladins don't make narrative sense.

Mechanically again: In 3.5, Paladins have a supernatural (uninterruptible) extra healing pool, a couple of constant immunities, a smite (single heavy blow) ability with limited uses, and then either a special mount or some other set of extra features. In PF IIRC they make the smite into not actually a smite, but otherwise have many of the same features. Does a Cavalier Inqusitor get an extra healing pool, imunnity to fear and disease, some sort of "smite," and a special mount or other set of extra features, with the mount staying at "full power" spells not dropping below 4th, and BAB staying at full?

No, it does not. You need a minimum 10 levels of Inquisitor by 14th to keep your spells on pace with the base class Paladin, so your mount sucks, and the BAB is not full. Saying a Cavalier/Inquisitor is equal to a Paladin, even ignoring the themes and the minutiae of several abilities, is incorrect. You'd be better off making an Inquisitor archetype that drops the "code of conducts don't apply to me" and adds the missing Paladin features.


- 3.x half-casters are extremely underwhelming. . . .
Of course they are, they're from nearly the earliest part of the game, the Ranger and Paladin using spells because that was the only versatile/daily mechanic that existed, and the arcane versions were given more penalties because "arcane" was being thematically locked to martial penalties at the time while divine was not. Comparing them to the PF versions of Pal/Rgr with all their Pathfinderizations, and then PF'd progression towards 6th casters, what else could you possibly expect?


Why I might want half-casters:
- While half of them suck, there are at least seven half-casters to be found if you dig around a bit, which is hypothetically enough to feel like it fits with the other two categories. Maybe someone could point out a solid resource for Hexblades that makes them more viable, then I could get ACG and figure out how it all fits together.
You can follow the link in my sig or here (https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1hsLuk88H_7FHi4PGkPyMvc93SLMM_-Dx?usp=sharing) for my Hexblade and Sohei fixes (base class tweaks and expanded spell lists) meant to bring them closer to the late 3.5 pile of (strictly upside) ACF Paladin/Ranger builds (as well as some base Paladin considerations for people that don't build characters that way). But I would not be surprised at all if these still don't match up to the Pathfinder 4th half casters/6th casters and/or whatever OP level you use.

This is where I come back to the question of the base premise- are you trying to build "martials only/mostly," or are you basing things on 6th casters and expecting the allowed martials to "keep up," or standard asymetrical/party role but with 6th instead of 9th?


- Maybe there are half-casting archetypes out there that really can't be adequately expressed with a cross-classed martial/mid-caster. I don't really care about the mechanical disadvantage, only how troublesome it is to express a character concept.
- I generally prefer low-magic, so why am I taking an issue with classes that have less magic?
- Without Ranger (or Hunter from the ACG) I don't really have any casters that fit a 'nature magic' archetype despite that being a fairly strong theme in my inspiration material.
You say again that the trouble is expressing character concepts while rejecting Paladins as a distinct concept.

The Paladin concept doesn't really have any need for 4th casting, that's just legacy mechanics, but since it's already printed with those mechanics you won't find a replacement (aside from say PrC versions made for those who don't want it as a base class, but you've said that you don't use those at all). But archetypes which remove the casting have already been listed, and if that leaves a useful enough class there you go. But since you say your setting rejects the main Paladin concept, then yeah you really shouldn't have one, any more than I should have a class about zomg LawVChaos! when I think it's lame and has no serious place in my game.

And yeah, that is a big question of why you're removing the even lower magic classes when you want lower magic. Indeed, you could just file the alignment off of the Paladin, fill out the Hexblade and Spellthief (just give Spellthief full Sor/Wiz if you want), and you'd only be lacking a 4th/half Blaster (and when everyone is martial with various spell tricks to beat defenses, crowd control and armor piercing damage are covered).

You've really gotta define what you mean and want with "low-magic" before you can start rebuilding the game to match it. If instead your goal is say, a list of classes that are either "martial with ability menu" or "6th caster," so the overall class design looks nice and neat, that's entirely different.


I think half-casters(as defined by OP) are interesting because they are primarily martials who have a few tricks they can bring out when hitting people with a sword isn't relevant, rather than the 6th level casters who tend to be "i put the magic ON the sword", and most of their combat power comes from mixing spell attacks into combat or having some other action advantage while both attacking and casting. Or the other flavor of PF "6th level caster", which just gets 3/4th BAB for some reason and a selection of 7th-9th level spells that are heavily discounted.
I would disagree that the 4th half casters are about direct spell attacks in any way: they have few, lower level spells, at half caster level. The Hexblade almost has some idea there where if you can land the curse to wreck their saving throw you can follow up by mind crushing them with spells (and I've tried to support that a bit more with my fixes), but the Paladin and Ranger don't go there at all- their combat spells are either useless as direct offense (delayed copies of spells that were intentionally worse than Sor/Wiz) or combat tricks in spell form from before there were martial maneuvers. The Duskblade is about having direct spell attacks. . . that no one cares about because they don't get Fireball or Lightning bolt and hey what if I char-op three different spells onto the sword (I've grown to hate the toxic progression of "channeling" features).


I also don't think they're as bad mechanically as often made out, the Paladin and Ranger are the ones I've most familiar with and both lists, at least in 3.5 got a lot of support in splats and therefore have many useful options, on top of being divine casters who can prepare any spells from their list without having to go out of their way to learn it. The Ranger for example is a much better tracker than almost any other class in the game because of unique spells.
Oh definitely, as long as you don't have a game that's oriented around the almighty spellcaster power, and particularly if you expand the lists of the classes that got no expansion, yeah a full BAB armored character with some magic tricks instead of raw damage is useful. The sheer extra daily hp of Paladin spells for example is the most basic quantification, and the spell system makes it absurdly easy to tweak character balance mid-game by adding new or removing problematic spells rather than having to re-build entire characters.

[Drakevarg]

So Paladin, Ranger, and one other. Spellthief is a very specific combo-tool sort of thing from early 3.5, Hexblade is also from early 3.5, and both are arcane from when arcane stuff was given tons of armor etc restrictions because arcane. Sounds to me like they're being left out because they're old and weak compared to PF stuff, and dragging the other ones with them.

Given how old they are, they really should've had more support later in the edition. Ranger and Pally are older still, but they got consistent support so even if I was sticking with 3.x Paladin it'd still be miles better than Hexblade.


This is interesting, because the partial list you provided which focused on the 6th casters after removing 9ths, reads more like "these casters are the epitome of balance." If you wanted no casters then why not just go no casters? This is also a clearly mechanically motivated decision- I do not think you added the PF 6th casters because they were interesting narrative things you had no have in the world. You started with no casters, then reconsidered almost certainly because of the problems that would be caused by no casters, and so returned the 6th casters (it then feeling like you're taking their distinct flavors as a post-hoc justification).

Very much prescribing motivations onto me. I've been running no-casters for years, and I had no problem with it (well, ever since I quit being a killer DM). The simple fact is that I decided to move my no-caster setting to be consistently played under nWoD rules, and the setting I decided to replace it with (a gothic horror-fantasy setting inspired by Thief and Bloodborne, originally conceived as a Minecraft project) had a lot of casters in its inspirational material.

However, since I don't particularly like casters, I declined to make use of the 'worst offenders,' i.e., full casters. 6-level casters felt like a healthy compromise between spellcasting and actual class features, which would hopefully encourage creative use of a limited supply of tools rather than just digging through a giant pile of solution-buttons to find the one that suits the current situation. It had nothing to do with gameplay balance and everything to do with my sense of aesthetics in the matter.


No, it's not? It's the most generic version possible, for any setting where there exists cosmic good and evil. Such as standard DnD, both 3.x and Pathfinder offshoots.

I can't think of a single non-D&D (Pathfinder for the purposes of this statement being D&D) setting where Good and Evil as cosmic forces above the gods themselves was a thing. LotR? No. Witcher? No. Elder Scrolls? No. Narnia? No. Dragon Age? No. Dwarf Fortress? No. The one other setting that I can think of that might qualify is Warcraft, with the Light and the Void. That's about it.


Of course they are, they're from nearly the earliest part of the game, the Ranger and Paladin using spells because that was the only versatile/daily mechanic that existed, and the arcane versions were given more penalties because "arcane" was being thematically locked to martial penalties at the time while divine was not. Comparing them to the PF versions of Pal/Rgr with all their Pathfinderizations, and then PF'd progression towards 6th casters, what else could you possibly expect?

Well one might hope that either 3.5e would've given them some better options at some point, or Pathfinder would have overhauled them (or just made a suspiciously similar substitute). Neither really happened and AFAIK Pathfinder only ever put out two half-casters outside of Core.


This is where I come back to the question of the base premise- are you trying to build "martials only/mostly," or are you basing things on 6th casters and expecting the allowed martials to "keep up," or standard asymetrical/party role but with 6th instead of 9th?

Neither, really. I'm basing it on what feels like it fits aesthetically.


You say again that the trouble is expressing character concepts while rejecting Paladins as a distinct concept.

I'm saying something that could persuade me is a character concept that could only really be expressed with a Paladin archetype, and outside of maybe UM's Oaths I haven't been convinced that's the case.


And yeah, that is a big question of why you're removing the even lower magic classes when you want lower magic. Indeed, you could just file the alignment off of the Paladin, fill out the Hexblade and Spellthief (just give Spellthief full Sor/Wiz if you want), and you'd only be lacking a 4th/half Blaster (and when everyone is martial with various spell tricks to beat defenses, crowd control and armor piercing damage are covered).

Spellthief only having partial Sorc/Wiz wasn't the problem, the problem was that it used the Sorc/Wiz spell list at all.


You've really gotta define what you mean and want with "low-magic" before you can start rebuilding the game to match it. If instead your goal is say, a list of classes that are either "martial with ability menu" or "6th caster," so the overall class design looks nice and neat, that's entirely different.

Por que no los dos? There's not much I can do to concretely define what I mean by "low-magic" besides to gesture vaguely at Thief, Bloodborne and Dishonored and give a thumbs up, then point at Final Fantasy and Warcraft and give a thumbs down. And as for neatness of overall class design, I'm slowly coming around to the idea that 3-4 half-casters would be an acceptable overlap between the two categories, I'm just not fully satisfied with any particular selection. Ranger obviously, Paladin probably... but I don't have ACG and the more I look at the Medium the less I like it (like the Factotum, I don't really appreciate cheeky 'I can be good at anything after a nap' powers).

[Rynjin]

I can't think of a single non-D&D (Pathfinder for the purposes of this statement being D&D) setting where Good and Evil as cosmic forces above the gods themselves was a thing. LotR? No. Witcher? No. Elder Scrolls? No. Narnia? No. Dragon Age? No. Dwarf Fortress? No. The one other setting that I can think of that might qualify is Warcraft, with the Light and the Void. That's about it.



Picking several settings with low fantasy trappings doesn't really make your point well. It's a big thing in Epic Fantasy, and arguably two of your own examples exhibit it as well. Narnia has....non-board-appropriate allegorical meanings that could make it qualify, and objective Evil (and by contrast Good) absolutely DOES exist in Lord of the Rings.

I'd count any setting with an explicit Good vs Evil (or "Light vs Dark", same difference) framing in its plot, eg. the Wheel of Time saga, the Belgariad/Malloreon novels, etc.

[Drakevarg]

Picking several settings with low fantasy trappings doesn't really make your point well. It's a big thing in Epic Fantasy, and arguably two of your own examples exhibit it as well. Narnia has....non-board-appropriate allegorical meanings that could make it qualify, and objective Evil (and by contrast Good) absolutely DOES exist in Lord of the Rings.

The idea was specifically cited that Paladins were agents of Good as a concept that exists above the gods (as a specific rejection of my characterization of them as agents of divine will). Which is something not applicable to LotR or Narnia, where either Eru Iluvatar or the Emperor-Beyond-the-Sea exist a priori to everything else. That they are considered capital-G Good doesn't change that anyone acting in the service of cosmic goodness in those settings would be acting as an agent of a divine will.

And I wouldn't really call Elder Scrolls, a setting that pretty much runs on metaphysics and is so stuffed full of magic that the cannon never really caught on because any idiot can cast fireball, "low-fantasy."


I'd count any setting with an explicit Good vs Evil (or "Light vs Dark", same difference) framing in its plot, eg. the Wheel of Time saga, the Belgariad/Malloreon novels, etc.

Never read any of those so I can't really speak to them.

[Rynjin]

The idea was specifically cited that Paladins were agents of Good as a concept that exists above the gods (as a specific rejection of my characterization of them as agents of divine will). Which is something not applicable to LotR or Narnia, where either Eru Iluvatar or the Emperor-Beyond-the-Sea exist a priori to everything else. That they are considered capital-G Good doesn't change that anyone acting in the service of cosmic goodness in those settings would be acting as an agent of a divine will.

The objectivity is what matters in my eyes, not the existence or lack of a deity. In these settings Good is indisputably definable, whereas in others it is not. In both settings the deity equivalent exists as a mere representative of the objective morality the author wanted to convey.



And I wouldn't really call Elder Scrolls, a setting that pretty much runs on metaphysics and is so stuffed full of magic that the cannon never really caught on because any idiot can cast fireball, "low-fantasy."

Perhaps it was not included in the phrasing of "several", which was deliberately chsoen instead of "all of the above" or some such.


Never read any of those so I can't really speak to them.

You should, or at least WoT (David Eddings' stuff is more mixed than Wheel of Time is IMO). They're representatives of a genre of fantasy it seems you've completely missed out on.

[Drakevarg]

The objectivity is what matters in my eyes, not the existence or lack of a deity. In these settings Good is indisputably definable, whereas in others it is not. In both settings the deity equivalent exists as a mere representative of the objective morality the author wanted to convey.

Given both deities have agents in their respective worlds that answer directly to them (Aslan, the Maiar), I think dismissing them as "mere" representatives of objective morality would be underplaying their role. To my eyes, a paladin in either of those settings would be agents of a god, not some abstract notion higher than one.


Perhaps it was not included in the phrasing of "several", which was deliberately chsoen instead of "all of the above" or some such.

Well if you take out Narnia, LotR, and Elder Scrolls, you're left with... Witcher (low fantasy, sure), Dragon Age (debatable), and Dwarf Fortress (I wouldn't say so, given how frequently the gods crop up as explicit actors in world history). Either way I wouldn't say "several" low-fantasy settings were cited.

Edit: Random idea that I just had but am way too tired to look into tonight: there aren't very many half-casting base classes (especially not decent ones), but there are a boatload of half-caster PrCs if memory serves (since apparently my definition of half-caster differs from most, by 'half-caster' here I mean 'class with four spell levels'). Maybe I should consider looking to them as an alternative, despite my previous stance of PrCs being too rigid and unnecessary compared to archetypes when it comes to expressing a character concept.

Edit 2: Well I said I'd look, not that I'd find anything good. The main conclusion I reached is that there should be an Arcane Trickster base class. Pretty much everything else was just a worse Paladin, Antipaladin, or Ranger. Am I surprised? Not particularly. Disappointed? Kinda. Just reinforces my conclusion that PrCs suck compared to archetypes, really.

[TotallyNotEvil]

I think a big reason there's pushback here is because "just cross-class" is pretty much the same thing as saying "no", except there's an underlying "you will suck so bad you shouldn't bother, but sure".

I'm sure someone can come up with a decent mix of Inquisitor and Cavalier, but I'm betting it's going to be of the dip variety. Anything that keeps the two balanced is just going to look awkward as hell.

Also, I'd recommend using PF's Paladin and Ranger, especially for the former. They have actually have neat class features.

And stepping away from from horse thing, they can do a warrior-healer very elegantly with their mercies, given your bans.

[Drakevarg]

I think a big reason there's pushback here is because "just cross-class" is pretty much the same thing as saying "no", except there's an underlying "you will suck so bad you shouldn't bother, but sure".

Maybe it's just because I have zero interest in T-Op, but in all my years of playing this game I have never once felt inconvenienced or underpowered as a result of cross-classing.

[Drelua]

One big problem I see with "just be a cavalier/inquisitor" instead of paladin, is that inquisitors are wisdom based, paladins are charisma based. I don't know about the rest of you, but I roleplay a charismatic character very differently from a wise character. They will probably interact with people in a very different way, and even if they don't they'll see very different levels of success in those interactions.

I actually played an inquisitor/cavalier not long ago, in a pretty low-op game. I took one level of cavalier mainly so I could be better at wild empathy, which I had through the feat that let him count as an animal, because he was raised by wolves, and because being able to just say no to any spell that targets a person or an animal, unless I want it to work on me, seemed really cool. This character in no way felt like, or played like, a paladin.

But I'm assuming a cavalier/inquisitor as a paladin replacement would favour cavalier, which is the reverse of this character. So an inquisitor dip would first get them judgment, a small but versatile bonus against all enemies which is the opposite of PF smite, which gives pretty big bonuses against a single foe, that must be evil. And monster lore, which in no way resembles a paladin ability, and a bonus to initimidate and sense motive. Then they can add wisdom to their initiative, and they get track. Sure, they also get detect alignment, so there's some similarities, but most inquisitor abilities are very un-paladin like. Then they get solo tactics, also not really something that fits with a paladin. They get bane at 5th, which kind of fits with a paladin.

So to me, most inquisitor abilities you'd get through this multiclass don't fit mechanically or thematically with a paladin, at all. And having cavalier's tactician and inquisitor's solo tactics is just weird and awkward. You gain teamwork feats from both classes, so there's some synergy. But you also get the ability to temporarily give your allies those feats, and the ability to benefit from them even if your allies don't have them. You can do teamwork feats without the teamwork, and you also get an ability that makes you better at the teamwork.

If I was going to play in your game, and I wanted to play a paladin, and you told me "no paladins in my game, play this multiclass instead," I... wouldn't. I would come up with an entirely different character concept, because what you're suggesting wouldn't work for me at all if I was aiming to play a paladin. They'd be more wisdom based, encouraged to use intimidate in social situations which a paladin probably wouldn't, get bonuses to identify monsters and initiative, get less casting and less BAB, much less healing, worse saves, more skills, way more focus on a mount which I might not even take as a paladin, a bunch of teamwork feats with abilities letting me use them in conflicting ways... yeah no, not a paladin.

Pure fighter would be closer to a paladin to me, maybe with a bard dip if they're allowed, with an archetype like dervish or archaeologist that makes them more focused on buffing themselves in combat. Still doesn't have most of a paladin's abilities, but at least what I'm doing in a fight or a social situation is closer to what a paladin would do.

[Drakevarg]

-stuff-

Very solid and well-explained points, thank you. And you've got me there, I'd say a cavalier/inquisitor would be paladin-shaped, but wouldn't really behave like a paladin. It dresses like a paladin, it has some of the powers of a paladin, it fits in the social role of a paladin, but doesn't at all operate like a paladin would.

Like I said a few posts ago, I've come a bit more around to Paladins as a distinct concept after looking at UM's Oathbound Paladin, but the fact that they and Ranger are really the only solid half-caster archetypes still bothers me. Bloodrager would probably help, if I got the ACG. Medium I've decided I don't like and all the 3.x half-casters suck. Some kind of Arcane Trickster base class would be nice to round out the niche, sort of a solidification of 3.x half-casting PrCs like Assassin, Hoardstealer and Temple Raider. Get some Corvo Attano vibes going.

My current stance, I think, is no half-casters until I have at least 3 available that I consider sufficiently robust and flavorful. So, when I buy the ACG basically.

[ciopo]

Edit 2: Well I said I'd look, not that I'd find anything good. The main conclusion I reached is that there should be an Arcane Trickster base class. Pretty much everything else was just a worse Paladin, Antipaladin, or Ranger. Am I surprised? Not particularly. Disappointed? Kinda. Just reinforces my conclusion that PrCs suck compared to archetypes, really.
Rogue eldritch scoundrel archetype? I don't remember if it's 4th or 6th spell level access

[Drakevarg]

Rogue eldritch scoundrel archetype? I don't remember if it's 4th or 6th spell level access

Appears to be six levels (daily spells per magus), uses the sorc/wiz spell list, and is from a side book I'm unlikely to ever own. Plus I more meant an actual class with its own identity, not just a rogue but with spells.

[Gnaeus]

Given both deities have agents in their respective worlds that answer directly to them (Aslan, the Maiar), I think dismissing them as "mere" representatives of objective morality would be underplaying their role. To my eyes, a paladin in either of those settings would be agents of a god, not some abstract notion higher than one.

In about half the D&D campaigns Divine casters have to worship a god (FR, Krynn). Certainly I require paladins in games I run to worship a god (if only because I find "What would god X think" is usually easier to answer than a more abstract "Is this good/evil".). I don't think the concept of Holy Knight requires any particular viewpoint re universes with gods.

[Particle_Man]

I kind of like the MacGyver aspect of the 3.5 Factotum but if it is not your cup of tea so be it. It does seem like a nice take on a skill character that can do some cool tricks through flashes of inspiration.

If you really hate the sorc/wiz list it would be easy enough to substitute another list instead. I remember someone did quite well with spellcasting dragons using druid instead of sorcerer spells, for example.

[Drelua]

My current stance, I think, is no half-casters until I have at least 3 available that I consider sufficiently robust and flavorful. So, when I buy the ACG basically.

I'm just curious, why does there need to be 3? I could understand if someone might want to play a half caster but not a holy knight or nature themed, but I've never heard anyone say they want to play some kind of half-caster. The spellcasting is a minor enough thing that I can't really see anyone just wanting to have up to 4 levels of spells to cast and wanting to pick a class from the ones that do that.

An arcane trickster base class might be nice, but you could also just allow the arcane trickster prestige class. Without full casters the best entry would probably be bard, so a bard 4/rogue 3/arcane trickster 10 would get 4th level spells starting at 13, coincidentally the same as rangers and paladins. Although arcane tricksters getting 4+int skills is pretty lame, that's not going to be enough unless you're an INT-based caster.

It sounds like you don't want to add classes that do something that can already be done, but some kind of arcane trickster base class is kinda just a bard. Although swapping out a few ranger class features and giving them arcane casting and the 3.5 assassin spell list would be fairly easy to do.

[Drakevarg]

I'm just curious, why does there need to be 3? I could understand if someone might want to play a half caster but not a holy knight or nature themed, but I've never heard anyone say they want to play some kind of half-caster. The spellcasting is a minor enough thing that I can't really see anyone just wanting to have up to 4 levels of spells to cast and wanting to pick a class from the ones that do that.

As I mentioned earlier in the thread, I have a fondness for neatness of design. I have six martials (plus ranger) and six casters, so three classes in the overlap seems appropriate to me, and makes sure there's a good variety of flavors. Enough to make it feel like an actual part of the playspace and not just a weird outlier like evokers.


An arcane trickster base class might be nice, but you could also just allow the arcane trickster prestige class. Without full casters the best entry would probably be bard, so a bard 4/rogue 3/arcane trickster 10 would get 4th level spells starting at 13, coincidentally the same as rangers and paladins. Although arcane tricksters getting 4+int skills is pretty lame, that's not going to be enough unless you're an INT-based caster.

It's more that I was going through the half-casting PrCs, and most of the ones that weren't just flavors of paladin or ranger were some variation of "magic sneak." Assassin, Hoardstealer, Temple Raider, arguably 3.5 Vigilante. So between all of those, it feels like there's enough ammo in the concept to build a standalone class with its own spell list out of.


It sounds like you don't want to add classes that do something that can already be done, but some kind of arcane trickster base class is kinda just a bard. Although swapping out a few ranger class features and giving them arcane casting and the 3.5 assassin spell list would be fairly easy to do.

Kinda-sorta-not-really, depends on what kind of sneaky mage you're thinking of. I wouldn't really picture Corvo Attano as a bard. Like I said, I feel like there's enough diversity within the concept to build a base class out of, hypothetically.

[Particle_Man]

For half caster prestige classes how about the green star adept? Not many classes that have you turn into a living robot by eating green rocks.

[Drelua]

Kinda-sorta-not-really, depends on what kind of sneaky mage you're thinking of. I wouldn't really picture Corvo Attano as a bard. Like I said, I feel like there's enough diversity within the concept to build a base class out of, hypothetically.

Fair, I'd say his magic was maybe more divine since it came from 'the outsider' or whatever, but it could also be arcane like a warlock's pact, depending what exactly the outsider is. I've only played the first game, so it didn't really get into that. The bard spell list isn't quite right, but with an archetype like archaeologist and maybe a warlock dip if they're allowed, it could work.

If it's just a symmetry thing, that's fair enough. Bloodrager does sound like a good fit if you get that book, like you said, since casting spells while raging is something a multiclass character wouldn't be able to do so it does bring something fairly unique to the table.

[Maat Mons]

In terms of neatness of design, the Bloodrager + Paladin + Ranger suite covers the 3 spellcasting themes that WotC seems to like, Arcane / (Un)Holy / Nature. However, it doesn’t cover the Int / Wis / Cha spectrum. Instead, it’s 1 Wis-based caster and 2 Cha-based casters. Additionally, it would be much neater if each theme and each ability score had two classes associated with it, one prepared caster and one spontaneous caster.

If you don’t mind the criticism, I think your set of 6 “2/3rds casters” could do with some more neatness of design too. Alchemist isn’t even a spellcaster. It uses formulae and extracts rather than spells. And it’s one of only 2 classes in the game to do so. That kind of violates your rule about needing 3 of something to keep it from being an outlier.

Also, all 5 of the actual 2/3rds casters on your list are spontaneous. That would actually mean Paladin and Ranger wind up being the only prepared casters in your game, since Bloodrager is also spontaneous. Outliers again.

Designing a suite of classes with a satisfying sense of symmetry is difficult, I know (https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?617018-Class-Suite). Also, I should finish that project at some point.

[Fizban]

Very much prescribing motivations onto me.
I could have added "to me" but that's also implied, and I think between the usual forum environment and a partial list consisting of X casters with equal casting, it's a fair reading.


The simple fact is that I decided to move my no-caster setting to be consistently played under nWoD rules, and the setting I decided to replace it with (a gothic horror-fantasy setting inspired by Thief and Bloodborne, originally conceived as a Minecraft project) had a lot of casters in its inspirational material.
A system swap to make a game that grates on the DnD rules more consistent? Nice.


However, since I don't particularly like casters, I declined to make use of the 'worst offenders,' i.e., full casters. 6-level casters felt like a healthy compromise between spellcasting and actual class features, which would hopefully encourage creative use of a limited supply of tools rather than just digging through a giant pile of solution-buttons to find the one that suits the current situation. It had nothing to do with gameplay balance and everything to do with my sense of aesthetics in the matter.
Well I should hope its obvious what I'll say next- that this is a significant mechanical change about which you should consider the effects on game balance. I must presume that "worst offenders" being full casters is not the usual power balance questions since you've later said it had nothing to do with balance and was only aesthetic, apparently the aesthetic of having a larger class feature to spell ratio.


I can't think of a single non-D&D (Pathfinder for the purposes of this statement being D&D) setting where Good and Evil as cosmic forces above the gods themselves was a thing. LotR? No. Witcher? No. Elder Scrolls? No. Narnia? No. Dragon Age? No. Dwarf Fortress? No. The one other setting that I can think of that might qualify is Warcraft, with the Light and the Void. That's about it.
I would say you're focusing too much on Cosmic power "above" the gods (though that is how it was phrased, that's just the most generic version that is also presented in DnD. I wouldn't say this concept is "above" the gods so much as outside them- the gods of Good are an expression of it, same as Good Outsiders, same as mortals that channel Good spells. Basically any narrative where being Good is a thing and magic exists can support a Paladin. That is to say, I actually disagree with Rynjin's "conduit of universal constant," and probably shouldn't have directly called it out as the most generic, because it's not, so my bad. The most generic is that being sufficiently Good (or Evil) can come with magic, whether its attracted from outside or generated within doesn't actually matter, and someone Good enough to use support magic who also fights with weapon and armor, is a Paladin.

LotR has angels of a sort, and one of the old arguments is that for all Aragorn is supposedly what Ranger is based on, he's actually a Paladin (that "hands of a healer" line). Narnia totally has cosmic good, Aslan is literally a benevolent god- it's just also a no-magic (caster) setting, IIRC. How about the Knights of the Cross from The Dresden Files: one goes to church, another is explicitly an atheist, both wield holy swords to fight things no mere mortal could match because they're Good.

Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest (probably also the Wizardry series, Heroes of Might and Magic? etc)- as I alluded to later, yes these are media that grew from DnD, but they carry the Paladin archetype outward. Dark Souls is a dark and gritty version- you might say that there are gods there, but as the games progress it becomes clear that at the end of the day the gods don't matter and power is what you make of it (same as how levels in DnD work), which can include being a Paladin-type.


Well one might hope that either 3.5e would've given them some better options at some point, or Pathfinder would have overhauled them (or just made a suspiciously similar substitute). Neither really happened and AFAIK Pathfinder only ever put out two half-casters outside of Core.
It wasn't until PHB2 that they actually started supporting some of their classes directly, and after that there are indeed Hexblade spell lists, in the non-setting books 9but not PHB2 apparently as I just rechecked). PHB2 is from May '06, and the end of 3.5 was somewhere around May '07. So yeah, nearly all the books with substitutions and ACFs came out before WotC finally officially started printing books with cross-book material. Note that a ton of the Paladin and Ranger substitutions are also found in a particular Forgotten Realms book all about holy orders.

I honestly wouldn't have expected Spellthief to get further support, but the Hexblade I would have, it's a great concept with simple mechanics- except it's a crippled victim of that anti-martial/arcane thing. They can't admit that they've made something over or under powered, so that initial light armor with no shield restriction and useless bonus feat list can never be fixed. And since they're not a core class that's been a part of a major setting since forever, they don't get to have a book about skullduggery orders printed with uber "substitutions." Most of the extra base classes don't actually need "support" anyway- Swash gets it because people love swashes, Ninja and Scout are self-contained, Favored Soul and Spirit Shaman just use existing spell lists.

But I am surprised that PF never did their own version. Unless it's because they made a whole different "Hex" mechanic for Witches?


I'm saying something that could persuade me is a character concept that could only really be expressed with a Paladin archetype, and outside of maybe UM's Oaths I haven't been convinced that's the case.
I mean, I spelled it out mechanically. Granted, it is absurdly easy to prove that X class cannot be duplicated by simply listing things X class does that other classes do not, and that's the point. If you had a player that wanted the Paladin's mechanics, the only reason you could give them for saying no is because you "don't like the aesthetic." Which I find rather worse than "Paladins aren't appropriate for this setting's themes" or "I don't want the X/Y/Z Paladin mechanic in the game."


Spellthief only having partial Sorc/Wiz wasn't the problem, the problem was that it used the Sorc/Wiz spell list at all.
I'm presenting Spellthief with expanded list as a 4th caster "arcane" role replacement.


Por que no los dos? There's not much I can do to concretely define what I mean by "low-magic" besides to gesture vaguely at Thief, Bloodborne and Dishonored and give a thumbs up, then point at Final Fantasy and Warcraft and give a thumbs down.
Sure you can, keep digging. What magic is available in Thief and Dishonored? What magic shows up in Final Fantasy and Warcraft which goes to far? How much of either is actually just fluffy DM narrative fiat and has nothing to do with game mechanics at all?

I've watched enough Dishonored to know it's basically got short range teleports, telekenisis, mild attacks, etc. 4th level spells ought to be plenty. I don't know Bloodborne but I do know Dark Souls, and presuming the available magic is similar, again that's just fairly small AoE combat magic and a couple utilities (the setting fluff has all kinds of stuff happening which is never part of character mechanics), which can be covered with 4th level spells. So there's a serious question of whether you even need 6ths, aside from those being the written classes- and if there's problems in the 6th or 5th level lists (which you should be checking), you can cap the game before those spells come up. Note that these settings don't generally have direct Resurrection, but do have you quick loading and respawning whenever you screw up, which you are expected to: What happens when characters die?

Final Fantasy has wackiness in the fluff, but the only big change in character combat is "summon" spells summoning big mythical figures (to do meh AoE attacks), and getting airships. So okay: no airships, no summoning or gating big mythical figures, 4th level spells don't do those things. Warcraft again has big summoning/calling and airships, as well as spells that are meant to be fighting armies, and going to WoW there's flying mounts all over and a general in your faceness about everything because now it's an MMO. The biggest offense as Final Fantasy becomes more modern is almost entirely setting-fiat stuff which doesn't have anything do with casting to begin with: modern and/or magitech stuff. Unless you remove magic item creation, items can still be created, but their saturation and even the allowance of any given item is still entirely up to you. You don't have to ban the prerequisite spells for making an airship to have no airships, and even with 4th or no casting you can have airships (magitech, etc).

The only reason the classes matter is if you're attempting to justify something from the ground up (including justifying the *lack* of something because it "can't be made"), but all that cool Bloodborne horror stuff? Not justified by spells. Monsters and DM fiat.


Edit: Random idea that I just had but am way too tired to look into tonight: there aren't very many half-casting base classes (especially not decent ones), but there are a boatload of half-caster PrCs if memory serves (since apparently my definition of half-caster differs from most, by 'half-caster' here I mean 'class with four spell levels'). Maybe I should consider looking to them as an alternative, despite my previous stance of PrCs being too rigid and unnecessary compared to archetypes when it comes to expressing a character concept.
10 level PrCs with 4th casting aren't actually that common I think- it's not that the chassis is too rigid, it's that when they actually print them they're usually super rigid. Assassin is good. Blackguard is anti-Paladin and leads to Holy Liberator or other versions of 10 level Prestige Paladin, including the Pious Templar which is a god-linked generic version, there's one that's sort of a general rogue/support, a number of psionic partials. And the rest. . . are usually super specific classes for X god, or the 3.0 Bladesinger, etc. You could certainly make a bunch, and d20 Modern actually uses PrC casting as its standard (basically you can't take Wizard until after 5th), but I don't think you'll actually find what you're looking for there. 4th casting either from base classes or 10 level PrCs I think is what you actually want to spice up your otherwise martial-focused setting (maybe up to 6th for a pure "mage"), but it was never very well supported. 3.x realized that caster players hated those classes and only wanted PrCs with "+1 level of spellcasting" at every level, so a bunch of former half-casters became +1 every other level and then they just started giving it away, while PF decided to add a bunch of 6th casting base classes instead.


If you want a minimum of 3, which is to say a minimum of 1 more in addition to Paladin and Ranger, there's still just fixing the Hexblade, which ought to be perfect for the settings you want. Even if you don't like mine you'll find plenty more on the homebrew board. Just add a short range teleport (not sure why I don't have Dimension Hop on mine actually) and you've got all sorts of magical dirty fighter on there, even has Summon Swarm on the original list.

[Jay R]

I suggest you de-couple two different decisions.

If you don't want to run half-caster NPCs, then don't build any half-caster NPCs. No problem.

But let the players decide what the PCs are. If somebody wants to play a half-caster, then let them. There's no reason to force somebody into cross-classing Cavalier and Inquisitor, if what they really want to play is a Paladin.


But maybe there's something I missed, so here I am expressing the contemplation to you all. Do half-casters have something to offer to my campaign that couldn't be readily expressed with the elements already in play?

That's the wrong question. The real question is this: Do half-casters have something to offer the player who wants to play one? And the answer, by definition, is "yes".

[JoshuaZ]

It seems like you may be trying to use the system for something it isn't completely intended for, and are going to end up with issues as a result. I appreciate a lack of preference for Good and Evil as fundamental ideas. Morality is complicated and blurry and, direct Good and Evil can undermine that. (For that reason in my own campaign worlds I essentially just cut out alignment almost completely.) And my next campaign is going to have a setting where there' basically no divine magic at all, and that's pretty restrictive. But at the end of the day, we're making campaigns for players to play in, and if they want to play something, and it doesn't break the feel of the world, why not let them? The partial casters, all of them, allow not just you to make interesting NPCs, but allow a lot more flexibility with what characters players can make. And by itself that should be a strong argument to allow a specific class, unless that class does something which breaks *world issues*. In that context, your dislike of full-casters makes sense in the context of the sort of world you are trying to build, and feeling you want to evoke. But that doesn't apply to the others.

Let players have freedom. And that's especially important because player characters are by nature playing important, special people. There's always a wish-fulfillment aspect in games like this, and so a PC being a super-rare, otherwise unheard of type of person is fine. There's also a connected issue which is worth bringing up: character building is hard. Some players may have never played before, or even if they have played before, it can take an hour or more to go make a character. Forcing characters who want certain character types to have do some sort of multiclassing (where and let's be clear, most people don't multiclass at all) is making life more difficult for players with unclear payoff.

It is one thing to start with a default universe of "Not that" for making NPCs. No one will complain if anyone in setting that acts and looks like a paladin has zero levels in paladin. It is another to do that to apply to what PCs can be made. If you are going to use your default of not having a class unless you see a reason for it, than the amount of reason you should let a PC use one should be very low. The end goal is to have fun, not to make a perfect simulation of an imagined universe.

[Curbludgeon]

d20 Modern actually uses PrC casting as its standard (basically you can't take Wizard until after 5th)As the most minor of quibbles, d20 Modern begins advanced classes after 3rd. A dedicated Mage build might look like Smart Hero3/Mage10/Archmage5/Artificer2, with 3rd party stuff adding a few options. Such a character can cast 5th level spells with double the normal slots, has a caster level of 20, and possesses multiple feats related to casting, item creation, and ritual magic.

As to the topic, most half casters (being those with a 4th spell level cap, cast at 1/2 character level) don't really have enough abilities to be worth bothering with in games with a relatively low level of optimization. A game getting rid of such perhaps loses something in the way of character concepts, but probably smooths out discrepancies between characters. I could see an increase in 4th level casters' other abilities to compensate: I'd compare, for example, a gestalt Paladin/Ranger or Hexblade/Duskblade against a moderately optimized Bard as being roughly equivalent.

[Drakevarg]

Busy weekend. Okay, let's see what I missed...


In terms of neatness of design, the Bloodrager + Paladin + Ranger suite covers the 3 spellcasting themes that WotC seems to like, Arcane / (Un)Holy / Nature. However, it doesn’t cover the Int / Wis / Cha spectrum. Instead, it’s 1 Wis-based caster and 2 Cha-based casters. Additionally, it would be much neater if each theme and each ability score had two classes associated with it, one prepared caster and one spontaneous caster.

Without homebrew so extensive you're basically writing your own edition, you're always going to have some kind of imbalance or another. So at some point you just have to decide what elements are important to you and what aren't. To me, the spellcasting themes are much more important than casting stat or prepared vs. spontaneous. If there were more than seven half-casters on the table to pick from, I might take the time to be more choosy, but as it stands I just want to get solid representation for the parts that I consider important.


If you don’t mind the criticism, I think your set of 6 “2/3rds casters” could do with some more neatness of design too. Alchemist isn’t even a spellcaster. It uses formulae and extracts rather than spells. And it’s one of only 2 classes in the game to do so. That kind of violates your rule about needing 3 of something to keep it from being an outlier.

Eh. Technically you're right, but it's just spells in fancy clothes. It's way more in line with how other casters work than say, an evoker or a ki-user is.


Also, all 5 of the actual 2/3rds casters on your list are spontaneous. That would actually mean Paladin and Ranger wind up being the only prepared casters in your game, since Bloodrager is also spontaneous. Outliers again.

I had to double-check this to be sure, but you're right. I had assumed at least the Occultist was a prepared caster, given their aesthetics. Ultimately though, as I said earlier, prepared vs. spontaneous isn't nearly as important a distinction to me as the aspects I have elected to build around. If it proves a problem, probably wouldn't be hard to make Paladins and Rangers spontaneous casters too.


A system swap to make a game that grates on the DnD rules more consistent? Nice.

The main reason I kept using 3.PF for that setting (besides familiarity) was that the setting is in part heavily inspired by my love of monster movies, and 3.PF is undoubtedly a better system (even with no casters) than nWoD for the purposes of punching a T-Rex in the face. But eventually I came around to the conclusion that typically in a monster movie if you try and turn around and punch the monster in the face, that tends to go poorly for you, so there's not much reason to keep those rules around.


Well I should hope its obvious what I'll say next- that this is a significant mechanical change about which you should consider the effects on game balance. I must presume that "worst offenders" being full casters is not the usual power balance questions since you've later said it had nothing to do with balance and was only aesthetic, apparently the aesthetic of having a larger class feature to spell ratio.

Well there's that, and the scale of the magical effects and the degree to which spells are expected to handle every situation they could expect to come across. Now of course, the degree to which the latter is a problem varies from class to class - with Sorc/Wiz being by far the worst offenders - but nonetheless full casters are essentially expected to use magic to solve all of their problems, which isn't a vibe I care for. 6-level casters have a lower ceiling, a slower growth rate, and more non-spell class features to work with. Generally a more comfortable compromise to express the idea of a mage character concept than a full caster to me.


That is to say, I actually disagree with Rynjin's "conduit of universal constant," and probably shouldn't have directly called it out as the most generic, because it's not, so my bad.

That was the aspect of the interpretation I balked at the idea of calling generic, yes.


But I am surprised that PF never did their own version. Unless it's because they made a whole different "Hex" mechanic for Witches?

Really that just makes the opportunity feel even more wasted. Imagine a Hexblade that was to the Witch what the Ranger is to the Druid. Way more connective tissue than just "wizard with a sword."


Sure you can, keep digging. What magic is available in Thief and Dishonored? What magic shows up in Final Fantasy and Warcraft which goes to far? How much of either is actually just fluffy DM narrative fiat and has nothing to do with game mechanics at all?

I've watched enough Dishonored to know it's basically got short range teleports, telekenisis, mild attacks, etc. 4th level spells ought to be plenty. I don't know Bloodborne but I do know Dark Souls, and presuming the available magic is similar, again that's just fairly small AoE combat magic and a couple utilities (the setting fluff has all kinds of stuff happening which is never part of character mechanics), which can be covered with 4th level spells. So there's a serious question of whether you even need 6ths, aside from those being the written classes- and if there's problems in the 6th or 5th level lists (which you should be checking), you can cap the game before those spells come up. Note that these settings don't generally have direct Resurrection, but do have you quick loading and respawning whenever you screw up, which you are expected to: What happens when characters die?

I think your dismissal of fluff as essentially irrelevant to any design process a fundamental cognitive disconnect between my ethos and your own, and if that's gonna be a sticking point then we're not really going to be able to reach an accord. To me the mechanics are there to give structure to the fluff, rather than the fluff being there to flavor the mechanics.

But to answer the other aspect, Thief has no player-used magic beyond invisibility/feather fall potions and a few trick arrows. Garrett is, in D&D terms, a mundane Rogue with a few consumable magic items. In terms of the setting, NPC mages are capable of a few simple zaps, but most magic is expressed through pre-constructed enchantments or rituals, rather than spontaneous displays of supernatural power. Bloodborne is similar; unlike Dark Souls, the player character doesn't directly use any magic, instead relying on a few magical items to approximate spells or using runes/gems to enhance their abilities. In both cases, magic is usually depicted as a borrowed property, and those who actually can use magic of their own are either limited in their abilities or pay a high price for them.

Dishonored is more free with the player's access to magic, but it's all very tied up in occultism and gives the player an extremely limited supply of highly flexible abilities rather than a vast array of highly situational spells. That's the kind of philosophy I'm following with my edits to the spell lists, but that's a project not really relevant to this discussion unless we're just nitpicking how I run my games in general now.


Final Fantasy has wackiness in the fluff, but the only big change in character combat is "summon" spells summoning big mythical figures (to do meh AoE attacks), and getting airships. So okay: no airships, no summoning or gating big mythical figures, 4th level spells don't do those things. Warcraft again has big summoning/calling and airships, as well as spells that are meant to be fighting armies, and going to WoW there's flying mounts all over and a general in your faceness about everything because now it's an MMO. The biggest offense as Final Fantasy becomes more modern is almost entirely setting-fiat stuff which doesn't have anything do with casting to begin with: modern and/or magitech stuff. Unless you remove magic item creation, items can still be created, but their saturation and even the allowance of any given item is still entirely up to you. You don't have to ban the prerequisite spells for making an airship to have no airships, and even with 4th or no casting you can have airships (magitech, etc).

It's mostly the size of everything, how many particle effects get thrown around and how casually the characters fling around magic. I often describe my taste in/issues with fantasy in terms of "special effects budget." I personally like to have my magic with a low SFX budget. And no, that's not just fluff, there's no way to drop a celestial lion on someone or make a house explode in an understated, occult kind of way.


10 level PrCs with 4th casting aren't actually that common I think- it's not that the chassis is too rigid, it's that when they actually print them they're usually super rigid.

It was just an idea, and one I quickly gave up on. I managed to find at least a dozen such classes when I skimmed my books, but most of them were either "paladin or ranger but worse," or some kind of magic sneak (Assassin, Hoardstealer, Temple Raider, arguably 3.5 Vigilante...) hence my comment that there's probably enough juice there to build a base class around the concept.


But let the players decide what the PCs are. If somebody wants to play a half-caster, then let them. There's no reason to force somebody into cross-classing Cavalier and Inquisitor, if what they really want to play is a Paladin.

That's the wrong question. The real question is this: Do half-casters have something to offer the player who wants to play one? And the answer, by definition, is "yes".

You could say the same thing about gunslingers in a setting that isn't supposed to have firearms (not the case here, but as an example). Just because a player wants it doesn't mean the DM is in any way obligated to give it to them, and they're not an abusive tyrant for refusing either. I don't have to give them a lightsaber if they ask for it either. Once you sit at my table you're agreeing to play my game, not the book's game. So "paladins exist in this system" is not automatically a good enough answer to include them.


Let players have freedom. And that's especially important because player characters are by nature playing important, special people. There's always a wish-fulfillment aspect in games like this, and so a PC being a super-rare, otherwise unheard of type of person is fine.

That's not an ethos I'm in any way obligated to adopt for my own games. Speaking for myself as a player, I hate being The Special. My favorite thing to play in most games is Fantastical Blue Collar Worker. A monster hunter who's more a high-risk exterminator than a legendary hero. A low-class thief in a city of adventure. A salvage technician who explores derelict spaceships for valuable pieces. Playing a normal person in an abnormal world is what appeals to me about such settings and that's the energy I bring to DMing as well.

[Jay R]

You could say the same thing about gunslingers in a setting that isn't supposed to have firearms (not the case here, but as an example). Just because a player wants it doesn't mean the DM is in any way obligated to give it to them, and they're not an abusive tyrant for refusing either. I don't have to give them a lightsaber if they ask for it either. Once you sit at my table you're agreeing to play my game, not the book's game. So "paladins exist in this system" is not automatically a good enough answer to include them.

Agreed. If paladin-like characters don't fit into the game, then you should disallow them. But you didn't say it didn't fit in; you said that it was redundant. "So for instance, Paladin feels somewhat redundant to me when one could simply cross-class Cavalier and Inquisitor and express basically the same concept." That's not like firearms or lightsabers that don't fit in. That's something that fits in so well you could do almost the same thing in another way.

In that case, go ahead and allow the redundant version that the player wants.

If you don't want that concept at all, then you will also need to ban a cross-class of Cavalier and Inquisitor -- in which case your argument about redundancy was wrong from the start.


One other point: While I agree that somebody playing in my game needs to accept the rules of my game, it's also true that the purpose of the game is to entertain the players. I suggest that you ask the players what classes they want to run. Maybe nobody wants a half-caster at all, in which case you have no problem. Maybe the only people who want half-casters will be happy with the redundant version you would prefer, in which case you can fix the problem merely with that suggestion

But I strongly suggest finding out if you have a problem, and what that problem is, before you decide how to fix it.

[Drakevarg]

Agreed. If paladin-like characters don't fit into the game, then you should disallow them. But you didn't say it didn't fit in; you said that it was redundant. "So for instance, Paladin feels somewhat redundant to me when one could simply cross-class Cavalier and Inquisitor and express basically the same concept." That's not like firearms or lightsabers that don't fit in. That's something that fits in so well you could do almost the same thing in another way.

In that case, go ahead and allow the redundant version that the player wants.

If you don't want that concept at all, then you will also need to ban a cross-class of Cavalier and Inquisitor -- in which case your argument about redundancy was wrong from the start.

Part of my hesitancy to add redundant or outlier concepts (which I've mostly come around on over this discussion) is that each caster class in the game means more work for me. Even if I wasn't modifying all of the spell lists to suit my needs, each new class (casters in particular) means a new suite of potential abilities I need to scour through for problem elements. With a martial class it's relatively easy to spot nonsense like say the Cavalier's Order of the Shroud compared to determining whether any of a caster's 200 spells might potentially cause problems. It's generally considered bad form to ban something mid-session, so that's the kind of thing I want to look into ahead of time.

And that's not work I want to do for some weird fringe case in an otherwise largely vetted system.


One other point: While I agree that somebody playing in my game needs to accept the rules of my game, it's also true that the purpose of the game is to entertain the players. I suggest that you ask the players what classes they want to run. Maybe nobody wants a half-caster at all, in which case you have no problem. Maybe the only people who want half-casters will be happy with the redundant version you would prefer, in which case you can fix the problem merely with that suggestion

To be honest, in my experience players are generally okay with playing within whatever constraints you put before them as long as they produce fun and interesting gameplay and story opportunities. For instance, recently in the campaign I'm currently running, one of the players tried to install a cybernetic arm to enhance their Agility score. I decided to rule that because recovering from surgery can be rough, each cybernetic installed would incur a random Critical Injury. They also wanted to install a biofeedback regulator, which would increase their overall cybernetic cap. Since that's basically an artificial nervous system wired through the entire body, I ruled that such a mod would add a +50 to the Critical Injury roll because of how extensive the surgery would be.

That Critical Injury resulted in a permanent reduction to one of their stats... and I rolled Agility. Completely negating the benefits of the cybernetic arm they just installed. And none of this is remotely in the official rules, I made it up pretty much on the spot entirely because I thought it seemed more interesting that way. Yet the player has repeatedly cited the incident as hilarious and one of the most entertaining things to happen in the campaign so far.

Moral of the story is (in my opinion) that it's far less important to give the players what they want than it is to make sure they have fun.

[JNAProductions]

Do you not trust your players?
If there’s something potentially abusive, shouldn’t they mention it, and work out if it’s good to use with you?

[Drakevarg]

Do you not trust your players?
If there’s something potentially abusive, shouldn’t they mention it, and work out if it’s good to use with you?

I don't trust them to have a perfect working knowledge of all their build options and the potential exploits thereof, nor do I assume that any such unwanted material would be used maliciously or opportunistically. From the player's point of view, it's an entirely fair assumption that anything available in the greenlisted source material is considered acceptable, when the reality can be that I simply haven't noticed that piece in the toybox until it was pulled out during the session.

And while I don't think it's in good taste to ban something mid-session just because that's the first time I was made aware of it, neither do I think I should be forced to accept the consequences of not knowing the content front to back ahead of time and let the player go forward with using something I'd never have given them had I known of it beforehand.

[Particle_Man]

I could see that with some new classes but I haven’t heard of anyone saying that either the core ranger or the core paladin was over-powered. Usually it is the opposite.

[JoshuaZ]

That's not an ethos I'm in any way obligated to adopt for my own games. Speaking for myself as a player, I hate being The Special. My favorite thing to play in most games is Fantastical Blue Collar Worker. A monster hunter who's more a high-risk exterminator than a legendary hero. A low-class thief in a city of adventure. A salvage technician who explores derelict spaceships for valuable pieces. Playing a normal person in an abnormal world is what appeals to me about such settings and that's the energy I bring to DMing as well.

So is your goal to make a world you enjoy or a world your players enjoy? And if both, at what ratio?

[Drakevarg]

So is your goal to make a world you enjoy or a world your players enjoy? And if both, at what ratio?

I am not a videogame console, nor am I paid for my services. If the players aren't interested in the kind of content I provide, they're perfectly welcome to not play with me.

[Elenian]

Are you looking for a world in which god(s) intervene in the world through miracles, but only to benefit grim, cunning people, well-versed in the ways of heresy? In which the only true priests are inquisitors, quick to judge and to condemn? In which god(s) are primarily concerned with orthodoxy and not so into orthopraxis?

Because that's the impression I would get from a world where the only divine spellcaster is the inquisitor. If that's not what you're looking for, then it might behoove you to seek out some other spellcasting classes powered by the divine - adding paladins might partially satisfy this desideratum?

EDIT: There's a line in Chesterton's wonderful The Man Who Was Thursday: "I read up all about bishops in our anarchist pamphlets, in Superstition the Vampire and Priests of Prey. I certainly understood from them that bishops are strange and terrible old men keeping a cruel secret from mankind. I was misinformed. When on my first appearing in episcopal gaiters in a drawing-room I cried out in a voice of thunder, ‘Down! down! presumptuous human reason!’ they found out in some way that I was not a bishop at all." I imagine your setting as one in which Gregory the anarchist, here, was more or less right.

[Particle_Man]

Are you looking for a world in which god(s) intervene in the world through miracles, but only to benefit grim, cunning people, well-versed in the ways of heresy? In which the only true priests are inquisitors, quick to judge and to condemn? In which god(s) are primarily concerned with orthodoxy and not so into orthopraxis?

Because that's the impression I would get from a world where the only divine spellcaster is the inquisitor. If that's not what you're looking for, then it might behoove you to seek out some other spellcasting classes powered by the divine - adding paladins might partially satisfy this desideratum?



I could see a world in which paladins used to exist but in which the evil powers were so proficient at temptation that every single paladin, without exception, became an anti-paladin (I will include blackguards here), the only way in this setting that allowed for the creation of anti-paladins. After enough of this, the good gods decided to stop granting divine powers to paladins, and even found a way to block "Goodness itself" from granting paladin powers. So it was inquisitors or nothing, since inquisitors did not fall into antipaladinhood. Then eventually all the antipaladins died, and were (along with the paladins they used to be) lost to history.

[Drakevarg]

Are you looking for a world in which god(s) intervene in the world through miracles, but only to benefit grim, cunning people, well-versed in the ways of heresy? In which the only true priests are inquisitors, quick to judge and to condemn? In which god(s) are primarily concerned with orthodoxy and not so into orthopraxis?

Honestly... yes, that's pretty much exactly the case. The setting's mainstream god, the Builder, holds the doctrine that flesh is sin, nature is raw materials, and that the highest virtues are obedience, industry and ingenuity. Which isn't to say that all priests are evil, but it would be safe to say that they generally value societal order over morality.

[Elenian]

Honestly... yes, that's pretty much exactly the case. The setting's mainstream god, the Builder, holds the doctrine that flesh is sin, nature is raw materials, and that the highest virtues are obedience, industry and ingenuity. Which isn't to say that all priests are evil, but it would be safe to say that they generally value societal order over morality.

Excellent! Then it sounds like you've got more or less what you want.

[Particle_Man]

So the reason you don't have Law vs. Chaos is that Law basically won. :smallsmile:

[Drakevarg]

So the reason you don't have Law vs. Chaos is that Law basically won. :smallsmile:

Well, no. Chaos just doesn't use priests. The antithetical deity to the Builder is the Trickster, who represents the wild. But where the Builder demands and rewards obedience, the Trickster doesn't care and simply requires sacrifice in exchange for their boons. If I had the ACG there'd be a lot of Hunters on their side, but since I don't it'd mostly be Occultists, Spiritualists, and Bards. The Builder would also have Occultists, since they're pretty much the closest the setting has to book-magic.

[Particle_Man]

Do you have pathfinder’s ultimate wilderness? I think there is a shapeshifter class in there.

[Drakevarg]

Do you have pathfinder’s ultimate wilderness? I think there is a shapeshifter class in there.

I don't, but I've seen the class and don't like it.

[Feantar]

:smallconfused: Do any of the knights in Arthurian myth (not counting that one Fae bloke) actually have any magical powers? AFAIK they're all effectively Cavaliers, give or take a magic item or two.


I think you could do away with paladins, but make a homebrew archetype of cavalier with divine grace and maybe some other paladin goodie(s) along with a more goodie-two-shoes code. That would give the more ethereal messengers from god but not godly themselves feel that some Arthurian Knights seem to have.

But yes, a huge part of paladin seems to be Fighter, but holier.

[Fizban]

Well there's that, and the scale of the magical effects and the degree to which spells are expected to handle every situation they could expect to come across. Now of course, the degree to which the latter is a problem varies from class to class - with Sorc/Wiz being by far the worst offenders - but nonetheless full casters are essentially expected to use magic to solve all of their problems, which isn't a vibe I care for. 6-level casters have a lower ceiling, a slower growth rate, and more non-spell class features to work with. Generally a more comfortable compromise to express the idea of a mage character concept than a full caster to me.
Which is, potentially even more effectively, supported by the PrC "can't cast until after 5th" method where you must already be 5 levels of competent at something else first- but that's pretty much mutually exclusive to a game where characters are expected to be able to start at 1st level doing their thing with cater being an accepted thing.


Really that just makes the opportunity feel even more wasted. Imagine a Hexblade that was to the Witch what the Ranger is to the Druid. Way more connective tissue than just "wizard with a sword."
Well like I said, there remains a decent chance someone has made it, or possibly even an "archetype" for it. Otherwise, you have the power.


I think your dismissal of fluff as essentially irrelevant to any design process a fundamental cognitive disconnect between my ethos and your own, and if that's gonna be a sticking point then we're not really going to be able to reach an accord. To me the mechanics are there to give structure to the fluff, rather than the fluff being there to flavor the mechanics.
I think you're reading the opposite of my intent: I have plenty of my own notes on stuff like airships and industrialization and the Significant spells and standard city NPCs which govern what the default world ought to have available (and from there what assumptions of actual use or disuse are apparently in play).

My point is that the restrictions you've given don't reduce those things, because those things were already restricted, or rather only allowed, by setting fiat in the first place. Again, giant bosses with multiple phases and body/soul horror of people being turned into things or sacrificed to accumulate power, none of these are actually represented in the rules (aside from the obvious souls=xp of course), so the available classes don't matter.

Meanwhile the spells used to justify things like big flashy airships: in Eberron it's Lesser Planar Binding, a 5th level spell. Maybe you use Overland Flight like a Broom of Flying? still a 5th level spell. FR's Halruuan Skyship uses Suspend, a 4th level spell. A custom boat enchanted with Fly would only require a 3rd level spell. 9th level spells were already available, but airships are only common in settings where they're stated to be common, because the DM decides if anyone has actually made a bunch of them. The biggest factor is money, not available people to cast the spells, because cities already have sufficient high level people to do it. Changing the available classes to 6th casters does not remove any of those spells- it removes Teleportation Circles and Portals, but only pushes the level requirement for an airship (or say, calling outsiders) higher, unless it so happens that none of the casters you've selected have any of the the offending spells. The second factor is reading caster item caster levels as prerequisites, but the 6th casters have full caster level so that doesn't change anything for them: only a reduction in the available high level NPCs, either by using smaller cities or changing the standard city levels (both of which are pure DM choice) would do that.

Using only 6th casters does basically destroy the usefulness of normal summon spells while removing the Gate which would essentially be the FF big spooky Summon effects, but based on spell level (I don't know or wish to read all those PF classes in detail) there are still some things like Summon Elemental which might give off the vibe, even if they're a day late and a dollar short for practical use.

You'll get far more mileage out of directly removing undesirable spells than picking published lists written for different purposes. And you have mentioned modification of spell lists so I presume you're making a list.


But to answer the other aspect, Thief has no player-used magic beyond invisibility/feather fall potions and a few trick arrows. Garrett is, in D&D terms, a mundane Rogue with a few consumable magic items. In terms of the setting, NPC mages are capable of a few simple zaps, but most magic is expressed through pre-constructed enchantments or rituals, rather than spontaneous displays of supernatural power. Bloodborne is similar; unlike Dark Souls, the player character doesn't directly use any magic, instead relying on a few magical items to approximate spells or using runes/gems to enhance their abilities. In both cases, magic is usually depicted as a borrowed property, and those who actually can use magic of their own are either limited in their abilities or pay a high price for them.
If you want entirely externalized magic, then naturally there is the most obvious solution of just sticking to your original gut response and using no casters. If the players/PCs are allowed fairly free access to get what they need/want via "magic items," whether they're "making" them themselves or have super gadget suppliers, then all their stuff can be externalized while still leaving them plenty of room to get the magic they want. "Pacts" with outside forces have no need to be, and indeed are actually far less approrpiate as, class features. Non-gadget magic from externalized sources is far more appropriate as feats (representing a certain dedication of time and training outside of but not impacting their primary profession, achievable by anyone with the base requirements), or just given gp values as non-standard "items."


Dishonored is more free with the player's access to magic, but it's all very tied up in occultism and gives the player an extremely limited supply of highly flexible abilities rather than a vast array of highly situational spells. That's the kind of philosophy I'm following with my edits to the spell lists, but that's a project not really relevant to this discussion unless we're just nitpicking how I run my games in general now.
Again, this sounds more like 4th casters, specifically spontaneous with short spells known list (*cough Hexblade*). Or Invocations. Or Spheres of Power.

I just find it really weird that you're flipping from no casters, and have a bunch of setting desires that read clearly as very low spell levels and counts, and brought in 6th casters anyway. If you have a group that's willing to play 4th/half casters or less, you don't need to include the 6ths. Unless you're planning on using mostly classed NPCs for major foes (which is a whole different problem I would tell you not to do), and using their magic to excuse gothic/horror/etc (much of which their magic won't actually excuse, so why not just use the same DM fiat with a lower or non-caster?)


It's mostly the size of everything, how many particle effects get thrown around and how casually the characters fling around magic. I often describe my taste in/issues with fantasy in terms of "special effects budget." I personally like to have my magic with a low SFX budget. And no, that's not just fluff, there's no way to drop a celestial lion on someone or make a house explode in an understated, occult kind of way.
So you want to get rid of the big AoE effects (which has some impact on crowd control balance), the summons, etc. This is starting to look less like a spell level problem and more of a spell "school" problem, which is of course a different issue, and which might explain why you're starting from a list of themed casters that presumably lack those effects, but 6th casters past a certain level will still be flinging magic around pretty casually: they still have a full 2/3 of what a 9th caster would have. It might take a little longer, but if your game goes high enough they'll have "sufficient" spells to do whatever they want and even waste some.*

A 4th/half caster on the other hand, usually has less base spells even at their maximum (something I've boosted in my own fixes because it's so restrictive they rarely consider actually casting) than a caster with access to the same level, and their reduced caster level means they can never expect a brute force offense to work: they must use their (potentially versatile) tools sparingly and to good effect. Which is why combat trick "spells" are so popular of course. But a Hexblade gets things like Alarm, Unseen Servant, Suggestion, Alter Self, Summon Swarm, Invisibility, Pyrotechnics, and Dimension Door, plenty of "understated" effects with versatile uses. If Assassin was a base class, they would be fairly similar but with sneak attack (and presumably later death attack).

*Which brings us back to the question of level limits, where "gritty" and "low-magic" settings are usually best respresented by just getting rid of the idea that the game must somehow include all 20 levels, particularly if the DM has no actual plans to use that entire range. Figure out the range you're going to use (what sorts of monsters, challenges, etc), then see what the classes can do within that range, to see what actually matters. It might very well be that what you actually want is a 1-10 game, where only at the highest level will even a 9th caster reach a mere 5th level of spells, with all their lower level spells still being important ammunition to ration.

[Drakevarg]

Which is, potentially even more effectively, supported by the PrC "can't cast until after 5th" method where you must already be 5 levels of competent at something else first- but that's pretty much mutually exclusive to a game where characters are expected to be able to start at 1st level doing their thing with cater being an accepted thing.

I tried this once with my previous setting, before I ultimately decided that it suited the setting better if magic wasn't something mortals were ever in full control of. So I went with "you can get magic from rituals and artifacts but under no circumstances do you ever get your own spellcasting." This setting isn't that setting though, and I want mages to be a thing here. Just not unrestrained ones.


Meanwhile the spells used to justify things like big flashy airships: in Eberron it's Lesser Planar Binding, a 5th level spell. Maybe you use Overland Flight like a Broom of Flying? still a 5th level spell. FR's Halruuan Skyship uses Suspend, a 4th level spell. A custom boat enchanted with Fly would only require a 3rd level spell. 9th level spells were already available, but airships are only common in settings where they're stated to be common, because the DM decides if anyone has actually made a bunch of them. The biggest factor is money, not available people to cast the spells, because cities already have sufficient high level people to do it. Changing the available classes to 6th casters does not remove any of those spells- it removes Teleportation Circles and Portals, but only pushes the level requirement for an airship (or say, calling outsiders) higher, unless it so happens that none of the casters you've selected have any of the the offending spells. The second factor is reading caster item caster levels as prerequisites, but the 6th casters have full caster level so that doesn't change anything for them: only a reduction in the available high level NPCs, either by using smaller cities or changing the standard city levels (both of which are pure DM choice) would do that.

DM Fiat and actual mechanics aren't necessarily mutually exclusive, either. I'm quite fond of the idea of ritual mechanics. Don't technically even need caster levels for 'em, just occult knowledge, materials and patience. And if I need something to happen in the story that there isn't a spell for, I can make there be a ritual for. Thus fluff becomes mechanics, not fiat.


You'll get far more mileage out of directly removing undesirable spells than picking published lists written for different purposes. And you have mentioned modification of spell lists so I presume you're making a list.

I am, yes. 'bout... 2/3rds done, maybe?


If you want entirely externalized magic, then naturally there is the most obvious solution of just sticking to your original gut response and using no casters. If the players/PCs are allowed fairly free access to get what they need/want via "magic items," whether they're "making" them themselves or have super gadget suppliers, then all their stuff can be externalized while still leaving them plenty of room to get the magic they want. "Pacts" with outside forces have no need to be, and indeed are actually far less approrpiate as, class features. Non-gadget magic from externalized sources is far more appropriate as feats (representing a certain dedication of time and training outside of but not impacting their primary profession, achievable by anyone with the base requirements), or just given gp values as non-standard "items."

Well, Garrett's just one guy in the setting. There are mages who are dressed like mages and do mage stuff, but they're a lot less casual and high-SFX-budget about it compared to say a mage from FF or Warcraft.


Again, this sounds more like 4th casters, specifically spontaneous with short spells known list (*cough Hexblade*). Or Invocations. Or Spheres of Power.

I did try a game years back where the only magical class was Warlock, but what I wound up with was 3/4 of the group rolling Warlock. Tad repetitive, plus lasers are boring. A (carefully restricted) spell list can let your magical abilities be a lot more interesting and esoteric than just being X-Men in snuggies.


I just find it really weird that you're flipping from no casters, and have a bunch of setting desires that read clearly as very low spell levels and counts, and brought in 6th casters anyway. If you have a group that's willing to play 4th/half casters or less, you don't need to include the 6ths. Unless you're planning on using mostly classed NPCs for major foes (which is a whole different problem I would tell you not to do), and using their magic to excuse gothic/horror/etc (much of which their magic won't actually excuse, so why not just use the same DM fiat with a lower or non-caster?)

Low spell counts I have handled, but part of the matter is just that half-casters don't feel like casters. They feel like martials who know some magic. 6th casters feel like classes where 'magic' is the main thing that they do, without going (as) completely nuts with it. It's about letting John Constantine into the room without inviting Stephen Strange.

On the side, why don't you like classed NPCs as major enemies?


So you want to get rid of the big AoE effects (which has some impact on crowd control balance), the summons, etc. This is starting to look less like a spell level problem and more of a spell "school" problem, which is of course a different issue, and which might explain why you're starting from a list of themed casters that presumably lack those effects, but 6th casters past a certain level will still be flinging magic around pretty casually: they still have a full 2/3 of what a 9th caster would have. It might take a little longer, but if your game goes high enough they'll have "sufficient" spells to do whatever they want and even waste some.*

Eh, it's a nit there and a pick there. I've been working on trimming the spells and I'm relatively satisfied with my selection so far (even if people around here will probably think I'm an idiot when I'm ready to share with the class). As for the other bit... part of the appeal of lowering the ceiling and slowing the growth curve is that past a certain level, the casters will have earned that power. In the same way cosmic horror is more effective if you save the tentacles until at least the second act, arcane power is more satisfying if it's actually hard to do.

[Fizban]

DM Fiat and actual mechanics aren't necessarily mutually exclusive, either. I'm quite fond of the idea of ritual mechanics. Don't technically even need caster levels for 'em, just occult knowledge, materials and patience. And if I need something to happen in the story that there isn't a spell for, I can make there be a ritual for. Thus fluff becomes mechanics, not fiat. . . .
Well, Garrett's just one guy in the setting. There are mages who are dressed like mages and do mage stuff, but they're a lot less casual and high-SFX-budget about it compared to say a mage from FF or Warcraft.
Speaking of rituals- you could even go so far as to have "mages" whose magic is not a class feature, but rather some number of charges gained through a ritual (costing/resulting in gp-valued abilities even). Though this can lead to creating so many rituals, or formulaic "rituals" that lack the desired occultism, that it becomes self-defeating.


I did try a game years back where the only magical class was Warlock, but what I wound up with was 3/4 of the group rolling Warlock. Tad repetitive, plus lasers are boring. A (carefully restricted) spell list can let your magical abilities be a lot more interesting and esoteric than just being X-Men in snuggies.
This does rather suggest you'll need more caster options, yes.


Low spell counts I have handled, but part of the matter is just that half-casters don't feel like casters. They feel like martials who know some magic. 6th casters feel like classes where 'magic' is the main thing that they do, without going (as) completely nuts with it. It's about letting John Constantine into the room without inviting Stephen Strange.
Well yeah, 'cause they aren't pure casters, they're martials that don't get any spells until 4th (the term 4th casters I've been using actually applies twice, heh).


On the side, why don't you like classed NPCs as major enemies?
Monsters are meant for fighting parties of classed PCs and vice-versa, while classed NPCs are not monsters, and applying classed anti-monster offense to non-monsters has predictable results. It tends to be readily recognized that the game is not balanced for PvP, so why would it work with (NPC)vP? Occasional boss fights or mooks sure (low level humanoids don't stop existing just because you level up and the rare high level humanoids will naturally have their own agendas), but some people try to use classed NPCs for everything (and many or most of the foes in your source material are humanoid or similar), and this means rather than just making up one side of the game's balance, they're making up both sides. Often whilst believing they're following RAW and everything should just work, and then having problems when it doesn't. Doing so with full awareness is one thing, but my usual recommendation is that it's called Dungeons and Dragons for a reason and adventurers ought to be fighting monsters, it's just easier to follow the design spec.


Eh, it's a nit there and a pick there. I've been working on trimming the spells and I'm relatively satisfied with my selection so far (even if people around here will probably think I'm an idiot when I'm ready to share with the class).
No stranger to that, sounds fun!


As for the other bit... part of the appeal of lowering the ceiling and slowing the growth curve is that past a certain level, the casters will have earned that power. In the same way cosmic horror is more effective if you save the tentacles until at least the second act, arcane power is more satisfying if it's actually hard to do.
Don't know if you caught the part I added at the end, but this makes it sound like you're also making a specific choice that you want a large number of levels on principle rather than simply capping at the appropriate endpoint.

[Drakevarg]

Speaking of rituals- you could even go so far as to have "mages" whose magic is not a class feature, but rather some number of charges gained through a ritual (costing/resulting in gp-valued abilities even). Though this can lead to creating so many rituals, or formulaic "rituals" that lack the desired occultism, that it becomes self-defeating.

I've contemplated the idea for my previous setting, but I think for this one it'd be more effective to have mages who can do some things on the fly and need rituals for others. I think it better fits the literary concept of a mage anyway, rather than having everything in convenient travel-size for the sake of classical adventuring.


Well yeah, 'cause they aren't pure casters, they're martials that don't get any spells until 4th (the term 4th casters I've been using actually applies twice, heh).

Which is a deficit if you want mages who are mages, but in a low-magic kind of way.


Monsters are meant for fighting parties of classed PCs and vice-versa, while classed NPCs are not monsters, and applying classed anti-monster offense to non-monsters has predictable results. It tends to be readily recognized that the game is not balanced for PvP, so why would it work with (NPC)vP? Occasional boss fights or mooks sure (low level humanoids don't stop existing just because you level up and the rare high level humanoids will naturally have their own agendas), but some people try to use classed NPCs for everything (and many or most of the foes in your source material are humanoid or similar), and this means rather than just making up one side of the game's balance, they're making up both sides. Often whilst believing they're following RAW and everything should just work, and then having problems when it doesn't. Doing so with full awareness is one thing, but my usual recommendation is that it's called Dungeons and Dragons for a reason and adventurers ought to be fighting monsters, it's just easier to follow the design spec.

Feels rather limiting from a narrative perspective. But I've never been too concerned about encounter balance anyway, I'm the kind of DM who freely mulligans and fudges as needed.


Don't know if you caught the part I added at the end, but this makes it sound like you're also making a specific choice that you want a large number of levels on principle rather than simply capping at the appropriate endpoint.

I've never held with the idea that the game should just stop at a particular cap. It's an idea I usually see pushed by people who like high-power play and want to keep low-power players out of their space, which to me just seems silly. I've got the spell lists under control to my satisfaction, so why shouldn't I use the entire playspace? High level play is perfectly viable for all classes if you construct encounters with them in mind.

As for potential tonal concerns, the game will decide for itself when it's had enough. If whatever story I decide to tell doesn't feel like it goes any higher than 10th, I'll stop at 10th. If it still feels like there's more to see, I'll keep going. Just means the shadows get deeper and the things skittering in them get weirder.

[Jay R]

Part of my hesitancy to add redundant or outlier concepts (which I've mostly come around on over this discussion) is that each caster class in the game means more work for me. Even if I wasn't modifying all of the spell lists to suit my needs, each new class (casters in particular) means a new suite of potential abilities I need to scour through for problem elements. With a martial class it's relatively easy to spot nonsense like say the Cavalier's Order of the Shroud compared to determining whether any of a caster's 200 spells might potentially cause problems. It's generally considered bad form to ban something mid-session, so that's the kind of thing I want to look into ahead of time.

And that's not work I want to do for some weird fringe case in an otherwise largely vetted system.

How many dozens of PCs do you plan to have? You only have to do this work for the half-caster classes that your PCs want to play. That shouldn't be very many. I urge you to ask the players if they would be disappointed at the lack of a specific class.

Besides, the example that you and I have been discussing was Paladins. [And I didn't bring up that example; [I]you did — in your first post.] How much of a Paladin's abilities do you not know about yet? You should be able to be sure about Paladins very quickly. I certain didn't need to scour through Ranger and Bard for problem elements.


To be honest, in my experience players are generally okay with playing within whatever constraints you put before them as long as they produce fun and interesting gameplay and story opportunities. <example snipped>

Moral of the story is (in my opinion) that it's far less important to give the players what they want than it is to make sure they have fun.

Of course. That's part of the social contract. The players agree to accept the DM's world conditions, even though they don't know why those conditions exist. They trust that the DM has good reasons for it, which their PCs shouldn't know yet. Lord and Ladies.]

In return, the DM agrees not to make arbitrary decisions. Any alteration should have a clear reason why, in this case, that rules change makes this game better.

One legitimate reason is, or could be, "I can't do the work to make sure that option is reasonable in this game" That's the reason that you are giving. But that argument only works if you would have to go through dozens of cases.

Yes, I absolutely agree with you that the players will accept the limitations you put in the game. I've never suggested otherwise. But you asked us to "Talk me into Half-Casters". And one reason to include half-casters — in fact, the only reason to include any PC class — is that players may want to play it.

[Drakevarg]

Besides, the example that you and I have been discussing was Paladins. [And I didn't bring up that example; you did — in your first post.] How much of a Paladin's abilities do you not know about yet? You should be able to be sure about Paladins very quickly. I certain didn't need to scour through Ranger and Bard for problem elements.

Looking at class features doesn't take more than an hour or two, including archetypes (unless it's a class with a lot of options, like Barbarian rage powers, Rogue talents, Alchemist discoveries, etc). Looking at spell lists takes a lot longer. I've been working through the 6th-casters for a few months now and I'm still not done.

So adding half-casters on top of that is more work that I don't want to do unless it'll be worth it.

[JoshuaZ]

Looking at class features doesn't take more than an hour or two, including archetypes (unless it's a class with a lot of options, like Barbarian rage powers, Rogue talents, Alchemist discoveries, etc). Looking at spell lists takes a lot longer. I've been working through the 6th-casters for a few months now and I'm still not done.

So adding half-casters on top of that is more work that I don't want to do unless it'll be worth it.

Why not look at a class when players express interest in playing it? Otherwise whether the class exists in the world can be just ambiguous. And the same goes for specific spells. If a player wants a specific spell, you can look at it then. What is gained by your current method?

[Drakevarg]

Why not look at a class when players express interest in playing it? Otherwise whether the class exists in the world can be just ambiguous. And the same goes for specific spells. If a player wants a specific spell, you can look at it then.

I don't trust them to have a perfect working knowledge of all their build options and the potential exploits thereof, nor do I assume that any such unwanted material would be used maliciously or opportunistically. From the player's point of view, it's an entirely fair assumption that anything available in the greenlisted source material is considered acceptable, when the reality can be that I simply haven't noticed that piece in the toybox until it was pulled out during the session.

And while I don't think it's in good taste to ban something mid-session just because that's the first time I was made aware of it, neither do I think I should be forced to accept the consequences of not knowing the content front to back ahead of time and let the player go forward with using something I'd never have given them had I known of it beforehand.

That's why.


What is gained by your current method?

Not delaying CharGen for two weeks so I can look over a spell list.


And one reason to include half-casters — in fact, the only reason to include any PC class — is that players may want to play it.

Oh, wanted to take a step back and address this as well: This isn't a view I hold to at all. As far as I'm concerned, the only NPC class is Commoner 1, for completely untrained civilians with no significant skillset. Anything other than that and I'm using a real class.

The only thing that makes the PCs special in my games is the anthropic principle.

[JoshuaZ]

That's why.

Huh? That doesn't follow my question at all. If you are worried about someone pulling something out during session you can have looked at their stuff in detail beforehand. Frankly, you are making yourself have far *more work* overall by trying to go through every class in advance and trying to decide if it should be in.

I'm also not sure why you think that anything that that's going to add a 2 week delay to things.

[Drelua]

Not delaying CharGen for two weeks so I can look over a spell list.

That's fair, that does sound like a lot of work. Have you considered just going over their core book spell selection, then telling players any spell from any other book has to be run past you first?


Oh, wanted to take a step back and address this as well: This isn't a view I hold to at all. As far as I'm concerned, the only NPC class is Commoner 1, for completely untrained civilians with no significant skillset. Anything other than that and I'm using a real class.

The only thing that makes the PCs special in my games is the anthropic principle.

Agreed, including a class because a player wants to play it is a good reason, if you don't have anything against the class, but it is certainly not the only reason. If there's a class from some obscure book that your players aren't aware of, but you want to include it because it fits your world, make them aware of it. I love Dreamscarred Press' psionics, so when I'm GMing I'll mention it to my players and offer to lend them the books if any of them are interested, and probably have them encounter some psionic NPCs. You can also make a point to include a PC class even if none of them play it, maybe by putting in a faction that has a lot of them. My last game with my old roommates had them interacting with a group of dwarven Paladins, the Stone Watchers, because I like Paladins.

[Drakevarg]

Huh? That doesn't follow my question at all. If you are worried about someone pulling something out during session you can have looked at their stuff in detail beforehand. Frankly, you are making yourself have far *more work* overall by trying to go through every class in advance and trying to decide if it should be in.

I'm also not sure why you think that anything that that's going to add a 2 week delay to things.

Let's say, hypothetically, I let a player roll a casting ranger without reviewing the spell list first. They roll a Ranger 1, I look it over and it seems fine, because of course it does, it's a first-level character and it's pretty hard to do anything objectionable at that level. They go on to play that character, getting invested in their story and planning a long-term build.

Then, 6-7 levels later, they get access to their second level spells and pull out something that I find as disruptive as say endure elements. I never objected to their build before this, and their entire build going forward kind of falls apart without this. Do I punish the player for not knowing seven levels ahead of time that I wouldn't like their spell selection? Or do I figure that out beforehand and avoid the concern altogether?


That's fair, that does sound like a lot of work. Have you considered just going over their core book spell selection, then telling players any spell from any other book has to be run past you first?

Eh, I've taken an 'in for a penny, in for a pound' approach to it. And since I have a policy against using content from books I don't own physical copies of, while I'm looking into the core spell lists it's not too far out of my way to look at the others. (Especially since Bard is the only 6th-caster that even exists out of PF, so I can pretty much completely ignore the 3.x spell lists).

[JoshuaZ]

Let's say, hypothetically, I let a player roll a casting ranger without reviewing the spell list first. They roll a Ranger 1, I look it over and it seems fine, because of course it does, it's a first-level character and it's pretty hard to do anything objectionable at that level. They go on to play that character, getting invested in their story and planning a long-term build.

Then, 6-7 levels later, they get access to their second level spells and pull out something that I find as disruptive as say endure elements. I never objected to their build before this, and their entire build going forward kind of falls apart without this. Do I punish the player for not knowing seven levels ahead of time that I wouldn't like their spell selection? Or do I figure that out beforehand and avoid the concern altogether?



This seems like a weird attitude at multiple levels. First of all, you can just ask for spell lists anyways. Second you can whitelist spells and that's easier. I'm not sure the logic behind your statement of "in for a penny, in for a pound" later since it seems to go exactly against this. Third, I'm skeptical that most players are going to be that set in their spell lists and will never be inclined to go pick something else out based on where the campaign has gone. For example, if something turned out to involve more undead, they might decide to go for an additional anti-undead spell. If the campaign has turned into involving a lot of tracking, they may take something which helps there. Fourth, your idea of what is a disruptive spell seems pretty odd. Endure Elements is a highly useful spell, but it is hardly disruptive spell from my most people's standpoints. Does "disruptive" here just mean "can solve multiple problems?"

[Drakevarg]

This seems like a weird attitude at multiple levels. First of all, you can just ask for spell lists anyways. Second you can whitelist spells and that's easier.

...that's... exactly what I'm doing? You know there's literally thousands of spells, right? That's precisely what I mean when I say looking over that stuff is a ton of work.


I'm not sure the logic behind your statement of "in for a penny, in for a pound" later since it seems to go exactly against this.

If I'm going to look over all the core spells for the 6th-casters, I might as well look over all their other spells while I'm at it. Especially for non-core classes (aka all of the casters besides bard), whose basic list includes spells from every book that came out before theirs.


Third, I'm skeptical that most players are going to be that set in their spell lists and will never be inclined to go pick something else out based on where the campaign has gone. For example, if something turned out to involve more undead, they might decide to go for an additional anti-undead spell. If the campaign has turned into involving a lot of tracking, they may take something which helps there.

I honestly have no idea what you're even talking about here.


Fourth, your idea of what is a disruptive spell seems pretty odd. Endure Elements is a highly useful spell, but it is hardly disruptive spell from my most people's standpoints. Does "disruptive" here just mean "can solve multiple problems?"

If by "solve multiple problems" you mean "make an entire type of challenge entirely evaporate," then yes. Endure elements pretty much just turns off the potential threat presented by extreme weather. People who are accustomed to it as part of the game say "well then extreme weather just isn't a valid challenge." To which I say "then don't sit at my table."

[JoshuaZ]

...that's... exactly what I'm doing? You know there's literally thousands of spells, right? That's precisely what I mean when I say looking over that stuff is a ton of work.

So, you worry about it when they give it to you. But even if you didn't do that. Whitelisting spells is radically different than whitelisting *classes*.





I honestly have no idea what you're even talking about here.

Campaign starts. Player: I'm planning a ranger, and I'm going to take Cure Light Wounds for my first 2nd level spell to help with healing. Then when they get to 8th level, the campaign has taken a turn involving a lot of interaction with weird plant creatures. So instead they take Speak With Plants when they get to that level. You seem to be operating under the assumption that players plan out there entire builds from level one, and then never alter that plan in the slightest as they advance in level. This is a highly questionable assumption. I do have to confess genuine curiosity if the groups you've played with, people are never changing their builds at all?




If by "solve multiple problems" you mean "make an entire type of challenge entirely evaporate," then yes. Endure elements pretty much just turns off the potential threat presented by extreme weather. People who are accustomed to it as part of the game say "well then extreme weather just isn't a valid challenge." To which I say "then don't sit at my table."

Endure Elements doesn't eliminate an entire challenge class. It works for one person per a spell. That means that to apply it to a party of 4 to 6 people, a low level mage will be using up almost all their spell slots. There's a tradeoff. I'm also not sure where you are getting the imagined quote of what people will say. Have you actually encountered people saying that the correct response is to decide that extreme weather cannot be a valid challenge?

[Drakevarg]

So, you worry about it when they give it to you. But even if you didn't do that. Whitelisting spells is radically different than whitelisting *classes*.

Do you habitually write out your entire intended spell list for your entire 20-level build at the start of the campaign? If not, how am I supposed to know at level 1 that you'll have a disruptive spell at 8th level? And if I don't worry about it until 8th level, how is it fair of me to tell you that the build you've been working towards for the last three months won't work?

Also I'm not just cherry-picking one or two spells here. I'm straight-up nuking about 60% of these spell lists on average. Moving down to ~15 spells per spell level rather than the 50-90 some classes have by default.


Campaign starts. Player: I'm planning a ranger, and I'm going to take Cure Light Wounds for my first 2nd level spell to help with healing. Then when they get to 8th level, the campaign has taken a turn involving a lot of interaction with weird plant creatures. So instead they take Speak With Plants when they get to that level. You seem to be operating under the assumption that players plan out there entire builds from level one, and then never alter that plan in the slightest as they advance in level. This is a highly questionable assumption. I do have to confess genuine curiosity if the groups you've played with, people are never changing their builds at all?

Not saying they never alter their plans, but generally I think players have some idea of what kind of character they want besides "X class sounds neat" and just winging it from there. And if you built your entire character around being a diplomancer or whatever only to find several levels in that I don't like your favorite diplomancy spell, you might feel punished for pursuing that build in the first place and, rather than shrugging and making some other build, just completely lose enthusiasm for the game and fade into the background.


I'm also not sure where you are getting the imagined quote of what people will say. Have you actually encountered people saying that the correct response is to decide that extreme weather cannot be a valid challenge?

From the same people who mock those who don't like the fly spell for thinking a ravine should still be a valid challenge to high-level characters.

[Fizban]

They go on to play that character, getting invested in their story and planning a long-term build.

Then, 6-7 levels later, they get access to their second level spells and pull out something that I find as disruptive as say endure elements. . . .


Do you habitually write out your entire intended spell list for your entire 20-level build at the start of the campaign? If not, how am I supposed to know at level 1 that you'll have a disruptive spell at 8th level? And if I don't worry about it until 8th level, how is it fair of me to tell you that the build you've been working towards for the last three months won't work? . . .
And if you built your entire character around being a diplomancer or whatever only to find several levels in that I don't like your favorite diplomancy spell, you might feel punished for pursuing that build in the first place and, rather than shrugging and making some other build, just completely lose enthusiasm for the game and fade into the background.

These are two different situations, both of which are solved by the same thing: tell players that if they're building towards something they should inform you as soon as they're interested so you can pre-check it. Thus, if they haven't mentioned something beforehand then you must reserve the right to remove unexpected disruptions.

If the diplomancer is planning on using a certain spell as the entire point of their build, they tell you and you catch it before it becomes a problem and they don't build that diplomancer. If a a Ranger suddenly pulls up some obscure splat spell you didn't know you'd need to "ban," they've already been informed about the potential consequences of doing so. This is why spellcasters are the easiest to fix mid-game, as I mentioned earlier.The martial 4th/half casters are much more expandable, adaptable, and indeed nerfable, than martial builds made from combinations of a dozen unique class features and obscure feats, which could be individually completely innocuous and in play for half the campaign before you notice the impending problem.

I would much rather tell someone to replace a single spell they just barely started using, than expect myself to have perfect knowledge of every possible feat and unique feature combination else end up gutting a character that's already been in play. Expecting to perfectly anticipate every possible problem such that you can hold yourself to a "new RAW" seems hubristic.

[Drakevarg]

These are two different situations, both of which are solved by the same thing: tell players that if they're building towards something they should inform you as soon as they're interested so you can pre-check it. Thus, if they haven't mentioned something beforehand then you must reserve the right to remove unexpected disruptions.

That seems fair.


This is why spellcasters are the easiest to fix mid-game, as I mentioned earlier.The martial 4th/half casters are much more expandable, adaptable, and indeed nerfable, than martial builds made from combinations of a dozen unique class features and obscure feats, which could be individually completely innocuous and in play for half the campaign before you notice the impending problem.

FWIW, after running no-caster campaigns for years, you can see how I might become habituated to the latter worry.