Spellcasting nerf

[Sirperry]

I had a thought (dangerous, I know) and I thought I would let all of you shoot holes in it.

What if Spellcasting required a move action (or perhaps just a swift action) to collect and manipulate the material components, in addition to the standard action?

Obviously, eschew components becomes a valuable feat. It also becomes a prerequisite for quicken spell.

Does this, perhaps, help balance tier 1 characters a tiny bit?

[Bohandas]

certainly seems more realistic than the current handling of material components

[Beni-Kujaku]

The necessity of taking Natural Spell does not make druids less overpowered (or, more accurately, it does, but they're still high-tier 1). If you're going this way, changing all swift action spells into move actions and all standard action spells into full-round actions would be more consistent and have a deeper impact. That, and the impossibility of casting on the defensive, would really help to balance casters in combat, while keeping their overall superiority in utility, which is a good bit of what people like when playing casters.

[Crake]

The only way to truly impact spellcasting is to significantly nerf the effects of spells. The problem is that casters have such a huge variety of very powerful effects, trying to nerf that through implementing component action costs and costing a feat is just inciting grods law.

What about all the spells that are incredibly powerful outside of combat? This doesnt affect them at all, and at least 50% of a caster’s power comes from their noncombat power of agency.

[Gruftzwerg]

I had a thought (dangerous, I know) and I thought I would let all of you shoot holes in it.

What if Spellcasting required a move action (or perhaps just a swift action) to collect and manipulate the material components, in addition to the standard action?

Obviously, eschew components becomes a valuable feat. It also becomes a prerequisite for quicken spell.

Does this, perhaps, help balance tier 1 characters a tiny bit?

imho no, not at all...

1) It just becomes a feat tax. Sure that would prevent some builds, but those are not the ones causing the problem here. See below.

2) It only affects combat. T1 classes have ways to cancel/skip entire fights. The things they can do out of combat is a big part of the entire problem with T1 classes.

3) combat optimization is the weakest of all optimization types. being able to skip entire plot strings is what makes T1 characters so problematic.

Just think about divination spells. In the hands of a capable player it is a very powerful tool. Your suggestion does nothing to alter this problem. While the "face" character of your party needs an entire day to gather some informations, you do it almost in an instant as a T1 caster.
Or what about Teleport? Skipping weeks and months of travel and possible random encounters.
And Polymorph will still overshadow most mundane builds. Doesn't matter that you now have to "waste" your movement action to cast the spell.


The problem about T1 is not the combat power. Because you can optimize ANY class for combat. The problem is their flexible kit that can solve any problem once they have access to certain spells.

Imho 3.5 is not intended to be balanced out of the box. And that is the real beauty of it. You as table (players and the DM) are free to set the intended power lvl of the characters. And if you play "together", it doesn't matter if your party ain't fully balanced. But if everybody fights for the spotlight all the time, that is a problem for itself. Balancing won't change anything there.
So my suggestion is to play on a "gentlemen's agreement". Talk about intended power lvls from time to time and see what fits your current situation the best. Nothing is set into stone. You can play one campaign with barely optimized players (e.g. a street kid/teenager gang or something like that) and another with over the top builds. It's up to you to explore what is fun and what not. Just keep in mind that with the amount of optimization, the amount of rule discussion increase proportionally.^^

[Zanos]

The only way to truly impact spellcasting is to significantly nerf the effects of spells. The problem is that casters have such a huge variety of very powerful effects, trying to nerf that through implementing component action costs and costing a feat is just inciting grods law.

What about all the spells that are incredibly powerful outside of combat? This doesnt affect them at all, and at least 50% of a caster’s power comes from their noncombat power of agency.
This.

The other issue is that all blanket spellcasting "fixes" hurt people that just want to throw a fireball more than people who have an army of animated objects or skeletons or bound devils. And if it's taking you a full round action to get a spell off you better not be anywhere near melee(nerfing hybrids), and that spell better be the single most impactful spell you can cast...so more crowd control.

[Promethean]

Honestly, the better solution is probably to buff non-casters rather than nerf casters.

Make magic item less expensive + give non-casters more item slots and class specific items like in earlier editions. Give non-casters boosts to skill and attribute gains/caps so they can do their own cool things with epic skill checks.

In general just let each non-caster class be it's own thing and just make them better at that thing rather than punish people that Like the cool things casters have.

[RandomPeasant]

The other issue is that all blanket spellcasting "fixes" hurt people that just want to throw a fireball more than people who have an army of animated objects or skeletons or bound devils. And if it's taking you a full round action to get a spell off you better not be anywhere near melee(nerfing hybrids), and that spell better be the single most impactful spell you can cast...so more crowd control.

This is absolutely correct. I have never seen one of these "nerf spellcasting" proposals that does not make the most powerful caster builds even more appealing, relatively speaking. When you get down to it, a minionmancer needs maybe three spells from maybe two schools to do their thing and is perfectly happy to cast those spells days or weeks in advance. Anything you do to limit that out is going to be absolutely crippling for the Warmage, who wants to cast multiple spells per combat to be relevant. "Casters" are not a homogenous group who are homogenously too powerful, and the sooner people realize that the sooner they'll find good ways to make the changes they want.


Honestly, the better solution is probably to buff non-casters rather than nerf casters.

This is also absolutely correct. There are certainly some things casters have that are too good (looking at you, planar binding). But for the most part, the power level of things casters do is fine. If the party Wizard is casting stinking cloud or major image or haste out of their 3rd-level spell slots, that's fine. You don't need to nerf that. But take a look at the Marshal some time and tell me that class doesn't deserve to get more than it does.

[Crake]

Honestly, the better solution is probably to buff non-casters rather than nerf casters.

Make magic item less expensive + give non-casters more item slots and class specific items like in earlier editions. Give non-casters boosts to skill and attribute gains/caps so they can do their own cool things with epic skill checks.

In general just let each non-caster class be it's own thing and just make them better at that thing rather than punish people that Like the cool things casters have.

Umd bypasses class restrictions on gear, and making magic items cheaper benefits casters who can craft their own gear more than non casters.

If you want to buff non casters, buff noncasters, dont buff the things around noncasters.

Buffing magic items is just making a caster with extra steps, and I hate how item centric 3.5 is, by far one of the system’s worst’s qualities.

[paladinn]

I've begun using the 5e spellcasting system (spell slots or points) even in 3e. It limits the power of spells to the spell level, not the caster level, which is a significant nerf. At the same time, it also gives more flexibility because all casters become "spontaneous."

To me, that's a win-win!

[Darg]

If we want to be technical, retrieving a spell component IS a move action by the rules. There is no rule that says retrieving a spell component is a free action. Preparing a spell component is not elaborated on nor should it allow you to do more than what a simpler less complicated action is capable of doing. Preparation is more like throwing tarts and waving a feather.

In practice it doesn't balance anything, it just makes casters more vulnerable and more reliant on their more combat related counter parts to protect them. Preparation becomes more valuable. Many spells cause casters to become immobile turrets otherwise. I like the flavor and implications, but obviously people are vehemently against swinging a nerf bat against something they like. So that should be weighed against the decision to add it if it wasn't from the start.

[Sirperry]

Good points, folks, good points. And I acknowledge it is a minor feat tax, at most. I originally came across the idea while rereading the basic rules of spellcasting, and thinking more of verisimilitude than balance. Thanks for your thoughts.

[Remuko]

Seems like a case of Grod's Law here


You cannot and should not balance bad mechanics by making them annoying to use.

Id say your suggested change just makes spells "annoying to use".

[Beni-Kujaku]

Seems like a case of Grod's Law here
Id say your suggested change just makes spells "annoying to use".

I don't really agree with you. Taking an additional move action is not "annoying" as much as it requires better placement in combat. Having to take a feat tax is annoying, and Eschew would be, but the gist of the houserule is not annoying as much as it is a real nerf of spellcaster combat ability.

[Crake]

I don't really agree with you. Taking an additional move action is not "annoying" as much as it requires better placement in combat. Having to take a feat tax is annoying, and Eschew would be, but the gist of the houserule is not annoying as much as it is a real nerf of spellcaster combat ability.

It doesn't nerf the ability, it nerfs how you use the ability, and it does so by making it more annoying to use.

As plenty of people have said, myself included, it ultimately does nothing to affect the out of combat problems that spellcasting cause. You could literally make spellcasting require a minute minimum, and a large swathe of spellcasting issues would still be present.

Ironically, increasing casting times, again as others have mentioned, affects the least problematic builds the most.

[GloatingSwine]

The only way to truly impact spellcasting is to significantly nerf the effects of spells. The problem is that casters have such a huge variety of very powerful effects, trying to nerf that through implementing component action costs and costing a feat is just inciting grods law.

What about all the spells that are incredibly powerful outside of combat? This doesnt affect them at all, and at least 50% of a caster’s power comes from their noncombat power of agency.

Nah, the way to do it is to take those effects out of spell slots.

Spells should be for damage, healing, crowd control, buffs, and debuffs.

Effects that don't fit into one of those buckets should be rituals or artifact effects which characters who have spell slots can burn a spell slot to do more conveniently than those without. (in ways that make sense, eg. summon spells that are useful in combat can be done by anyone but only casters can do them fast enough to help in combat).

[Zombimode]

Before making any changes to the rules, especially things that are meant to do stuff like "fix spellcasting" or "balance XY", I would like you take a step back and ask yourself honestly: "What problem do I want to solve?" and "Is that really a problem?"
And the second question should only be answered with "yes" if it is an actual problem at your table. Not hypothetically, not for other people, but for your actual game.

[martixy]

Umd bypasses class restrictions on gear, and making magic items cheaper benefits casters who can craft their own gear more than non casters.

If you want to buff non casters, buff noncasters, dont buff the things around noncasters.

Buffing magic items is just making a caster with extra steps, and I hate how item centric 3.5 is, by far one of the system’s worst’s qualities.

I agree with every statement here.

I've seen this described as a western thing.

The myth of the gun vs the myth of the hero.

In the west you're a schmuck, you get a gun and you can DO THINGS.
In the east strength is innate. Power flows from the inside. A gun or a sword is just a tool, an extension of the self.

Narratively, I've always enjoyed the latter significantly more. But that's personal preference.

[Quertus]

It doesn't nerf the ability, it nerfs how you use the ability, and it does so by making it more annoying to use.

As plenty of people have said, myself included, it ultimately does nothing to affect the out of combat problems that spellcasting cause. You could literally make spellcasting require a minute minimum, and a large swathe of spellcasting issues would still be present.

Ironically, increasing casting times, again as others have mentioned, affects the least problematic builds the most.

How about the reverse? Spells are now 2/round, and the caster must cast spells every round? Push that endurance, mandate that casters cast.


Nah, the way to do it is to take those effects out of spell slots.

Spells should be for damage, healing, crowd control, buffs, and debuffs.

Effects that don't fit into one of those buckets should be rituals or artifact effects which characters who have spell slots can burn a spell slot to do more conveniently than those without. (in ways that make sense, eg. summon spells that are useful in combat can be done by anyone but only casters can do them fast enough to help in combat).

Hmmm… in combat, I like to use… illusions, tactical teleportation, SoD/SoL effects (Hold Monster, Flesh to Stone), enhance mobility effects (Fly), minionmancy (Charm/Dominate, Command Undead), Chaos (Nahal’s Reckless Dwoemer, Confusion)… and things I have a hard time putting into D&D terms (stripping my opponent naked by teleporting their items away, Matter transmission (sometimes to similar effect, or to cover them in oil, or…), useful combat telekinesis (which can also be used to remove items, or move opponents, or “grant Flight”, or defensively/reactively, or…), etc). I’m not sure that any of those fit nicely into your buckets, but many don’t seem usable except in combat.

Although I like the sound of making most everything a ritual, I’m not so sure about the implementation.


Before making any changes to the rules, especially things that are meant to do stuff like "fix spellcasting" or "balance XY", I would like you take a step back and ask yourself honestly: "What problem do I want to solve?" and "Is that really a problem?"
And the second question should only be answered with "yes" if it is an actual problem at your table. Not hypothetically, not for other people, but for your actual game.

At my tables, “Wizard” - especially at low levels - is a terrible chassis for dealing damage: no AC or HP, low damage output, finite resources. I’d love a fix that makes the 3e Wizard class a viable candidate for “combat DPS MVP”, and as durable as the Fighter.


I agree with every statement here.

I've seen this described as a western thing.

The myth of the gun vs the myth of the hero.

In the west you're a schmuck, you get a gun and you can DO THINGS.
In the east strength is innate. Power flows from the inside. A gun or a sword is just a tool, an extension of the self.

Narratively, I've always enjoyed the latter significantly more. But that's personal preference.

Marvel Multiverse 616 is good for explaining my problems with that. Ironman can soak NI plasma rifle / antimatter ray shots from mooks. But a high-level character picks up a mundane slingshot, and he’ll grievously wound Ironman, and 1-shot tanks. (EDIT: I think it was clearer when I used Batman and Superman, despite their being non-native.)

I just can’t maintain suspension of disbelief in that scenario.

[Crake]

Marvel Multiverse 616 is good for explaining my problems with that. Ironman can soak NI plasma rifle / antimatter ray shots from mooks. But a high-level character picks up a mundane slingshot, and he’ll grievously wound Ironman, and 1-shot tanks. (EDIT: I think it was clearer when I used Batman and Superman, despite their being non-native.)

I just can’t maintain suspension of disbelief in that scenario.

The thing is though, items are universal. You cant use items to balance a class, because all classes can use the item, so whats good for the goose is good for the gander. Items will never be the solution to class imbalance, the balance needs to be done to the classes, not the things around the classes.

Ironman doesnt really work as a great example here because, like an artificer, item are his class features. The idea would be that a similar high level character could fight him even without the slingshot (if anything using a slingshot would be worse than fighting bare fisted because you get no modifiers to the, likely nonlethal, damage), take captain america for example, literally fist fighting iron man, no items except his iconic shield.

[Troacctid]

I had a thought (dangerous, I know) and I thought I would let all of you shoot holes in it.

What if Spellcasting required a move action (or perhaps just a swift action) to collect and manipulate the material components, in addition to the standard action?

Obviously, eschew components becomes a valuable feat. It also becomes a prerequisite for quicken spell.

Does this, perhaps, help balance tier 1 characters a tiny bit?
No, it's a terrible change. First off, what spells do or don't have material components is almost entirely arbitrary. Spells weren't designed with this rule in mind, so you may as well throw darts at a spell list to figure out which effects to nerf. Why do you think that polar ray and hold person need to be hit with the nerf bat but prismatic spray and suggestion don't?

Secondly, what you're really nerfing with this change isn't T1 classes, it's T2 classes, who are disproportionately spontaneous casters. Spontaneous casters already need a full-round action to cast spells with metamagic, so adding an extra move action to that is basically locking them out of using metamagic entirely. T1 casters don't care—they can just stand still and it doesn't matter.

Thirdly, it doesn't affect spells that are cast outside of combat, where action economy doesn't matter. Combined with the first point, this is another reason why you aren't actually making spells weaker, you're just narrowing the meta of spells that are worth casting—reducing the diversity of casters, but not meaningfully capping their strength.

Fourthly, as a corollary to the third point, this change makes casters less fun and more annoying to play. Your spell choices are more limited, your actions in combat are more limited, and worst of all, you suddenly have to care about spell components all the time, which means remembering and tracking which spells have which components. That's a pain in the neck.

So, yeah, no, this is not a good quick fix. It doesn't do a good job of accomplishing your goals, and I suspect it doesn't even really have a strong understanding of the problem it's trying to solve.


If we want to be technical, retrieving a spell component IS a move action by the rules. There is no rule that says retrieving a spell component is a free action. Preparing a spell component is not elaborated on nor should it allow you to do more than what a simpler less complicated action is capable of doing. Preparation is more like throwing tarts and waving a feather.
There is a rule that says it's a free action, actually.

[martixy]

Marvel Multiverse 616 is good for explaining my problems with that. Ironman can soak NI plasma rifle / antimatter ray shots from mooks. But a high-level character picks up a mundane slingshot, and he’ll grievously wound Ironman, and 1-shot tanks. (EDIT: I think it was clearer when I used Batman and Superman, despite their being non-native.)

I just can’t maintain suspension of disbelief in that scenario.

It's the setting. It breaks my suspension too. Because it's supposed to be real world, normal humans, with tacked on superheroes it seems less plausible.

But take for example a wuxia setting - it suddenly seems less suspension breaking. We're used to mundane weapons being potent in a master's hands. Stopping swords with chopsticks and the like.

[Asmotherion]

it doesn't really address the problem.

A highly optimised Mage can:

A) Always play First
B) Interupt an opponent mid sentence, and gain a full round worth of actions
C) Rest mid battle, regaining all their spell slots and health.
D) One shot almost everything in the Monster Manuals.

In fact, the only thing a Highly optimised Sorcerer or Wizard needs to worry about is negating Natural 1s, and usually does so with Luck feats.

A battle between 2 Mages is essentially an Initiative battle, and the strategic application of Celerity spells.

There is no real Fix for this, other than knowing what paths lead to cheese builds and preventing them as a DM.

[icefractal]

Does this, perhaps, help balance tier 1 characters a tiny bit?A tiny bit, yes. Not by a significant amount, but they'll be effectively down one feat or else somewhat restricted in spell selection.

The biggest impact would be spells with non-trivial components that get used in combat, like Forcecage. Those become significantly weaker. Not sure how many of those there are, a lot of the expensive spells are cast outside combat anyway, but you may want to peruse through them and see whether it's a desirable change.


Incidentally -

In practice it doesn't balance anything, it just makes casters more vulnerable and more reliant on their more combat related counter parts to protect them. Preparation becomes more valuable. Many spells cause casters to become immobile turrets otherwise. I like the flavor and implications, but obviously people are vehemently against swinging a nerf bat against something they like. So that should be weighed against the decision to add it if it wasn't from the start.Am I missing sarcasm here? Being more vulnerable and more reliant on others to protect them, being immobile on some occasions, needing more preparation - those are nerfs, even if not huge ones. And if you're talking about something overly strong, nerfs are going to bring it closer to balance (unless they overshoot into underpowered).

It's a weird quirk of how T1 casters are discussed here:
Poster: "T1 casters are very strong."
Replies: "Yeah, incredibly strong. For some campaigns that's a good thing, but otherwise consider banning T1 classes entirely."
Poster: "I wasn't going to ban them, I was just going to apply this nerf."
Replies: "That's terrible, it's not going to fix ANYTHING, and it will be so incredibly unfun that all the caster players will literally die of frustration. Don't even think about it."

Like, if it's fine to play with full-power T1 casters, and it's also fine to play with T1 casters banned, why is it bad to be somewhere between those two points?

[Wichi]

A tiny bit, yes. Not by a significant amount, but they'll be effectively down one feat or else somewhat restricted in spell selection.

The biggest impact would be spells with non-trivial components that get used in combat, like Forcecage. Those become significantly weaker. Not sure how many of those there are, a lot of the expensive spells are cast outside combat anyway, but you may want to peruse through them and see whether it's a desirable change.


Incidentally -
Am I missing sarcasm here? Being more vulnerable and more reliant on others to protect them, being immobile on some occasions, needing more preparation - those are nerfs, even if not huge ones. And if you're talking about something overly strong, nerfs are going to bring it closer to balance (unless they overshoot into underpowered).

It's a weird quirk of how T1 casters are discussed here:
Poster: "T1 casters are very strong."
Replies: "Yeah, incredibly strong. For some campaigns that's a good thing, but otherwise consider banning T1 classes entirely."
Poster: "I wasn't going to ban them, I was just going to apply this nerf."
Replies: "That's terrible, it's not going to fix ANYTHING, and it will be so incredibly unfun that all the caster players will literally die of frustration. Don't even think about it."

Like, if it's fine to play with full-power T1 casters, and it's also fine to play with T1 casters banned, why is it bad to be somewhere between those two points?

because they don't only affect t1 characters, they affect all characters that use spells in at least this case.

wanting to weaken the t1 you end up weakening the t2 and some t3 in the process.

[Crake]

Like, if it's fine to play with full-power T1 casters, and it's also fine to play with T1 casters banned, why is it bad to be somewhere between those two points?

Because, as has been said many times, this isnt really nerfing casters, its just making them annoying to play. The power ceiling remains largely unchanged, but now you have a bunch of extra bookkeeping to take care of on a character thats already a headache of bookkeeping for spellbooks and spells prepared. Plus as Darg mentioned, it impacts non t1 casters as well

[icefractal]

Because, as has been said many times, this isnt really nerfing casters, its just making them annoying to play. The power ceiling remains largely unchanged, but now you have a bunch of extra bookkeeping to take care of on a character thats already a headache of bookkeeping for spellbooks and spells prepared. Plus as Darg mentioned, it impacts non t1 casters as well
What book-keeping? Needing to remember which spells have material components and which don't? The OP isn't talking about requiring individual tracking of all components, simply an action cost to use any material component. And in practice it's more like "you have one less feat, no extra bookkeeping".

Also, the power ceiling being unchanged matters very little, because almost nobody is playing at that ceiling. Besides, if you're really at the power ceiling it doesn't even matter what class you are, because true power comes from wishes.

Affecting casters that aren't too strong - yeah, it does. So do any nerfs you'd propose to T1 classes, because not every character with a T1 class is actually strong. WotC-example-Wizard is not very strong and will probably feel mediocre compared to a moderately-optimized martial, for example.

And if the argument was "you shouldn't try to balance entire mechanics at all, you should balance individual characters" then I agree (in many cases). But that's not usually how I've seen it phrased, it's that theoretical re-balancing is totally merited, but any concrete proposal is bad and shouldn't be done.

[Crake]

And if the argument was "you shouldn't try to balance entire mechanics at all, you should balance individual characters" then I agree (in many cases). But that's not usually how I've seen it phrased, it's that theoretical re-balancing is totally merited, but any concrete proposal is bad and shouldn't be done.

My argument is that you should be balancing the effects of the spells themselves, and not the act of casting the spell. Its not the casting thats the issue, its the outcome thats the issue. Target the fix at the problem, not the act of getting to the problem. If you nerf the act of getting to the problem, then you just make it more annoying to get to, but its still as much of a problem as it ever was.

[AvatarVecna]

Spellcasting is a problem because it has a solution to every problem, usually cheaper and more effective solutions than what any noncasters have. Making it so casters can't cast+move every round doesn't change the fact that casting was doing waaaaaaay more for their success than moving was. And making it so casters can't cast+move every round has zero effect on things outside of combat.

If you're playing a murder mystery, and it can be solved by anybody casting "Speak With Dead" on the murder victim, changing the rules so that casting Speak With Dead takes 6 seconds instead of 3 doesn't matter. It doesn't solve the problem of a single spell cancelling a whole plot, because the spell is perfectly designed for solving an entire genre; the only way to fix that is either banning the spell, or writing a murder mystery that can't be solved by Speak With Dead.

If you're playing a "we have to bring the [One Ring] to [Mt Doom]" (insert your own mcguffin and location), and it can be solved by anybody casting "Teleport", changing the rules so that casting Teleport takes 6 seconds instead of 3 doesn't matter. You could write a story where Mt Doom is a teleportation dead zone, or maybe write the story so that the wizard doesn't dare pick up the One Ring for fear of what it would do to him, or you could ban teleport. But "making teleport take 6 seconds to cast" doesn't change the fact that it's putting the entire parts days, weeks, months, or even years ahead of schedule (depending on how big the teleport was and how treacherous the journey would've been). Yeah the spell costs a few more seconds to use than it used to...but who cares?

[AvatarVecna]

And if the argument was "you shouldn't try to balance entire mechanics at all, you should balance individual characters" then I agree (in many cases). But that's not usually how I've seen it phrased, it's that theoretical re-balancing is totally merited, but any concrete proposal is bad and shouldn't be done.

The problem is that it's always framed as "I have an easy fix for spellcasting" and then it's just papering over one tiny aspect of the problem. Congrats, you made every spell take slightly longer to cast than it used to! Unfortunately, that did nothing to fix what was unbalanced about teleportation (Dimension Door, Teleport, Greater Teleport, Plane Shift, etc), minionmancy (Summon Nature's Ally, Summon Monster, Planar Binding, Planar Ally, Animate Dead, Create Undead, etc), information gathering (Locate Object, Locate Creature, Speak With Dead, Divination, Commune, etc), shapeshifting (Polymorph, Polymorph Any Object, etc), and so on and so on and so on. Didn't even mention the spells that can do all of the above (Limited Wish, Wish, Gate, Shapechange). Didn't even mention any non-core spells.

There's not an easy fix for spellcasting. There is a section of characters who gradually gain the ability to manipulate reality in literally any way they please (up to things like Miracle, Wish, and Epic Spellcasting, where they can literally just say what they want the result to be and have the universe bend over to give it to them even if it doesn't currently exist), and then another section of characters that gets...a slightly deeper hit point pool, that still isn't enough for them to survive rocket tag? Slightly more skill points, but still with the same maximum per skill as mages have? A couple extra attacks per round they personally make, even if their DPR is lower than the mage's army?

You can't fix that kind of divide with anything that fits in one post. You probably can't fix that kind of divide with anything fits in one thread. This thread could be nothing but the OP maxing out every single one of 1500 posts with his thoughts on how to fix 3.5's balance issues and even if everyone 100% agreed that every suggestion he made works, he'd still be missing some things.

[RandomPeasant]

Umd bypasses class restrictions on gear, and making magic items cheaper benefits casters who can craft their own gear more than non casters.

While I agree with the overall thesis (that buffing items is a poor way to address the weakness of non-casters), I don't think this is necessarily true. If you think about the maximalist world of "cheap items, easy UMD", casters suffer a great deal there, because all the things they do are things you can just get as items. It's true that a Wizard can UMD whatever Rogue-only item you devise, but the Rogue can UMD scrolls of Wizard spells right back, and at the limit that gives you a Wizard with "spells + Rogue item" and a Rogue with "Rogue class features + spells from scrolls + Rogue item".


Buffing magic items is just making a caster with extra steps, and I hate how item centric 3.5 is, by far one of the system’s worst’s qualities.

This is absolutely true. People are far too reliant on items, and they're reliant on them in ways that tend to make characters less interesting. There's nothing exciting about getting the +3 Cloak you need to make saves at the expected rate, and upgrading that to a +4 Cloak is somehow even less exciting. I do think there's space for a fix that addresses the issue in a way that improves the relative standing of non-casters (imagine if your Persistent buffs were competing for the same slots as your magic items -- then it would actually be true that you're better off giving the magic sword to the Fighter), but overall I think you need to address non-casters directly.


Ironically, increasing casting times, again as others have mentioned, affects the least problematic builds the most.

Again, this is exactly it. The question you should ask, when you propose your caster nerf, is "does this make the Warmage sad". Because a lot of casting nerfs do, and the Warmage doesn't need to be sad.


How about the reverse? Spells are now 2/round, and the caster must cast spells every round? Push that endurance, mandate that casters cast.

This doesn't really do anything unless you also ensure that people are reliably not doing 5-minute workdays, and that's a hard problem to solve. I would much rather the game be balanced in a way that assumes as little as possible about how often you will have encounters.


Hmmm… in combat, I like to use… illusions, tactical teleportation, SoD/SoL effects (Hold Monster, Flesh to Stone), enhance mobility effects (Fly), minionmancy (Charm/Dominate, Command Undead), Chaos (Nahal’s Reckless Dwoemer, Confusion)… and things I have a hard time putting into D&D terms (stripping my opponent naked by teleporting their items away, Matter transmission (sometimes to similar effect, or to cover them in oil, or…), useful combat telekinesis (which can also be used to remove items, or move opponents, or “grant Flight”, or defensively/reactively, or…), etc). I’m not sure that any of those fit nicely into your buckets, but many don’t seem usable except in combat.

This is a very fair point. "What if we just divide casting into combat and non-combat" is a tempting idea. And it works to a degree. You can make teleport take ten minutes to cast, and that's mostly fine. People don't use teleport in combat a ton, and what they do can be managed by dimension door. But silent image has applications both in and out of combat. So does wall of stone. You can't just go "wall of stone is a non-combat spell now" and have stuff work out. You've gotta either bite the bullet of putting some things on one side or another (cutting off some options), or figuring out a way to have things cross that boundary.


There is a rule that says it's a free action, actually.

I would love it if people in debates like this would start citing the sources they think support their arguments.


Being more vulnerable and more reliant on others to protect them, being immobile on some occasions, needing more preparation - those are nerfs, even if not huge ones. And if you're talking about something overly strong, nerfs are going to bring it closer to balance (unless they overshoot into underpowered).

I think you're hitting exactly the distinction there at the end. Nerfing something is not the same as balancing that thing. There are a lot of nerfs you could apply to spellcasters. Applying a nerf that disproportionately hurts builds that are not a problem (in-combat casters) while doing effectively nothing to the worst offenders (downtime minionmancy) is just not a good approach. Just because something is overpowered does not mean every nerf you could apply to it is a good idea.


Also, the power ceiling being unchanged matters very little, because almost nobody is playing at that ceiling.

But if we're acknowledging that, we also need to acknowledge that most people are not playing Wizards at a power level that deserves a nerf. If you are casting black tentacles to BFC some enemies, teleport to skip over the campaign's 20th land journey, and planar binding to get some elementals to set up the party's clubhouse for cheap, none of what you're doing is an issue and if the Fighter feels less useful we should address that by making him more useful. You have to evaluate the effects of nerfs on abusive tactics, because if people aren't using abusive tactics they don't need to be nerfed.


It doesn't solve the problem of a single spell cancelling a whole plot, because the spell is perfectly designed for solving an entire genre; the only way to fix that is either banning the spell, or writing a murder mystery that can't be solved by Speak With Dead.

This is just not true. A couple of weeks ago, I watched Glass Onion, which is a pretty classic murder mystery. Of the three murders that happen (spoilers if you haven't seen it and want to), one is done in a way that the victim doesn't know what happened, one is a fakeout, and one is done in private enough circumstances that you could trivially shift things around so the killer bypassed speak with dead. And the previous movie, Knives Out, is much the same. It is simply not hard to write murder mysteries that bypass "you can ask the dead guy", to the point that people do it without trying.


maybe write the story so that the wizard doesn't dare pick up the One Ring for fear of what it would do to him

To be far, that is exactly the story Lord of the Rings is. There's a reason it's not Gandalf that takes the ring to Mount Doom.

[AvatarVecna]

This is just not true. A couple of weeks ago, I watched Glass Onion, which is a pretty classic murder mystery. Of the three murders that happen (spoilers if you haven't seen it and want to), one is done in a way that the victim doesn't know what happened, one is a fakeout, and one is done in private enough circumstances that you could trivially shift things around so the killer bypassed speak with dead. And the previous movie, Knives Out, is much the same. It is simply not hard to write murder mysteries that bypass "you can ask the dead guy", to the point that people do it without trying.



To be far, that is exactly the story Lord of the Rings is. There's a reason it's not Gandalf that takes the ring to Mount Doom.

That's exactly why I listed that specific reason for the ring example.

I'm not saying this stuff is impossible or even necessarily hard to write around. The problem is that you, as the DM, have to prepare for if the players say "why dont we just teleport the mcguffin to the place" when they have teleport in their spellbook. There are plots you can throw at a lvl 1 party that you 100% cannot throw at a lvl 10 party, just because the toolbox of problem solving tools has gotten bigger.

...or rather, it's gotten bigger if you're a caster. If it's a whole party of rogues, nothing has changed, not significantly. We've changed whether we're playing an idiot detective or sherlock holmes, but we're still fundamentally playing by the rules of the murder mystery genre. Whether we're playing "my coworker Dave who jogs sometimes" or ****in Usain Bolt, the story of "get X to Y" is still hundreds of miles long; the monk 20 isn't getting there that much faster than the monk 1, but the wizard 9 has them both beat.

When there's someone in the party has literally magic at their fingertips designed for solving this specific problem, the story either dies in its tracks, or gets increasingly more complicated to work around the fact they are doing something that is literally impossible for most any other detective who was trying to solve this case. That's not something that has to happen for a fighter. That's not something that has to happen for a rogue. That's not something that has to happen for a barbarian. "Dead men tell no tales" is a rule they have to play by, but the cleric does not. Maybe it gives no answers, and you're right back where you started, but it's another avenue of possibility the DM has to consider ahead of time and plan to shut down. And another. And another. And another, ad infinitum.

Speak With Dead on the victim doesn't give any clues because their jaw was removed? Fine. Raise Dead, or Resurrection, or True Resurrection. Can't be raised, won't talk with you? Commune with God for an answer, bypass the victim altogether. God doesn't know? Maybe a Wish spell will bring the killer right here. Wish didn't work? Teleport Through Time to witness the murder in person. They can't be detected while time traveling for some reason? Custom craft an epic spell to catch them. And there's at least a dozen divinations that could've helped in between Commune and Wish.

Yes, the DM can make obstacles for all these. The DM can do anything. That's not the point. The point is that he wouldn't have to do that if you were just playing a rogue. The DM being able to fix the game doesn't mean the game isn't broken.

You can't Rule 0 your way out of the game being bad.

[Troacctid]

What book-keeping? Needing to remember which spells have material components and which don't?
I mean, yeah, that's pretty annoying.

[Darg]

Like, if it's fine to play with full-power T1 casters, and it's also fine to play with T1 casters banned, why is it bad to be somewhere between those two points?

I'm not against it on any personal level, and I don't just allow manipulating just any component to be a free action as explained in my response to another below. I tried a few one offs requiring components to be in hand and a minimum move action to retrieve at 3 different levels (3, 9, 15) and ultimately it came down to personal preference. It didn't really change much other than the fighters got much more regular combat spotlight and slowing down the combat. It felt more tactical in the sense you need more foresight like playing chess, but ultimately it's just nerfing fun for people less inclined for that kind of gameplay. D&D is a game first and foremost. If the players aren't having fun you have a problem that needs to be addressed.


I would love it if people in debates like this would start citing the sources they think support their arguments.

I mean, it's right there in the description (https://www.d20srd.org/srd/combat/actionsInCombat.htm#manipulateanItem). Then again, preparing spell components is never defined (https://www.d20srd.org/srd/combat/actionsInCombat.htm#spellComponents). Retrieving a stored item is a move action. So is picking something up. The rule never says that retrieving a spell component is a free action. The rules don't say you even need to retrieve a spell component to cast a spell, just have them in your possession or being touched. There is a catch though. Components that are elaborate, large, or awkward take more time than a free action to prepare. It's the DM's call as to how much longer. You can find the relevant rules on pages 140, 141, and 174 of the PHB. I thinks it's completely fair to limit hideous laughter to just a move action retrieval. Animate dead could be anywhere from 1 move action to many rounds worth depending on how many corpses and the distances involved. The example given in the PHB is preparing the mirror for scrying.

[RandomPeasant]

There are plots you can throw at a lvl 1 party that you 100% cannot throw at a lvl 10 party, just because the toolbox of problem solving tools has gotten bigger.

I continue to be baffled by people making this argument like the MM isn't full of things you can throw at 1st level parties that you can't throw at 10th level parties. Yes, higher level parties deal with different challenges. That's good. Characters are supposed to grow over time.


Speak With Dead on the victim doesn't give any clues because their jaw was removed? Fine. Raise Dead, or Resurrection, or True Resurrection. Can't be raised, won't talk with you? Commune with God for an answer, bypass the victim altogether. God doesn't know? Maybe a Wish spell will bring the killer right here. Wish didn't work? Teleport Through Time to witness the murder in person. They can't be detected while time traveling for some reason? Custom craft an epic spell to catch them. And there's at least a dozen divinations that could've helped in between Commune and Wish.

I agree that things like wish and Epic Level Spellcasting warp the game heavily. But they're also things that exist in the wild and crazy world of Epic (or near-Epic) play. In an Epic-level game, you can walk into a room and fight an Atropal. Not as, like, a boss monster or the climax of a major arc, that's just a stock enemy you will sometimes find as an encounter at 30th level. And it's a zombie god-fetus. I think it's fine if crazy stuff happens in that environment, because that is a crazy environment.

As far as lower level environments go, I just don't think a pure "whodunnit" needs to last the whole twenty-level progression. Again, if you look at media that's totally unconcerned with dealing with magic (often because it takes place in the real world, where there is famously not magic), it often doesn't just focus on "whodunnit". Usually, the hard problem is "how do you catch them" or "how do you deal with the political issues around this murder", and those are things magic doesn't trivialize. Think about The Wire. Certainly various bits of divination magic would help, but the fundamental problems are structural political and economic ones. Giving McNulty speak with dead would make his job easier, but it wouldn't do anything about the drug trade driving violence.


The DM being able to fix the game doesn't mean the game isn't broken.

That is true. What is also true is that the game changing doesn't make it broken.

[ericgrau]

I like the idea of using increased WBL to help non-casters. And since costs go up quadratically, you can use something big and simple like +50% WBL and treasure and it's not that big of an increase in the level of the magic. And also ban a lot of infinite loops and combos, if the DM wasn't rolling his eyes already. So then you get a world that is a mix of innate superpowers and iron men. Which the system expects and kind of is already. But system mastery tends to lean more towards casters. So you give more magic to everyone and it dilutes it. And then even greater system mastery doesn't necessarily lead to greater caster advantage because it often applies to items too. So there is less group by group adjusting that needs to be done.

[Promethean]

Buffing magic items is just making a caster with extra steps, and I hate how item centric 3.5 is, by far one of the system’s worst’s qualities.

I disagree with this.

You could easily give them On-Use magic items that are nothing like caster spells.

Example: if a magic item is a melee weapon, instead of giving it 1/day wraith strike, just have it attack touch AC continuously. Doesn't matter if its overpowered either because the non-caster needs the boost and the caster isn't going to wading into melee.

Just put some thought into the magic items your players get rather than handing them generic stuff.

[RandomPeasant]

So then you get a world that is a mix of innate superpowers and iron men.

The problem is that the people who want to play non-casters don't want to play Iron Man. They want to play a character that is recognizably doing martial things and has recognizably martial powers, but is nevertheless able to keep up with casters (so, in superhero parlance, the likes of Thor or Wonder Woman). It's true that you can balance the game by giving non-casters more items, but you can also balance the game by simply having everybody play a caster. In the same way that nerfing casters by making them less fun isn't very compelling, the best buffs to non-casters are ones that allow people to get the things they want out of those characters.


Example: if a magic item is a melee weapon, instead of giving it 1/day wraith strike, just have it attack touch AC continuously. Doesn't matter if its overpowered either because the non-caster needs the boost and the caster isn't going to wading into melee.

Some casters aren't, sure. But the DMM: Persist Cleric or would be perfectly happy to pick up that weapon and go to town. I think people overstate their case when they claim casters can trivially slide into any role, but it's absolutely true that you can build a caster to fulfill whatever particular role if that happens to be what you want to do. Giving people magic items to buff them can work, but for it to work you have to be pretty explicit with your targeting. Not just "this works better for strategies I think of as non-caster strategies" but "this specifically works for a dagger Rogue and UMD doesn't bypass that because *mumble mumble*". And, to be fair to this approach, it does work, and it's a useful tool for the kind of ad hoc balancing that DMs inevitably have to do to some degree. But I don't think it's a good thing to use as the foundation for your system's approach to balance.

[icefractal]

They want to play a character that is recognizably doing martial things and has recognizably martial powers, but is nevertheless able to keep up with casters (so, in superhero parlance, the likes of Thor or Wonder Woman). Some of them do, others would say "Able to fly and throw cars around? What's this superhero / anime BS?!"

There are many ways non-casters could be on par:
* Superhuman abilities (as mentioned above)
* Extensive use of items (Iron Man, also mentioned)
* Mythic / folk-tale abilities, like grabbing a river and wrestling it into a new course
* Explicit (IC) control of fate / destiny
* Implicit (OOC) control of fate / destiny

And for each of those, some people would be happy with them, others would say that it ruins the concept of what a non-caster is.

And of course for at least a few people, the answer is:
* None of the above, a 20th level Fighter should be entirely within normal human limits, not have events swayed in their favor, not use significant magic items, none of that, but should still be equally relevant to the campaign. How? That's not my problem, you figure it out.

Which is not reasonable IMO, but it an opinion I've seen a number of times.

[Promethean]

Some of them do, others would say "Able to fly and throw cars around? What's this superhero / anime BS?!"

I'm going to be honest. Anyone who says that while their character is standing next to a wizard that can control lightning, turn armed soldiers into harmless farm animals, and Stop Time, and then complains when their average joe martial can't keep up with the wizard, needs to seriously look in the mirror and re-evaluate their life.

There is no way that a mundane human could ever realistically keep up with a human using any flavor of magic(that includes psionics, maneuvers, etc. as those are "magic" in the literary sense). People who expect to take on reality-warpers with nothing but dry wit and a can-do attitude are are the same ones who get rolled over by the quadradic-linear problem like clockwork. The only solutions to that are 1.) nerf magic into the ground until its barely more useful than mundane skills anyway(the 4e/5e approach) or 2.) giving the mundane humans magic items or unrealistic/non-mundane abilities to let them in on the fun(the 1e-3e approach).

I typically assume the people who stay with 3.pf aren't okay with option 1, because they're still here and haven't moved on.

[RandomPeasant]

Some of them do, others would say "Able to fly and throw cars around? What's this superhero / anime BS?!"

Honestly, I think what those people are communicating is that they do not want to play in the kind of high-power environments casters produce. The solution to their concerns is not to figure out some way to square the circle of "regular dude" and "archmage" in the same party, it's to provide first party support for E6-style limited advancement, and make it easier to build characters that feel like Aragorn or Conan at the levels where those characters are appropriate (which, to be fair, is something D&D has struggled with).


The only solutions to that are 1.) nerf magic into the ground until its barely more useful than mundane skills anyway(the 4e/5e approach) or 2.) giving the mundane humans magic items or unrealistic/non-mundane abilities to let them in on the fun(the 1e-3e approach).

There's also "only play at the levels where those characters are appropriate and magic isn't powerful enough to overshadow them". There's a chunk of 3e that's like that, and I'm not unsympathetic to people would prefer to play there, just as I am not unsympathetic to people who would prefer to start their games at high levels. In fact, I think there's a real problem these people are articulating, they just have a bad solution for it. D&D really is bad at creating characters that measure up to the standards of the various non-magical badasses of fantasy fiction. Conan doesn't have any abilities you couldn't have by 8th level, but no version of the game has ever really let you build Conan by 8th level. So you end up with people demanding casters be nerfed when the thing that would actually make them happy is for martial progressions to be compressed.

[Quertus]

It's the setting. It breaks my suspension too. Because it's supposed to be real world, normal humans, with tacked on superheroes it seems less plausible.

But take for example a wuxia setting - it suddenly seems less suspension breaking. We're used to mundane weapons being potent in a master's hands. Stopping swords with chopsticks and the like.

True that. I agree that its applicability varies by setting. I agree that it works in wuxia, and is problematic in… hmmm… many genres, actually. Like, lightsabers can cut through blast doors, but Yoda can block a lightsaber with a stick? Um… no?

I’m not sure where I stand on the most relevant to the thread / forum D&D universe.


The thing is though, items are universal. You cant use items to balance a class, because all classes can use the item, so whats good for the goose is good for the gander. Items will never be the solution to class imbalance, the balance needs to be done to the classes, not the things around the classes.

Ironman doesnt really work as a great example here because, like an artificer, item are his class features. The idea would be that a similar high level character could fight him even without the slingshot (if anything using a slingshot would be worse than fighting bare fisted because you get no modifiers to the, likely nonlethal, damage), take captain america for example, literally fist fighting iron man, no items except his iconic shield.

Eh, I’m a mix of “not following”, “not sure”, and “not agreeing”.

I think, if you take a 5th level Fighter, and a 5th level Wizard, and give them both Star Destroyers, that the differences in their classes might not matter in the same way.

Older editions had much more “X-only” items, but UMD (among other things) kinda changed that paradigm.

Still, there’s some triggers, like “in a flanking position after a move using tumble” that items could be built around, that very few casters are likely to trigger.


What book-keeping? Needing to remember which spells have material components and which don't? The OP isn't talking about requiring individual tracking of all components, simply an action cost to use any material component.

No, it’s keeping track of how many feathers, magnets, eye lashes, bits of wool, and pinches of sand you still have in hand 3 rounds after combat began. Because of course you carry them around at all times to avoid the retrieval action cost.


This is absolutely true. People are far too reliant on items, and they're reliant on them in ways that tend to make characters less interesting. There's nothing exciting about getting the +3 Cloak you need to make saves at the expected rate, and upgrading that to a +4 Cloak is somehow even less exciting.


This is a very fair point. "What if we just divide casting into combat and non-combat" is a tempting idea. And it works to a degree. You can make teleport take ten minutes to cast, and that's mostly fine. People don't use teleport in combat a ton, and what they do can be managed by dimension door. But silent image has applications both in and out of combat. So does wall of stone. You can't just go "wall of stone is a non-combat spell now" and have stuff work out. You've gotta either bite the bullet of putting some things on one side or another (cutting off some options), or figuring out a way to have things cross that boundary.

The Cloak of Protection used to be really cool, because you could let your beloved henchman wear it in a crisis, or grant it to a civilian in similar straights. I miss the oldschool mindset.

And, yeah, I was trying to divide things by “combat only” / “ritual only” / either/both, and just commenting that I wasn’t finding the listed… 5(?) categories to match up well, just to my list of “options commonly used (in combat)”, or to my (smaller) list of “things basically useless outside of combat”.

[Darg]

The Cloak of Protection used to be really cool, because you could let your beloved henchman wear it in a crisis, or grant it to a civilian in similar straights. I miss the oldschool mindset.

So beautiful. Such nostalgia. It wasn't even two decades ago that such a mindset was practically everywhere. Gotta miss that sense of heroism and self sacrifice.

[Crake]

Eh, I’m a mix of “not following”, “not sure”, and “not agreeing”.

I think, if you take a 5th level Fighter, and a 5th level Wizard, and give them both Star Destroyers, that the differences in their classes might not matter in the same way.

Older editions had much more “X-only” items, but UMD (among other things) kinda changed that paradigm.

Still, there’s some triggers, like “in a flanking position after a move using tumble” that items could be built around, that very few casters are likely to trigger.

My point is that fixing a class in an extrinsic manner isn't actually fixing the class. Items are not inherent to the character, and in the event something hamstrings the character such that they can't use their item, then they suddenly find themselves back to square 1. As I said, the reliance of 3.5 on making up shortcomings with a whole christmas tree of magic items is one of the things I loathe about the system, despite loving so much else about it. Personally, I use pathfinder's automatic bonus progression (the no magic item version which puts you 2 levels forward to accomodate not getting any items at all) to give everyone free big 6 effects, and then make magic items themselves flavourful and rare. Some may say that this negatively affects martials, but a lot of my games rarely go above level 8, assuming I'm not playing e6 in the first place, so casters don't exactly enter the realm of crazytown for the most part. Plus, my players don't usually play full casters anyway, and when they do, they often play them closer to tier 3 or even 4 at times.

Ahem, but getting back on point, magic items are not "fixes" to classes.

[Jack_Simth]

If we want to be technical, retrieving a spell component IS a move action by the rules. There is no rule that says retrieving a spell component is a free action. Preparing a spell component is not elaborated on nor should it allow you to do more than what a simpler less complicated action is capable of doing. Preparation is more like throwing tarts and waving a feather.This is factually incorrect.

See Here (https://www.d20srd.org/srd/combat/actionsInCombat.htm#spellComponents):

Spell Components

To cast a spell with a verbal (V) component, your character must speak in a firm voice. If you’re gagged or in the area of a silence spell, you can’t cast such a spell. A spellcaster who has been deafened has a 20% chance to spoil any spell he tries to cast if that spell has a verbal component.

To cast a spell with a somatic (S) component, you must gesture freely with at least one hand. You can’t cast a spell of this type while bound, grappling, or with both your hands full or occupied.

To cast a spell with a material (M), focus (F), or divine focus (DF) component, you have to have the proper materials, as described by the spell. Unless these materials are elaborate preparing these materials is a free action. For material components and focuses whose costs are not listed, you can assume that you have them if you have your spell component pouch.

Some spells have an experience point (XP) component and entail an experience point cost to you. No spell can restore the lost XP. You cannot spend so much XP that you lose a level, so you cannot cast the spell unless you have enough XP to spare. However, you may, on gaining enough XP to achieve a new level, immediately spend the XP on casting the spell rather than keeping it to advance a level. The XP are expended when you cast the spell, whether or not the casting succeeds. (Emphasis added)

[Quertus]

My point is that fixing a class in an extrinsic manner isn't actually fixing the class. Items are not inherent to the character, and in the event something hamstrings the character such that they can't use their item, then they suddenly find themselves back to square 1. As I said, the reliance of 3.5 on making up shortcomings with a whole christmas tree of magic items is one of the things I loathe about the system, despite loving so much else about it. Personally, I use pathfinder's automatic bonus progression (the no magic item version which puts you 2 levels forward to accomodate not getting any items at all) to give everyone free big 6 effects, and then make magic items themselves flavourful and rare. Some may say that this negatively affects martials, but a lot of my games rarely go above level 8, assuming I'm not playing e6 in the first place, so casters don't exactly enter the realm of crazytown for the most part. Plus, my players don't usually play full casters anyway, and when they do, they often play them closer to tier 3 or even 4 at times.

Ahem, but getting back on point, magic items are not "fixes" to classes.

Oh. Yes. Agreed. My reading comprehension failed me again for a moment there (probably in that part I didn’t understand :smallredface:). No matter how many plasma rifles you hand the 1st level Wizard, the class still isn’t letting them deal level-appropriate damage.

[Promethean]

There's also "only play at the levels where those characters are appropriate and magic isn't powerful enough to overshadow them". There's a chunk of 3e that's like that, and I'm not unsympathetic to people would prefer to play there, just as I am not unsympathetic to people who would prefer to start their games at high levels.

Oof, yeah. Personally not a fan so don't really think in those terms.


In fact, I think there's a real problem these people are articulating, they just have a bad solution for it. D&D really is bad at creating characters that measure up to the standards of the various non-magical badasses of fantasy fiction. Conan doesn't have any abilities you couldn't have by 8th level, but no version of the game has ever really let you build Conan by 8th level. So you end up with people demanding casters be nerfed when the thing that would actually make them happy is for martial progressions to be compressed.

True, but then what?

If you compress barbarian down to 8 levels, what does the character do after that? I'm not sure going "Whelp, we've crossed the level threshold. Prestige or multiclass your character(possibly throwing away whatever flavor you were going for) if you want to remain relevant" is going to be an idea people like if they play non-casters for the conan-esc flavor.

[Darg]

This is factually incorrect.

See Here (https://www.d20srd.org/srd/combat/actionsInCombat.htm#spellComponents):
(Emphasis added)

And your emphasis contains the important words "Unless these materials are elaborate preparing these materials is a free action." For most spells there isn't a need to retrieve them, you just need to touch them. However, there are still plenty of spells whose material cost can't logically be fulfilled without more time than is a free action which is expressed in that sentence.

[Jack_Simth]

And your emphasis contains the important words "Unless these materials are elaborate preparing these materials is a free action." For most spells there isn't a need to retrieve them, you just need to touch them. However, there are still plenty of spells whose material cost can't logically be fulfilled without more time than is a free action which is expressed in that sentence.

Most of them are things like "three grains of sand" or "a scrap of leather". Elaborate ones are much less common.

[Darg]

Most of them are things like "three grains of sand" or "a scrap of leather". Elaborate ones are much less common.

I only said retrieving an item is a move action which is true. Logically if a spell component doesn't need to be retrieved it doesn't need a move action. However something like hideous laughter which requires retrieval and manipulation it isn't illogical to require a move action for the retrieval and a free action to prepare.

[Crake]

This is factually incorrect.

See Here (https://www.d20srd.org/srd/combat/actionsInCombat.htm#spellComponents):
(Emphasis added)

the argument is that "retrieving" and "preparing" are not the same thing. Whether it be a magic circle that you need to spend time preparing the silver dust, or a fireball where you just ignite the guano, in both situations you still need to actually retrieve the material component, regardless of preparation time.

That's the argument anyway, whether you agree or not is another question.


Oof, yeah. Personally not a fan so don't really think in those terms.



True, but then what?

If you compress barbarian down to 8 levels, what does the character do after that? I'm not sure going "Whelp, we've crossed the level threshold. Prestige or multiclass your character(possibly throwing away whatever flavor you were going for) if you want to remain relevant" is going to be an idea people like if they play non-casters for the conan-esc flavor.

I imagine that past that point you'd probably prestige into something that's a bit more fantastical? The idea is to compress the "mundane" classes, then after you complete the mundane progression, you go into something... well, not mundane

[Doctor Despair]

Honestly, I think what those people are communicating is that they do not want to play in the kind of high-power environments casters produce. The solution to their concerns is not to figure out some way to square the circle of "regular dude" and "archmage" in the same party, it's to provide first party support for E6-style limited advancement, and make it easier to build characters that feel like Aragorn or Conan at the levels where those characters are appropriate (which, to be fair, is something D&D has struggled with).


Rather than doubling up on progression (and skyrocketing BAB and saves relative to the CR-appropriate monsters the party will be facing), and rather than nerfing casters into the ground, just spreading casters out a little more could extend E6-style gameplay a little more. Change it so that casting progression is a maximum of 1/4 instead of ~1/3. Wizards get 2nds at level 4; they get 3rds at level 7; they get 4ths at level 10. That means that E6 eel stretches to E9, and some mundane prcs get through half their progression before 4ths come online. The gap between T1 and T3 casters narrows considerably as well. Of course, eventually the wizards/clerics/sorcs get their 7ths at 19 and get to do high-power caster things, but the scale is reduced a little.

[ericgrau]

The problem is that the people who want to play non-casters don't want to play Iron Man. They want to play a character that is recognizably doing martial things and has recognizably martial powers, but is nevertheless able to keep up with casters (so, in superhero parlance, the likes of Thor or Wonder Woman). It's true that you can balance the game by giving non-casters more items, but you can also balance the game by simply having everybody play a caster. In the same way that nerfing casters by making them less fun isn't very compelling, the best buffs to non-casters are ones that allow people to get the things they want out of those characters.

It's pretty fundamental to the system already so if you don't want to play in a magic item heavy game you practically have to play a different system.

[Crake]

It's pretty fundamental to the system already so if you don't want to play in a magic item heavy game you practically have to play a different system.

As someone who regularly runs games with little to no magic items, I disagree. Pathfinder auto bonus progression easily lets you keep up with numbers, and theres a whole slew of mundane items that let you overcome enemies defenses without magic.

Magic items are just the defacto crutch that people use to shore up their weaknesses, but party members and tactical play can easily fix that issue.

[Promethean]

As someone who regularly runs games with little to no magic items, I disagree. Pathfinder auto bonus progression easily lets you keep up with numbers, and theres a whole slew of mundane items that let you overcome enemies defenses without magic.

Magic items are just the defacto crutch that people use to shore up their weaknesses, but party members and tactical play can easily fix that issue.

*Until high level.

At a certain point, spellcasters have spells that can flip the entire battlefield on it's head to the point that the Only way to match the opponent is with the help of some level of spellcasting. Joe barbarian just isn't able to take down a 20th level archmage that has any level of competence, unless he also has a spellcaster or magic item of sufficient power. No amount of bonus progression or tactics will change the fact that the spell caster can fly, teleport, stop time, and use a host of other battlefield changing tactics that don't give the enemy a saving throw.

Magic items are a fundamental necessity at high level. Otherwise the board is stacked in the favor of casters/manifesters/etc.

[martixy]

The problem is that the people who want to play non-casters don't want to play Iron Man. They want to play a character that is recognizably doing martial things and has recognizably martial powers, but is nevertheless able to keep up with casters (so, in superhero parlance, the likes of Thor or Wonder Woman). It's true that you can balance the game by giving non-casters more items, but you can also balance the game by simply having everybody play a caster. In the same way that nerfing casters by making them less fun isn't very compelling, the best buffs to non-casters are ones that allow people to get the things they want out of those characters.

The problem, as it were, is that we're trying to balance.

That's it. Full stop.

What does balance get us anyway? What is the ultimate goal we are trying to achieve?

Do you play a game to bask in the balancedness? Do you get off on being exactly as effective as the next player?

Even Thanos didn't chase balance for balance's sake.

[RandomPeasant]

True, but then what?

Then you either stop advancing (which should be explicitly supported by first-party material), or you advance into something more powerful (in a similar mechanism to 4e's Paragon Paths and Epic Destines). Yes, the latter is not going to be satisfying to someone who wants to play a character that is "like Conan". But the point is that nothing is going to be a satisfying way for those people to play the character they want in a high level environment, because the character they want to play isn't high level. There is no good answer to the question "what does Conan do to fight the zombie god-fetus", because Conan doesn't fight zombie god-fetuses. You have to accept that "Conan" and "zombie god-fetus" are not compatible pieces of material, and partition things so that you don't need to let them interact. Nothing else works.


Rather than doubling up on progression (and skyrocketing BAB and saves relative to the CR-appropriate monsters the party will be facing), and rather than nerfing casters into the ground, just spreading casters out a little more could extend E6-style gameplay a little more.

Making gameplay cover more levels does not extend it. E6 lasts forever, because you can keep playing the same character without ever having a character who is 7th level. Stretching a character's power progression out over more levels gives you more granularity, but it doesn't give you any more content. Whatever power level Conan is at, that's the power level he's at. You can make that 5th or 8th or 10th or 20th, but whatever you make it, the same things go there regardless of how finely you sliced the progression. What slicing things finely does is make it take longer for you to get the powers you want your character to have, which is a bad thing, not a good one.


Magic items are a fundamental necessity at high level. Otherwise the board is stacked in the favor of casters/manifesters/etc.

Sure, martial characters don't have existing alternatives to magic items. But if we are imagining changing the game, we could easily imagine changing it in such a way that they do. There's no reason a Barbarian can't have abilities that allow them to play at high level without leaning on magic items, they just don't. Hulk doesn't need any gear to keep up with Iron Man.


Do you play a game to bask in the balancedness? Do you get off on being exactly as effective as the next player?

I play a game to not have the campaign warped around someone who can't keep up with the expected level of performance, or who blows it out of the water so thoroughly that no one else matters. That's balance.

[Doctor Despair]

Making gameplay cover more levels does not extend it. E6 lasts forever, because you can keep playing the same character without ever having a character who is 7th level. Stretching a character's power progression out over more levels gives you more granularity, but it doesn't give you any more content.

This is just untrue. Being able to go to level 9 with your mundane class means you get access to the class features of a level 9 character. If you took a prestige class at 6, you could have some cool unique things to do. There's a world of more content available to you by merit of having more levels to take them with.



Whatever power level Conan is at, that's the power level he's at. You can make that 5th or 8th or 10th or 20th, but whatever you make it, the same things go there regardless of how finely you sliced the progression.

The initial tautology aside, it seems like you think I'm suggesting taking 6 levels of barbarian and stretching them out over 9 levels? That's not was I suggested. I suggested delaying spellcasting progression. The barbarian or fighter or ranger or what have you would happily keep advancing along their class until level 9 without seeing any casters get access to the 4ths that inspired the E6 limit of 6 levels.



What slicing things finely does is make it take longer for you to get the powers you want your character to have, which is a bad thing, not a good one.

What I suggested makes it take longer for full casters (wizards, clerics, sorcs, etc) to get the powers they want, that's true. However, it doesn't fundamentally alter how they play at any given power level. If you like playing a wizard, you will still like playing a wizard, because it will play the same. The power level is just a little lower.




I play a game to not have the campaign warped around someone who can't keep up with the expected level of performance, or who blows it out of the water so thoroughly that no one else matters. That's balance.

That's why I suggested delaying spellcasting progression as an option for folks who were looking for ways to narrow the caster-martial disparity. It allows campaigns at levels 1 - 9 to include characters from tiers 1 - 4 without having a character unable to keep up by merit of the nature of their class instead of just levels 1 - 6.

[Analytica]

I played around with these ideas:
- Spell components are used when preparing, not casting, unless they have a listed cost
- Magic items which give a bonus to anything depend on the strength of the user to power them (like in the Slaíne comic), unless that strength is used for spellcasting. So anyone with spell slots gets only a flat +1 or so, whereas those without get something like 1+cha bonus or scaling by level like a saving throw bonus. This way one can buff nonmartials, incentivize fewer of them to dump stats, without giving that same power to spellcasters unless they use spells to get it. In addition, one can make magic items less likely to completely overturn power balance if too low level characters get them.

[Crake]

*Until high level.

At a certain point, spellcasters have spells that can flip the entire battlefield on it's head to the point that the Only way to match the opponent is with the help of some level of spellcasting. Joe barbarian just isn't able to take down a 20th level archmage that has any level of competence, unless he also has a spellcaster or magic item of sufficient power. No amount of bonus progression or tactics will change the fact that the spell caster can fly, teleport, stop time, and use a host of other battlefield changing tactics that don't give the enemy a saving throw.

Magic items are a fundamental necessity at high level. Otherwise the board is stacked in the favor of casters/manifesters/etc.

Hence the part about having a balanced party that can shore up each other's weaknesses, rather than trying to be a one man army and have all the bases covered yourself. The party's spellcaster can solve those problems with dispels, counterspells, and buffs for the barbarian.

[Kitsuneymg]

Hence the part about having a balanced party that can shore up each other's weaknesses, rather than trying to be a one man army and have all the bases covered yourself. The party's spellcaster can solve those problems with dispels, counterspells, and buffs for the barbarian.

Sure. The problem is, often times the caster would be better off not bothering to help the barbarian and just solving them problem themselves. The best the barbarian can hope for it to be treated as if they weren’t there. Otherwise they are a hinderance.

That’s the issue with mundane players at high level. They are usually deadweight. If the cleric and wizard try to help them, it’s actively dragging the party’s total effectiveness down. Especially when rounds count. Now every adventure is a VIP escort quest too. And two players have become the VIPs.

Is this the only way to play? No. Is this a fairly natural consequence of playing at 20 with a wiz clr rog ftr party? In my experience, yes.

[Jack_Simth]

Rather than doubling up on progression (and skyrocketing BAB and saves relative to the CR-appropriate monsters the party will be facing), and rather than nerfing casters into the ground, just spreading casters out a little more could extend E6-style gameplay a little more. Change it so that casting progression is a maximum of 1/4 instead of ~1/3. Wizards get 2nds at level 4; they get 3rds at level 7; they get 4ths at level 10. That means that E6 eel stretches to E9, and some mundane prcs get through half their progression before 4ths come online. The gap between T1 and T3 casters narrows considerably as well. Of course, eventually the wizards/clerics/sorcs get their 7ths at 19 and get to do high-power caster things, but the scale is reduced a little.

This is doable, but you'll need to also curate the monsters more, due to the delay to the fix-it spells. While there are certainly exceptions, if you're fighting CR = APL, the 'expected' party usually gets access to the associated fix-it spell at about the same time the monsters get access to the status condition. As an example, a Shadow is CR 3 and deals strength damage - which the Cleric can fix up with Lesser Restoration.

[Crake]

Sure. The problem is, often times the caster would be better off not bothering to help the barbarian and just solving them problem themselves. The best the barbarian can hope for it to be treated as if they weren’t there. Otherwise they are a hinderance.

That’s the issue with mundane players at high level. They are usually deadweight. If the cleric and wizard try to help them, it’s actively dragging the party’s total effectiveness down. Especially when rounds count. Now every adventure is a VIP escort quest too. And two players have become the VIPs.

Is this the only way to play? No. Is this a fairly natural consequence of playing at 20 with a wiz clr rog ftr party? In my experience, yes.

I mean, I disagree? D&D is fundamentally a team exercise, and again you're going into it with the mentality of trying to do everything yourself, except in this case, you're doing it from the caster perspective. Casting fly on the barbarian is more effective than casting fly on yourself, the barbarian is going to make much more use out of it, just as an example. Working together with your party makes all your efforts a force multiplier, rather than all of you working individually and just being a group of four solo players.

Regarding the bolded part, I disagree quite a bit with that statement. It may drag the cleric or wizard's effectiveness down, but the party's total effectiveness rises dramatically when all party members are enabled and engaged in a fight. Again, people need to not approach things from an "I am an island" character design standpoint. You do not need to cover all the bases yourself, you are a part of a team, and you're all supposed to cover each other's weaknesses. The martial runs defense on the enemy martials that want to mob the caster, the caster runs interference on the enemy caster that wants to buff/debuff their friends. One of the biggest issues that the playground seems to have is that all the character designs seem to be done in a vaccuum, and people only ever judge things based on what they can do by themselves, and see any sort of flaw or weakness as a giant red flag, as if every character needs to be entirely self sufficient.

If you're all a party of self sufficient characters who can do everything themselves, why are you even playing together as a party? Whats the point? Why don't you each go out on your own adventure, get all the loot and xp for yourselves, no point in doing it together, right?

[Zombimode]

Sure. The problem is, often times the caster would be better off not bothering to help the barbarian and just solving them problem themselves. The best the barbarian can hope for it to be treated as if they weren’t there. Otherwise they are a hinderance.

That’s the issue with mundane players at high level. They are usually deadweight. If the cleric and wizard try to help them, it’s actively dragging the party’s total effectiveness down. Especially when rounds count. Now every adventure is a VIP escort quest too. And two players have become the VIPs.

Is this the only way to play? No. Is this a fairly natural consequence of playing at 20 with a wiz clr rog ftr party? In my experience, yes.

This is generally not supported by my own experience.
In the level 12-16 range brute-forcing an enemy casualty is surely possible but actually really costly to do for a wizard.

Instead working together with 1 or 2 more martial oriented characters is immensely more efficient. And solution efficiency is paramount if the amount of threats is unknown and likely higher then 1 per day.

My frame of reference are neither theory-crafting wizards, neither "my-first-fighter" strawman character builds. My frame of reference are actual characters played by real players in a actual campaign environment.

A really hard to remove repeatable instance of a +34/+29/+24/+19 1d8+20+1d6 electricty +1d6 slashing +1d6 negative energy +1d6 fire attack routine is very valuable and also very hard to replicate with magic alone. Protecting, enhancing and enabling this attack routine is far more sustainable than trying to do all of that yourself.

[RandomPeasant]

This is just untrue. Being able to go to level 9 with your mundane class means you get access to the class features of a level 9 character.

There are no "features of a level 9 character". There are features of characters, and you get those features at levels. If we give people some particular ability at 9th level instead of 6th level, there are not more challenges for which that ability is appropriate, or more adventures a character with that ability can go on. We have simply split those challenges into more buckets. And there is some degree to which that is valuable. Harry Potter gains new and different abilities over his seven years at Hogwarts, and it makes sense to have there be a way to describe "year four Harry" that is distinct from "year two Harry" or "year five Harry". But whether you split his progression out over seven or fourteen or twenty-one levels, he still ends up in the same place.


The initial tautology aside, it seems like you think I'm suggesting taking 6 levels of barbarian and stretching them out over 9 levels? That's not was I suggested. I suggested delaying spellcasting progression.

My point is that those are the same proposal. Yes, you're not stretching out the Barbarian any more, but relative to the solution of accelerating the Barbarian's progression, "stretching out the Barbarian" is exactly what you're doing.


What I suggested makes it take longer for full casters (wizards, clerics, sorcs, etc) to get the powers they want, that's true. However, it doesn't fundamentally alter how they play at any given power level. If you like playing a wizard, you will still like playing a wizard, because it will play the same. The power level is just a little lower.

Yes, that is exactly my point. My question to you is why you think it is valuable for there to be three power levels where the Wizard has 6th level spells but not 7th level spells instead of only two. What are we getting? Why is that the optimal level of granularity?


That's why I suggested delaying spellcasting progression as an option for folks who were looking for ways to narrow the caster-martial disparity. It allows campaigns at levels 1 - 9 to include characters from tiers 1 - 4 without having a character unable to keep up by merit of the nature of their class instead of just levels 1 - 6.

But "going to 9th level" is not itself a thing of value. If you accomplish it by removing the parts of being higher than 6th level, you might as well just play E6. "Level" doesn't mean anything. Capabilities do. So the question you have to answer is why it is we should believe that the current power progression of casters offers too little granularity to be powerful, not simply point out that if we slice things more finely they'd be more finely sliced.


I mean, I disagree? D&D is fundamentally a team exercise, and again you're going into it with the mentality of trying to do everything yourself, except in this case, you're doing it from the caster perspective. Casting fly on the barbarian is more effective than casting fly on yourself, the barbarian is going to make much more use out of it, just as an example. Working together with your party makes all your efforts a force multiplier, rather than all of you working individually and just being a group of four solo players.

But is it more effective than casting stinking cloud on the enemies? Is it more effective than casting fly on a DMM Cleric or a Wildshape Druid? Is it more effective than casting haste on a range of targets that include a Cleric, a Druid, their minions, and your minions? It is true that having a Barbarian there provides more value than having no one (in combat, at least, outside combat it is pretty much true that he could just as well not show). But that's not really the right question. The question is whether the Barbarian provides more value than someone else, because that's who you'd be replacing the Barbarian with. And it's pretty hard to argue that he does. A gish or CoDZilla can fight as well as a martial, and they come to the table with magic that they can use to solve non-combat problems.


The martial runs defense on the enemy martials that want to mob the caster

People love to say this, but I've never seen someone explain how it's supposed to work. The best martial control build is a Tripstar, who gets an area of control that is maybe 40ft across. High level martial enemies can fly, teleport, or attack from outside that radius. What is a 14th level Barbarian doing that stops a Nalfeshnee from attacking whoever it is that they want to attack?


A really hard to remove repeatable instance of a +34/+29/+24/+19 1d8+20+1d6 electricty +1d6 slashing +1d6 negative energy +1d6 fire attack routine is very valuable and also very hard to replicate with magic alone. Protecting, enhancing and enabling this attack routine is far more sustainable than trying to do all of that yourself.

It's really not hard to replicate with magic. It's just that people freak the hell out when a Cleric shows up with the stack buffs it needs to do that, despite that Cleric being nowhere near overpowered when you compare them to the actual monsters. I agree that there is value in having a guy who can do damage. But you don't need to dedicate an entire party slot to doing that to the exclusion of doing anything else, and even if you are going to build a character that way, doing it on anything other than a ToB class (and probably not Swordsage either) is leaving something on the table. There really are huge issues with the Fighters and Barbarians of the world, and it would be good to address them.

[Promethean]

Sure. The problem is, often times the caster would be better off not bothering to help the barbarian and just solving them problem themselves. The best the barbarian can hope for it to be treated as if they weren’t there. Otherwise they are a hinderance.

That’s the issue with mundane players at high level. They are usually deadweight. If the cleric and wizard try to help them, it’s actively dragging the party’s total effectiveness down. Especially when rounds count. Now every adventure is a VIP escort quest too. And two players have become the VIPs.

Is this the only way to play? No. Is this a fairly natural consequence of playing at 20 with a wiz clr rog ftr party? In my experience, yes.


I mean, I disagree? D&D is fundamentally a team exercise, and again you're going into it with the mentality of trying to do everything yourself, except in this case, you're doing it from the caster perspective. Casting fly on the barbarian is more effective than casting fly on yourself, the barbarian is going to make much more use out of it, just as an example. Working together with your party makes all your efforts a force multiplier, rather than all of you working individually and just being a group of four solo players.

Regarding the bolded part, I disagree quite a bit with that statement. It may drag the cleric or wizard's effectiveness down, but the party's total effectiveness rises dramatically when all party members are enabled and engaged in a fight. Again, people need to not approach things from an "I am an island" character design standpoint. You do not need to cover all the bases yourself, you are a part of a team, and you're all supposed to cover each other's weaknesses. The martial runs defense on the enemy martials that want to mob the caster, the caster runs interference on the enemy caster that wants to buff/debuff their friends. One of the biggest issues that the playground seems to have is that all the character designs seem to be done in a vaccuum, and people only ever judge things based on what they can do by themselves, and see any sort of flaw or weakness as a giant red flag, as if every character needs to be entirely self sufficient.

If you're all a party of self sufficient characters who can do everything themselves, why are you even playing together as a party? Whats the point? Why don't you each go out on your own adventure, get all the loot and xp for yourselves, no point in doing it together, right?


This is generally not supported by my own experience.
In the level 12-16 range brute-forcing an enemy casualty is surely possible but actually really costly to do for a wizard.

Instead working together with 1 or 2 more martial oriented characters is immensely more efficient. And solution efficiency is paramount if the amount of threats is unknown and likely higher then 1 per day.

My frame of reference are neither theory-crafting wizards, neither "my-first-fighter" strawman character builds. My frame of reference are actual characters played by real players in a actual campaign environment.

A really hard to remove repeatable instance of a +34/+29/+24/+19 1d8+20+1d6 electricty +1d6 slashing +1d6 negative energy +1d6 fire attack routine is very valuable and also very hard to replicate with magic alone. Protecting, enhancing and enabling this attack routine is far more sustainable than trying to do all of that yourself.

All of this depends on multiple factors including optimization level and group.

A group of players that got together on an online session to play because it was the only one available isn't necessarily going to work together, nor should they be expected to. D&D isn't just a team game, It's Also a Roleplaying Game. Many people use it more because it lets them play a character they find cool rather than to play with other people. To them, self -sufficiency may be the Point of the character.

A group with higher system mastery is another place where this falls apart. Optimization focused group are already thinking about efficiency, and "team effciency" drops in value the larger the discrepancy in team between team members. An optimized fighter's attack routine isn't as impressive when an optimized malconvoker can use implore to call beings with an even Better attack routine, and it becomes even worse when dark chaos cheese lets the wizard put the same kind of shocktrooper/tripper/whatever builds on those same summons.

What this issue comes down to is the fact the different groups play D&D differently, that's why anecdotal experience is so wildly different and absolutely Useless as evidence for a point. D&D as a game quickly breaks down if played outside a specific style, but the designers of 3.5 actively created rules for those instances and encouraged people to play in those break-points for the same reason WOTC did the same thing to magic: the gathering, creating new sources of broken builds ensures people will buy books to keep up with power-creep.

I find it weird how this discussion derailed from "giving advice to a table" to "trying to come up with a definite answer to solving the linear-quadratic problem". It's an entirely futile effort because it won't work for all tables.

[Troacctid]

I find it weird how this discussion derailed from "giving advice to a table" to "trying to come up with a definite answer to solving the linear-quadratic problem". It's an entirely futile effort because it won't work for all tables.
Oh, it's not weird at all. It happens literally every time. You can pretty much set your watch by it.

[Crake]

It is true that having a Barbarian there provides more value than having no one (in combat, at least, outside combat it is pretty much true that he could just as well not show). But that's not really the right question. The question is whether the Barbarian provides more value than someone else, because that's who you'd be replacing the Barbarian with. And it's pretty hard to argue that he does. A gish or CoDZilla can fight as well as a martial, and they come to the table with magic that they can use to solve non-combat problems.

You're arguing with, I don't want to say a strawman, because I don't think you constructed it out of nothing, but you're not discussing the point I'm bringing up. My point wasn't that barbarians are completely balanced against more powerful options, my point was that D&D is a team game, and that your party can cover your weaknesses. This was in the context of the fact that I think magic items are far too much of a crutch in 3.5 gameplay, and that people rely on magic items to cover up their weaknesses, rather than instead playing alongside their team members and covering each other's weaknesses.

In the context of the broader discussion of this thread's topic, this was in relation to people using magic items to "balance" classes, and my point was that balancing classes with magic items isn't actually balancing classes at all, because the class itself remains unchanged.


I find it weird how this discussion derailed from "giving advice to a table" to "trying to come up with a definite answer to solving the linear-quadratic problem". It's an entirely futile effort because it won't work for all tables.

That's not what the discussion became at all. Those three posts you linked were about using magic items as a means of balancing classes, which, as I have stated multiple times now, is not a solution to class balance.

[RandomPeasant]

I find it weird how this discussion derailed from "giving advice to a table" to "trying to come up with a definite answer to solving the linear-quadratic problem". It's an entirely futile effort because it won't work for all tables.

It didn't really get derailed. A bunch of people gave OP advice on his proposal, he said "thanks for the advice" and then people continued discussing a related topic. That's not "derailing", that's just how conversations work.


My point wasn't that barbarians are completely balanced against more powerful options, my point was that D&D is a team game, and that your party can cover your weaknesses.

I think there's two principles at work there. On the one hand, yeah, D&D is a team game. It's good to work with the rest of the party. On the other hand, D&D is a game, and you play it for fun. It's good to do the thing you enjoy. If that's "play a caster who buffs the party martials", great. You can do that. If it's "play a martial who does some kind of lockdown build to protect the party casters", that's also great, and you can also do that. But there are people who want to play a caster who just casts offensive spells, or a martial who gets up in there and just beats on the enemy. Those guys are also get to play the game, and the assumption of a lot these "you should buff the martial" takes seems to be that there's an obligation. If you work with another character to do something synergistic, that's fine. But if you need those synergies to contribute, that's an issue, because you can't assume they'll always be there. Maybe the caster doesn't know fly.

[Crake]

I think there's two principles at work there. On the one hand, yeah, D&D is a team game. It's good to work with the rest of the party. On the other hand, D&D is a game, and you play it for fun. It's good to do the thing you enjoy. If that's "play a caster who buffs the party martials", great. You can do that. If it's "play a martial who does some kind of lockdown build to protect the party casters", that's also great, and you can also do that. But there are people who want to play a caster who just casts offensive spells, or a martial who gets up in there and just beats on the enemy. Those guys are also get to play the game, and the assumption of a lot these "you should buff the martial" takes seems to be that there's an obligation. If you work with another character to do something synergistic, that's fine. But if you need those synergies to contribute, that's an issue, because you can't assume they'll always be there. Maybe the caster doesn't know fly.

And there will be plenty of times when you can just do your thing and be totally fine, but when you're, for example, facing off against the Archmage BBEG at the end of the campaign, you probably would want to forgo your schtick if it's not particularly effective. If you go into a game expecting to be able to just do the one tactic every fight and win every time, then you're gonna have a bad time either way. The barbarian won't need to be buffed every fight after all, but for the tough fights, you should expect to compromise on your preferred tactics.

[Promethean]

And there will be plenty of times when you can just do your thing and be totally fine, but when you're, for example, facing off against the Archmage BBEG at the end of the campaign, you probably would want to forgo your schtick if it's not particularly effective. If you go into a game expecting to be able to just do the one tactic every fight and win every time, then you're gonna have a bad time either way. The barbarian won't need to be buffed every fight after all, but for the tough fights, you should expect to compromise on your preferred tactics.

Which isn't an issue for even single class caster builds with a semi-optimized spell list.

At higher levels, a caster can easily be taking on that challenger more efficiently by facing the threat themselves than by being the party buff dispenser. There are a million and seven handbooks on how to do that on the forums. The casters just have more options to build in general and many of those options allow levels of self-sufficiency non-casters can never have.

It is not more efficient to for the casters and non-casters to work together unless they specifically Build that way. It's just as easy to build a caster that makes the rest of the party irrelevent, to the point it happens Accidentally.

[Crake]

Which isn't an issue for even single class caster builds with a semi-optimized spell list.

At higher levels, a caster can easily be taking on that challenger more efficiently by facing the threat themselves than by being the party buff dispenser. There are a million and seven handbooks on how to do that on the forums. The casters just have more options to build in general and many of those options allow levels of self-sufficiency non-casters can never have.

It is not more efficient to for the casters and non-casters to work together unless they specifically Build that way. It's just as easy to build a caster that makes the rest of the party irrelevent, to the point it happens Accidentally.

Uhh, hard disagree? If the enemy is literally "Caster but higher level than you", you're just at a straight up disadvantage. They are everything you are, but better. You need your team to succeed. There's a reason why action economy is deemed king. Giving up 4x the actions by just ditching your party and trying to be a one man army is a recipie for disaster.

[Darg]

Which isn't an issue for even single class caster builds with a semi-optimized spell list.

At higher levels, a caster can easily be taking on that challenger more efficiently by facing the threat themselves than by being the party buff dispenser. There are a million and seven handbooks on how to do that on the forums. The casters just have more options to build in general and many of those options allow levels of self-sufficiency non-casters can never have.

It is not more efficient to for the casters and non-casters to work together unless they specifically Build that way. It's just as easy to build a caster that makes the rest of the party irrelevent, to the point it happens Accidentally.

Of course it happens accidentally. The DM has to handle so much more than the party casters. However, most players forget that enemies CAN be just as or more optimized than the party. It doesn't happen often enough though apparently.

[Quertus]

Then you either stop advancing (which should be explicitly supported by first-party material), or you advance into something more powerful (in a similar mechanism to 4e's Paragon Paths and Epic Destines). Yes, the latter is not going to be satisfying to someone who wants to play a character that is "like Conan". But the point is that nothing is going to be a satisfying way for those people to play the character they want in a high level environment, because the character they want to play isn't high level. There is no good answer to the question "what does Conan do to fight the zombie god-fetus", because Conan doesn't fight zombie god-fetuses. You have to accept that "Conan" and "zombie god-fetus" are not compatible pieces of material, and partition things so that you don't need to let them interact. Nothing else works.



Making gameplay cover more levels does not extend it. E6 lasts forever, because you can keep playing the same character without ever having a character who is 7th level. Stretching a character's power progression out over more levels gives you more granularity, but it doesn't give you any more content. Whatever power level Conan is at, that's the power level he's at. You can make that 5th or 8th or 10th or 20th, but whatever you make it, the same things go there regardless of how finely you sliced the progression. What slicing things finely does is make it take longer for you to get the powers you want your character to have, which is a bad thing, not a good one.



Sure, martial characters don't have existing alternatives to magic items. But if we are imagining changing the game, we could easily imagine changing it in such a way that they do. There's no reason a Barbarian can't have abilities that allow them to play at high level without leaning on magic items, they just don't. Hulk doesn't need any gear to keep up with Iron Man.



I play a game to not have the campaign warped around someone who can't keep up with the expected level of performance, or who blows it out of the water so thoroughly that no one else matters. That's balance.

Sure he does: he needed the Hulk-buster armor after he failed his will save, when he couldn’t handle there being anything in the universe he couldn’t handle. If only more fighters were this focused on being self-sufficient, that they suffer a complete breakdown the first time there’s anything they can’t handle by themselves.

But, yeah, if your concept is “Conan”, and the adventure involves “fight god zombie fetus”, either something needs to change, or you need to accept that your role in the Narrative might well be “The Load”.


This is just untrue. Being able to go to level 9 with your mundane class means you get access to the class features of a level 9 character. If you took a prestige class at 6, you could have some cool unique things to do. There's a world of more content available to you by merit of having more levels to take them with.



The initial tautology aside, it seems like you think I'm suggesting taking 6 levels of barbarian and stretching them out over 9 levels? That's not was I suggested. I suggested delaying spellcasting progression. The barbarian or fighter or ranger or what have you would happily keep advancing along their class until level 9 without seeing any casters get access to the 4ths that inspired the E6 limit of 6 levels.



What I suggested makes it take longer for full casters (wizards, clerics, sorcs, etc) to get the powers they want, that's true. However, it doesn't fundamentally alter how they play at any given power level. If you like playing a wizard, you will still like playing a wizard, because it will play the same. The power level is just a little lower.




That's why I suggested delaying spellcasting progression as an option for folks who were looking for ways to narrow the caster-martial disparity. It allows campaigns at levels 1 - 9 to include characters from tiers 1 - 4 without having a character unable to keep up by merit of the nature of their class instead of just levels 1 - 6.

And that’s a terrible solution.

Even ignoring that my blaster Wizard wouldn’t be balanced even if you gave him d10 HP, ability to cast in armor, and unlimited Spell slots, because he still can’t manage the DPS of a competently-built Fighter of equal level, it’s still a terrible solution.

Yay, now we’re dealing with things like “being turned to stone” or “ability damage” without the level-appropriate counters, because it wasn’t “sporting” for casters to get useful abilities at a timely rate.

Um… how about giving muggles level-appropriate abilities, rather than removing such from casters?


A group with higher system mastery is another place where this falls apart. Optimization focused group are already thinking about efficiency, and "team effciency" drops in value the larger the discrepancy in team between team members.

“High system mastery” <> “optimization-focused”.


And there will be plenty of times when you can just do your thing and be totally fine, but when you're, for example, facing off against the Archmage BBEG at the end of the campaign, you probably would want to forgo your schtick if it's not particularly effective. If you go into a game expecting to be able to just do the one tactic every fight and win every time, then you're gonna have a bad time either way. The barbarian won't need to be buffed every fight after all, but for the tough fights, you should expect to compromise on your preferred tactics.

And there will Be plenty of times where the caster can afford to buff the Barbarian. But sometimes, like when facing off against the Archmage BBEG, the Barbarian needs to put on his big boy pants and be useful on his own merits, because the party Wizard is too busy countering what the Archmage is trying to do to bother with the Barbarian (and the BBEG would just dispel / Disjunction any buffs cast anyway). If the Barbarian’s player goes into a game expecting to be able to just do the one tactic every fight every time, get the same buffs and win, then they’re gonna have a bad time either way.


Uhh, hard disagree? If the enemy is literally "Caster but higher level than you", you're just at a straight up disadvantage. They are everything you are, but better. You need your team to succeed. There's a reason why action economy is deemed king. Giving up 4x the actions by just ditching your party and trying to be a one man army is a recipie for disaster.

No, the BBEG isn’t “me, but better”. I’m a master of counter spells. And if that is what the BBEG has mastered, and the Barbarian is expecting a buff…

[martixy]

I play a game to not have the campaign warped around someone who can't keep up with the expected level of performance, or who blows it out of the water so thoroughly that no one else matters. That's balance.

Oh, I wasn't talking at you specifically. (Just bad at words.)

The point was to prompt the other participants in this thread about the reason we want balance. Me, I don't care for balance. But I do want to have fun, feel like I can make meaningful choices and play out the fantasy of my character.
Balance might help nudge a game in that direction, but it isn't a strictly 1-1 relation.
For example if I am playing a flamboyant knave I want to be able to competently dash and cavort about the battlefield or sneak in a guarded mansion without drowning in feat taxes. I care little that the wizard can level the whole mansion. I care little even if he's able to sneak in himself.

(I think it a broad sense we agree, though perhaps we might have differing tolerances for the balance window.)

[Promethean]

“High system mastery” <> “optimization-focused”.

Um, what???

[Crake]

And there will Be plenty of times where the caster can afford to buff the Barbarian. But sometimes, like when facing off against the Archmage BBEG, the Barbarian needs to put on his big boy pants and be useful on his own merits, because the party Wizard is too busy countering what the Archmage is trying to do to bother with the Barbarian (and the BBEG would just dispel / Disjunction any buffs cast anyway). If the Barbarian’s player goes into a game expecting to be able to just do the one tactic every fight every time, get the same buffs and win, then they’re gonna have a bad time either way.



No, the BBEG isn’t “me, but better”. I’m a master of counter spells. And if that is what the BBEG has mastered, and the Barbarian is expecting a buff…

If you’re busy running interference on the enemy archmage, then you can dispel his fly spell while you’re at it, letting the barbarian just go in and do his thing, so that works fine anyway? In either case, an item of flight is not needed

[Jay R]

Quite often, a wizard's best option is his buff spells. He shouldn't consider buffing the martials to be time-wasting. With the same level of ego, he can consider the martial as the tools that make this spell powerful -- rather like the vegetation when a druid casts entangle.

Just as the barbarian thinks the wizard is making her attacks more powerful, the wizard should think that the barbarian is making his buff spell more powerful.

---

Getting back to the topic, which is whether manipulating spell components should require a move action.

It's pretty clear that a rule change that has any real effect will change what the best tactics are. We need to consider what those changes will be before we can understand what effect the proposed rule will have.

In this case, touch or close range spells with components have just become harder and more dangerous to try. [First get in melee range, and cast nothing. Then wait until next turn and let the monster try to hit you before you take a move action and a standard action to cast a spell.] Therefore touch spells with components will be used less often. Similarly, any spell with components is less valuable. Note that this includes [I]haste and some other buff spells. If the wizard isn't already within 30 feet of the entire party, he can't move to a better spot and cast haste on everyone. This fact will make the martials less effective, not more.

A spell with a material component requires a move action and a standard action. A spell without one only requires a standard action. Casters will very quickly start using only the spells with no material components. Or, more likely, all casters will take Eschew Materials at first level, and the new rule is simply a feat tax.

But mainly, this rule doesn't change the fact that the casters have the most effective powers; it just means they can't move when they use them.

[RandomPeasant]

And there will be plenty of times when you can just do your thing and be totally fine, but when you're, for example, facing off against the Archmage BBEG at the end of the campaign, you probably would want to forgo your schtick if it's not particularly effective.

But that's a big "if". And it's accompanied by a second if you're not even mentioning: it's not enough that your preferred tactic has to be bad, supporting the Barbarian has to be good. What if your preferred tactic is fireball and the enemy's big weakness is stinking cloud? Hell, what if buffing your allies is the way to go, but the best approach is to cast haste on a bunch of targets? Wouldn't it be better to have a Druid and their animal companion, who represent two haste target's to the Barbarian's one?

And of course all this is ignoring that you're ignoring the analogous question on the Barbarian's end: if it's reasonable to ask that the Wizard make a choice they don't like as much that's more effective, isn't it reasonable to make the same ask of the Barbarian? If going from the third-best to the best 3rd level spell to cast for a fight makes a difference and is therefore justified, surely going from Barbarian to Warblade makes a larger difference on a larger number of fights and is therefore even more justified. That's the core tension I'm talking about. It seems very hard to justify a tradeoff between "do what is fun for you" and "do what is good for the group" that calls for the Wizard to buff the low-tier martial, but not for the low-tier martial to play something else in the first place.


but for the tough fights, you should expect to compromise on your preferred tactics.

Maybe this is the crux of it. It seems to me that this formulation puts much more of a demand on the casters (who, of course, have the ability to alter their tactics dramatically) and very little on the martials (who have almost no ability to meaningfully alter their tactics).


Uhh, hard disagree? If the enemy is literally "Caster but higher level than you", you're just at a straight up disadvantage. They are everything you are, but better. You need your team to succeed. There's a reason why action economy is deemed king. Giving up 4x the actions by just ditching your party and trying to be a one man army is a recipie for disaster.

You need your team. But do you need to spend actions buffing your team? Is it worth spending resources to move the Barbarian from a 4/10 to a 6/10 when you could instead spend them to move yourself from a 7/10 to a 10/10? Or to perform at a 7/10 in the first place?


Of course it happens accidentally. The DM has to handle so much more than the party casters. However, most players forget that enemies CAN be just as or more optimized than the party. It doesn't happen often enough though apparently.

I would love to know how "enemies become significantly more dangerous" is a situation that benefits the less powerful classes. Unless the proposal here is some sort of pure rubber-band balancing, in which case, sure, but you've effectively discarded the pretense of having player decisions matter at all in that case. It's all just going to rubber-band back to the difficulty the DM wants, so you can as well play a Commoner 20 or Pun-Pun.


Um… how about giving muggles level-appropriate abilities, rather than removing such from casters?

It is genuinely baffling to me how many things people will try before proposing this.


For example if I am playing a flamboyant knave I want to be able to competently dash and cavort about the battlefield or sneak in a guarded mansion without drowning in feat taxes. I care little that the wizard can level the whole mansion. I care little even if he's able to sneak in himself.

I would argue that you care a great deal whether the Wizard can level the mansion, because if the Wizard can level the mansion for a fraction of the resources you'd spend to achieve the same goal by sneaking about it's hard to see why it'd be worth having you spend the time sneaking around.


Quite often, a wizard's best option is his buff spells.

This is just not true. And it's especially not true that the best option is casting buffs on the Barbarian. Many of the buffs casters want to use are self-only. Those can't be cast on anyone else, by definition. Many others are multi-target. Those benefit much more from being cast on the wide range of minions you can get from a party of casters than the single target a martial presents. Even that narrow slice of single-target, non-Personal buffs contains many things (like polymorph or greater invisibility) that are best-suited to being used on a Rogue or other precision damage-based character rather than a traditional martial. "Buffing martials is good" is conventional wisdom among a certain set of people who would really like to justify playing a Fighter, but it doesn't really hold up mechanically.

[Quertus]

Um, what???


If you’re busy running interference on the enemy archmage, then you can dispel his fly spell while you’re at it, letting the barbarian just go in and do his thing, so that works fine anyway? In either case, an item of flight is not needed


Quite often, a wizard's best option is his buff spells. He shouldn't consider buffing the martials to be time-wasting. With the same level of ego, he can consider the martial as the tools that make this spell powerful -- rather like the vegetation when a druid casts entangle.

Just as the barbarian thinks the wizard is making her attacks more powerful, the wizard should think that the barbarian is making his buff spell more powerful.

---

Getting back to the topic, which is whether manipulating spell components should require a move action. [It really is. Go back and look.]

So, related to the topic is the idea, not just of goal, but of biases, of experiences and perception.

My experiences say that low-to-mid level Wizards cannot keep up in the damage department. That I’ve not seen a Fighter who was simultaneously worth buffing, and actually needed buffs (regularly). That a Wizard of any Competence (so, not Quertus) generally has much better uses of their actions than buffing. That if the Fighter is the plants, and buffing the Fighter is Entangle, not buffing the Fighter is Twinned Repeating Maximized Chain Disintegrate: buffing the Fighter will make the fight long and tedious, whereas the Wizard can often just end the fight with better spell choices.

Now, maybe it’s just me, but, iirc, the only times I’ve seen someone with the system mastery necessary to build a competent character use that to build a Fighter who still needed buffs by the time the Wizard could cast such, was when a) many levels went by with no access to shops; b) I was running the Fighter, to test just how dumb an idea this was.

Now, my experiences may be because my play groups are composed largely of a) people who have played older editions, and b) “7-year-olds” (who, contrary to my intentions, get older with the passage of time); the members of both of these sets are “smarter than the average bear”. Point being, I struggle to imagine a Fighter worth buffing who actually needs buffs, because that hasn’t happened in my groups - good Fighters who need buffs are invariably smart and resourceful enough to provide for themselves. Whether that’s a flying mount, Winged Cloak, potion of fight, bow, throwing axes, throwing Wizard, throwing moon, mithral buckler of haste, cowl of warding, Ring of Protection from Evil Good, weirwood, brine-triggered mist rocks, or feats and class features like Scent, Life Sight, and more I don’t really grok, IME Fighters worth buffing rarely need a leg up.

So that affects my perception of proposed changes. I see Wizards as needing buffs to their damage-dealing abilities, Fighters as needing buffs to their out-of-combat options, and buffs (buff spells) as seldom used or needed by competent characters, and wasted on incompetent ones.

But that may be because many people view system mastery as synonymous with having a focus on optimization. Which would be the same as assuming that “combat skill” was synonymous with murderhoboism. One is skill, the other is how you use what skill you have. And I’ve only seen the skill necessary to build a Fighter who wasn’t “The Load” also used to build a Fighter who didn’t constantly need buffs to be effective.

And while a counter-focused Wizard *could* Dispel Flight, a) no competent Wizard is going to be flying so low as for that to matter, for them to not just “counter” that by the application of Flight again in later rounds (stupid Feather Fall effect); b) congratulations, the Barbarian is now trapped in a Force Cage, because I wasn’t holding an action to counter his spell. Or, worse, the actually useful Wizard (me) just got Disintegrated had their Contingency send them to another plane because the BBEG fired a Twinned Maximized Chain Disintegrate. Hope you brought your big boy pants, Barbarian, because I’m out thanks to your needy whining - and, if it’s not just us, and the BBEG didn’t target me, the party Rogue is probably ash, and everyone else has to make 2 saves against 240 damage.

At least, that’s my experience with how such things go. And that’s not even counting the BBEG respecting action economy, and not fighting us alone.

Also, most games I’ve played involve fighting monsters; classed humanoid opponents happen almost never. If the BBEG is a caster, this might well be the only time in the entire campaign that my Wizard’s focus on the ability to counter spells has even come up. Seems a **** move, to remove that one chance for that ability to shine, just because you’ve spent the entire campaign not preparing for the BBEG.

That deserves to be repeated: the scenario here is that the Barbarian needs a buff against the BBEG caster. Being the BBEG, that makes this the theoretical focus of the campaign, and the single most likely encounter for the party to have foreknowledge of their adversary. Yet, apparently, the Barbarian in this scenario is too addlebrained to comprehend the challenge of fighting a Wizard (and they can’t even plead ignorance, as they have a Wizard in the party). Or too inept and codependent to even consider making preparations for the inevitable showdown. I just can’t even.

I’m really struggling to imagine a worse example than “Barbarian needs buffs against Wizard BBEG”. Heck, the party Wizard just casting a vanilla Disintegrate of their own might well 1-shot the d4 HP BBEG. I can’t imagine a worse use of the Wizard’s time than buffing the BDF in this scenario. Berating the BDF for their utter ineptitude in not preparing for the BBEG would be a better option here - maybe after the TPK, the Barbarian will have learned something about how to be competent and self-sufficient.

So, that’s my biases, based on my experiences.

Would the proposed change work to improve balance, in the games I’ve played? Well, it doesn’t buff the damage that (low level) Wizards deal, it doesn’t give Fighters extra options out of combat, it makes buffing Fighters even harder, being triggered based on “components” makes its effects uneven based on spells and builds in a way that isn’t related to power at all (let alone in a meaningful way), and it makes Wizards have to think about and plan around more things (compared to the BDF’s none) so… no, not even remotely improving balance at my tables.

[Darg]

I would love to know how "enemies become significantly more dangerous" is a situation that benefits the less powerful classes. Unless the proposal here is some sort of pure rubber-band balancing, in which case, sure, but you've effectively discarded the pretense of having player decisions matter at all in that case. It's all just going to rubber-band back to the difficulty the DM wants, so you can as well play a Commoner 20 or Pun-Pun.

Are you saying that as players get more powerful the enemies they face should become less difficult? As characters gain levels they gain more options and access to tactics. Why shouldn't that apply to the opponents as well? Why wouldn't an enemy wizard be just as or more clever than your party wizard? Variety in challenges allows certain classes to shine and others to fizzle. That's the goal. To let every character have their shining moments.

[Crake]

[..]


[..]

Since it seems to have been lost amidst a waft of rambling off topic spin-off conversations, I'll reiterate my base point (and roughly how we got to this point): Items are not class balance. Items are also not a required mechanic for gameplay outside of a few expectations: Primarily, the big 6.

Any weaknesses a character may have as a result of lack of items can instead be solved through interparty dynamics. That is not to say that every encounter should require interparty dynamics to solve, but players shouldn't begrudge each other when the solution of "Flying archmage" involves enabling the party martial some means of attacking them, whether it be by casting fly on them, dispelling the archmage, or some other means entirely.

What I am not arguing (nor do I care to argue about in the context of this thread):
Whether it's worth bringing martials over other casters to a party. That is largely irrelevant to the discussion. If you have a barbarian, then you have a barbarian. No point bringing up at the table "damn, why didn't you roll a druid".


Now, maybe it’s just me, but, iirc, the only times I’ve seen someone with the system mastery necessary to build a competent character use that to build a Fighter who still needed buffs by the time the Wizard could cast such, was when a) many levels went by with no access to shops; b) I was running the Fighter, to test just how dumb an idea this was.

This is part of the issue of losing context, because if you HAD context, then you'd know that the discussion was around whether or not items are mandatory to the game or not. The martial in this hypothetical does not have access to magic items, full stop. It's not willful neglect on their part due to not buying the right items, they simply lack the capability of flight.

[martixy]

I would argue that you care a great deal whether the Wizard can level the mansion, because if the Wizard can level the mansion for a fraction of the resources you'd spend to achieve the same goal by sneaking about it's hard to see why it'd be worth having you spend the time sneaking around.

You do not get to argue what I care about. Simple as that.

Let me paint a picture. Literally. Marvel at my epic paint.exe skills.

https://cdn.imgchest.com/files/j7kzc3mr67m.png

I care mostly about how high my line is.

I do not care about how high the second line is or how much they overlap, as long as it doesn't break the campaign setting (pun-pun and stuff).
I care a little if the gap is constant (i.e. my line gets higher and the other gets higher equally). But that's mostly because of the nature of how that is achieved.
This is what items do, and this is what Crake is arguing.
Like I said, I dislike this style. Also, there are many things that class features or feats do, that items cannot typically replicate (unless you allow arbitrary feats or class features to be placed on items).

Another important point:
The lines can represent different things to different people. It's a matter of preferred play style. DMG2 has a section on that.


For me, the line is about how competent the character is at his chosen specialties and whether I have meaningful decisions to make.

To go back to my example. If I want to nimbly wind my way around enemies or swing from chandeliers, I cannot be failing my tumble checks every second roll. If I want to do extravagant combat acrobatics, failing my trip check half or frankly anything more than 10% of the time is unacceptable. And if I am locked into just using trip there is no decision. I want to disarm, trip, feint, cause enemies to overextend and stab each other.
Maybe the wizard can blast everything in the room with a single spell and "solve" the encounter and move the plot along. Maybe that's even fun for him.
My fun isn't from solving the encounter, it's from the moment to moment interactions of doing cool shiz.
And yes, I see the problem above. As long as the wizard doesn't maliciously deny me my fun, I'm a happy camper - I can always ask them to leave a few or pick a different way to contribute, or the DM can design encounters better.

[Quertus]

Since it seems to have been lost amidst a waft of rambling off topic spin-off conversations, I'll reiterate my base point (and roughly how we got to this point): Items are not class balance. Items are also not a required mechanic for gameplay outside of a few expectations: Primarily, the big 6.

Any weaknesses a character may have as a result of lack of items can instead be solved through interparty dynamics. That is not to say that every encounter should require interparty dynamics to solve, but players shouldn't begrudge each other when the solution of "Flying archmage" involves enabling the party martial some means of attacking them, whether it be by casting fly on them, dispelling the archmage, or some other means entirely.

What I am not arguing (nor do I care to argue about in the context of this thread):
Whether it's worth bringing martials over other casters to a party. That is largely irrelevant to the discussion. If you have a barbarian, then you have a barbarian. No point bringing up at the table "damn, why didn't you roll a druid".



This is part of the issue of losing context, because if you HAD context, then you'd know that the discussion was around whether or not items are mandatory to the game or not. The martial in this hypothetical does not have access to magic items, full stop. It's not willful neglect on their part due to not buying the right items, they simply lack the capability of flight.

Fair, and I am really bad with context in general, but… the BBEG Archmage uses d4 for HD. Unless you’re arguing that “the Barbarian is fighting with their bare hands, and the Wizard took Eschew Materials” level of “no items”, the Barbarian could still have had a bow*, or thrown weaponry**, or a flying mount, or any number of completely mundane options, to allow them to totally own this BBEG, if the party Wizard was doing their job, and keeping the BBEG from wrecking the team.

So, while I somewhat agree that items don’t balance the lack of class features, in that I believe that everyone should start with a roughly equal number/value of class features, and the presence or absence of items does not change that assertion, items do allow a character to cover whatever particular weakness(es) they choose, to allow them to stretch outside their defined niche, to balance to the table, and to work with the party.

Nobody has “healing” as a class feature? There’s an app items that can cover that. Everybody else is stealthy? There’s an app items that can cover that. The BBEG is an Archmage, and the party Wizard can’t afford to buff you? There’s an app items that can cover that.

And I consider that a good thing.

So, while items may not “make up for” a lack of class features from a class-balance perspective, they can and do (generally) allow a character to ignore “does my class give me X” limitations, giving the players the agency to tailor their characters’ capabilities

The problem is that the specific scenario you have devised does not primarily present a question of balance or class features, but of entitlement and planning.

Can items be used to achieve game balance? That’s actually a really complicated question. Does the specific implementation in 3e D&D of classes and items and WBL expectations serve to make the classes balanced? Well, no. Does it facilitate “balance to the table”? Yes.

Regardless of the above, “class disparity” does not entitle the Barbarian to buffs, and it especially does not entitle them to ignore the benefits items can give them in terms of both self-sufficiency, and in attempting to close the overall power gap between themselves and the Wizard.

So, while, sure, the existence of items in 3e does not inherently mean that the Wizard and the Barbarian will be balanced, it does mean that they could be, and that there’s no excuse for the exceptionally horrific lack of planning, lack of self-sufficiency, and sense of entitlement (to the point of likely causing a TPK) of the Barbarian in your example.

If we can tease those apart, I believe it can be good, both for the health of the game, and for the productivity of conversations related to improving the game - this thread (with its proposal that would worsen balance in several ways) included.

* if we’re playing annoying “information games”, then the Barbarian should never have used or even carried this bow before the final encounter with the BBEG, so that said Archmage has no reason to have Wind Wall, Protection from Arrows, etc, as active defenses against us. In this scenario, the Barbarian is actually entitled to buffs throughout the campaign, and extra-entitled, for keeping the party secret… just not during the final fight.

** Ok, against a properly paranoid flying Archmage, this probably works on about 1 build, not for the general Barbarian. But it might have helped see them through up until this point.

[Quertus]

You do not get to argue what I care about. Simple as that.

Let me paint a picture. Literally. Marvel at my epic paint.exe skills.

https://cdn.imgchest.com/files/j7kzc3mr67m.png

I care mostly about how high my line is.

I do not care about how high the second line is or how much they overlap, as long as it doesn't break the campaign setting (pun-pun and stuff).
I care a little if the gap is constant (i.e. my line gets higher and the other gets higher equally). But that's mostly because of the nature of how that is achieved.
This is what items do, and this is what Crake is arguing.
Like I said, I dislike this style. Also, there are many things that class features or feats do, that items cannot typically replicate (unless you allow arbitrary feats or class features to be placed on items).

Another important point:
The lines can represent different things to different people. It's a matter of preferred play style. DMG2 has a section on that.


For me, the line is about how competent the character is at his chosen specialties and whether I have meaningful decisions to make.

To go back to my example. If I want to nimbly wind my way around enemies or swing from chandeliers, I cannot be failing my tumble checks every second roll. If I want to do extravagant combat acrobatics, failing my trip check half or frankly anything more than 10% of the time is unacceptable. And if I am locked into just using trip there is no decision. I want to disarm, trip, feint, cause enemies to overextend and stab each other.
Maybe the wizard can blast everything in the room with a single spell and "solve" the encounter and move the plot along. Maybe that's even fun for him.
My fun isn't from solving the encounter, it's from the moment to moment interactions of doing cool shiz.
And yes, I see the problem above. As long as the wizard doesn't maliciously deny me my fun, I'm a happy camper - I can always ask them to leave a few or pick a different way to contribute, or the DM can design encounters better.

The Fighter gets d10 HD, can wear armor, and… darn senility… does their BAB help keep them from being grappled, or is it just their Strength?

Regardless, the things the Fighter can just do includes things the Wizard… can’t. Not initially, not without items.

Now, eventually, the Wizard can make up for their lack of HP & AC with Contingency, and their vulnerability to grapples with a Ring of Free Action (or whatever). But there’s still things that are part of the Fighter’s line that aren’t part of the Wizard’s.

I mean, I completely agree wrt caring about “how competent the character is at his chosen specialties and whether I have meaningful decisions to make.” What I think you’re trying to get to is the idea of actually getting to use those abilities - if I’ve built a Harry Potter Hermione espy, the only spell I have worth casting at low level is Knock Aloha Mora, and I’ll be reasonably vexed if some Rogue maliciously takes my niche with infinitely-reusable Open Lock.

Regardless of how you feel about that particular example, the point remains that there are two components: having the ability, and getting the opportunity. The former is primarily a matter of individual build skill; the latter, however, involves “soft skills” and coordination with the group.

Still, I agree, it’s generally good if those lines, those sets, are roughly equal, in terms of size and “value”, unless you specifically want the challenge or the experience of divergent capabilities. Which, as my Sentient Potted Plant would tell you, I personally clearly don’t shy away from choosing such things.

(Does that sound like I’ve understood you, or has my reading comprehension failed me again?)

[martixy]

The Fighter gets d10 HD, can wear armor, and… darn senility… does their BAB help keep them from being grappled, or is it just their Strength?

Regardless, the things the Fighter can just do includes things the Wizard… can’t. Not initially, not without items.

Now, eventually, the Wizard can make up for their lack of HP & AC with Contingency, and their vulnerability to grapples with a Ring of Free Action (or whatever). But there’s still things that are part of the Fighter’s line that aren’t part of the Wizard’s.

I mean, I completely agree wrt caring about “how competent the character is at his chosen specialties and whether I have meaningful decisions to make.” What I think you’re trying to get to is the idea of actually getting to use those abilities - if I’ve built a Harry Potter Hermione espy, the only spell I have worth casting at low level is Knock Aloha Mora, and I’ll be reasonably vexed if some Rogue maliciously takes my niche with infinitely-reusable Open Lock.

Regardless of how you feel about that particular example, the point remains that there are two components: having the ability, and getting the opportunity. The former is primarily a matter of individual build skill; the latter, however, involves “soft skills” and coordination with the group.

Still, I agree, it’s generally good if those lines, those sets, are roughly equal, in terms of size and “value”, unless you specifically want the challenge or the experience of divergent capabilities. Which, as my Sentient Potted Plant would tell you, I personally clearly don’t shy away from choosing such things.

(Does that sound like I’ve understood you, or has my reading comprehension failed me again?)

(Taking a page from your book, and to make sure everyone is on the same page, me included: I am arguing against the notion that balance is a necessary and required part of the game, which seems to be espoused by quite a few people. Apologies if I accidentally strawmanned myself.)

That's a good summary. You understood. And do make a good point.

Ability and opportunity.

Ability can be problematic, as you might not have enough feats or class features to attain the ability you want. So you might want the character to have more feats. But that's not balance. Balance requires a relationship between 2 things. Here we are talking about a one sided affair, an absolute value, not a relative gap.

Opportunity is also not balance either. It can be afforded by balance (if one character cannot accomplish everything it promotes specialization and equal opportunity). But they are not equivalent. As you noted soft skills, coordination and general social contract can also be used to achieve the same end goal of opportunity. The argument is that balance is only one tool, and other mechanisms can achieve the same end result. And if those mechanisms are in play, then the game can be good even if it lacks balance. That is the reason I do not care about balance.

In more philosophical terms, the fun of the game, and satisfying one's motivations for playing the game is the terminal value. Balance is merely an instrumental value, one among many on the road to the terminal value.[1] (https://www.lesswrong.com/tag/terminal-value) [2] (https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/n5ucT5ZbPdhfGNLtP/terminal-values-and-instrumental-values)

Crake's hill is a different one. It resides in the gap between those lines. As I understand it, the argument is that while the lines get bigger, the gap stays the same. Hence items provide 0 contribution to balance.

[JNAProductions]

In more philosophical terms, the fun of the game, and satisfying one's motivations for playing the game is the terminal value. Balance is merely an instrumental value, one among many on the road to the terminal value.[1] (https://www.lesswrong.com/tag/terminal-value) [2] (https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/n5ucT5ZbPdhfGNLtP/terminal-values-and-instrumental-values)

I get what you're saying. But I'd like to point out that, for most people, being roughly balanced is pretty dang important to having a good time.

Perfect balance ain't needed, nor is it really possible. But, to take an extreme example, how many people would be happy playing a Commoner 5 when the rest of the party consisted of a Psion 20, a Warblade 20, and a Druid 20?

I'll reinforce the point that balance, in and of itself, isn't fun. You can have a well-balanced and amazingly dull game. But an unbalanced game is harder to have fun with for everyone-it might be fun to be king of the hill sometimes, but is it fun for the peasants on the bottom?

[Doctor Despair]

I get what you're saying. But I'd like to point out that, for most people, being roughly balanced is pretty dang important to having a good time.

Perfect balance ain't needed, nor is it really possible. But, to take an extreme example, how many people would be happy playing a Commoner 5 when the rest of the party consisted of a Psion 20, a Warblade 20, and a Druid 20?

I'll reinforce the point that balance, in and of itself, isn't fun. You can have a well-balanced and amazingly dull game. But an unbalanced game is harder to have fun with for everyone-it might be fun to be king of the hill sometimes, but is it fun for the peasants on the bottom?

To play devil's advocate here, the DM could organize the campaign such that the commoner was in a party with an aristocrat, a warrior, a truenamer, or other NPC classes to maintain intra-campaign balance if inter-campaign balance is not possible

[Quertus]

(Taking a page from your book, and to make sure everyone is on the same page,

I have a book? Sweet.

Thanks for explaining - I had gotten part, but gone in the wrong direction on other parts.

I’ve actually played with people for whom “balance” was a bad word, a negative, although I couldn’t tell you exactly why. Personally, I’m keenly aware that imbalance is a tool (an “instrumental value”) I use to achieve my ends (“a cool setup, enabling me to tell the story of the time…”, my “terminal value”? Or an instrumental value towards my terminal value of “not just fun, but lasting value”?)


I get what you're saying. But I'd like to point out that, for most people, being roughly balanced is pretty dang important to having a good time.

Perfect balance ain't needed, nor is it really possible. But, to take an extreme example, how many people would be happy playing a Commoner 5 when the rest of the party consisted of a Psion 20, a Warblade 20, and a Druid 20?

I'll reinforce the point that balance, in and of itself, isn't fun. You can have a well-balanced and amazingly dull game. But an unbalanced game is harder to have fun with for everyone-it might be fun to be king of the hill sometimes, but is it fun for the peasants on the bottom?

Is it any surprise that I respond, “sounds like fun!”?

Granted, it’s fun for certain setups.

For example, it would be awesome to be playing the kid brother of those famous adventures, who are trying to get me qualified for a rebuild quest, to replace those commoner levels. And maybe everyone has their own ideas about what I should be replacing them with.

Or maybe I’m a beloved NPC, that is on a revenge quest, or is a “last survivor”, or just that the party is chaperoning. Regardless, I’d want to have been GM, and not be GM during this “story”.

Or maybe I’m the fiancé (what’s the difference between fiancé and fiancée?) of one of the PCs. Clearly, the PC was about to retire, get married, etc, but, being a stubborn soul who wanted to understand what they were leaving behind, I asked (“asked”) to come on their last mission. And, being a mighty 5th level commoner, I’m used to powering through most things in my daily life, and don’t fully get just what they do, just how dangerous it is.

Or, if the table is particularly… dim… it might be a personal challenge, that I believe I can out-perform their near-epic characters with a Commoner 5.

Or maybe I’m almost balanced on paper, being, well, not human (an Illithid, for example, as a really odd choice, or a Paragon Winged Human). Still nowhere near their ability, but I can at least pretend to not be The Load while still not being an adventurer.

Or, with some very generous interpretations of the rules, and custom items from custom spells research, I could possibly be “comic relief” levels of marginally useful, and something of a puzzlement to more uncreative, “by the books” types of “how is he doing that” (if they don’t know my class and level).

Or I could be playing a reincarnated character, somehow Cursed to have had their stats “zeroed out” to commoner status. Bad if people remember me; possibly worse if I get confused and try to do things I used to be able to do.

There’s definite potential in the setup, it just requires the additional details to be aligned to make for a good story.

[Darg]

To play devil's advocate here, the DM could organize the campaign such that the commoner was in a party with an aristocrat, a warrior, a truenamer, or other NPC classes to maintain intra-campaign balance if inter-campaign balance is not possible

You could. But the real issue is that the commoner is level 5. Why is it level 5? Is it because it has whole bunch of +LAs? If it's got +15 LA that is quite a bit of power when the party is going to be fighting level 16 encounters. So, I wouldn't call the character ineffective just like that. Not to mention, there are other ways to balance a game outside of thought experiments. There are a lot of factors that could lead the commoner to be the stronger of the party members in some ways. Yes, mechanically a commoner is lesser than the base classes. It is an NPC after all. However the game is more than just rules and mechanics. Those rules and mechanics are supposed to exist within a world and some of the most powerful things human kind has experienced don't abide by rules we wish to place on them.


(what’s the difference between fiancé and fiancée?)

It's like armor and armour. No difference. It's just how people spell things. Similar to how bestial is spelled instead of "beastial" even though the root word is beast. Somewhere in the past it was spelled one way and people started copying it. That's all.

[RandomPeasant]

Are you saying that as players get more powerful the enemies they face should become less difficult?

I thought we were still trying to figure out if you were saying that fighting more powerful enemies benefited less powerful characters.


Variety in challenges allows certain classes to shine and others to fizzle.

It can do that. But for it to do that there have to be situations where one character outshines the other and vice versa. That's fairly easy to achieve if you're talking about, like, a Wizard and a Beguiler. Just throw some social or stealth challenges at the party. It gets harder when you've got a Fighter and a DMM Cleric and you're trying to figure out how to get the Fighter a niche that isn't "and here we have an AMF cage match that is arbitrarily tuned to be exactly hard enough for the Fighter to beat with no items or buffs".


I care mostly about how high my line is.

And so does everyone else care about their lines, which is how you get to balance.


I do not care about how high the second line is or how much they overlap, as long as it doesn't break the campaign setting (pun-pun and stuff).

I don't believe you. I just flat don't believe that you'd be perfectly happy with another character who could do all the things your character does but better and for free. Perhaps you are fundamentally different from myself and every with which I have played personally, but simply being competent is almost never sufficient. You have to exercise that competence, and some level of balance is necessary for that to happen (or deliberate sandbagging by the rest of the party, but that's really just ad hoc balancing).


As you noted soft skills, coordination and general social contract can also be used to achieve the same end goal of opportunity.

This is just Oberoni Fallacy-ing the problem. You want a thing (for everyone to have an opportunity to use their skills). The natural way to get that thing is to have the rules provide it (by making it mechanically optimal for different people to use different skills at different times, which we call balance). If the rules don't provide it, you can sorta pretend they do, but it's not really clear to me how that's anything less than a general argument that you don't need rules.


That is the reason I do not care about balance.

This is like saying effective spinal surgery is the reason you don't care about seatbelts.


Perfect balance ain't needed, nor is it really possible. But, to take an extreme example, how many people would be happy playing a Commoner 5 when the rest of the party consisted of a Psion 20, a Warblade 20, and a Druid 20?

Everyone talks a big game about how they don't need balance, or how they want to play a limited character, but I have never once seen someone ask to play a character who is even a level behind the rest of their party. People do not appreciate how much balance they care about.


To play devil's advocate here, the DM could organize the campaign such that the commoner was in a party with an aristocrat, a warrior, a truenamer, or other NPC classes to maintain intra-campaign balance if inter-campaign balance is not possible

Sure. Why is it desirable to force the DM to do that? Certainly, you could play games that balance unbalanced systems through all sorts of mechanisms. But if we're going to do that, we've accepted the premise that balance is good, and we should just build whatever ad hoc fixes we were talking about into the system so people can save the time of finding and implementing them.


You could. But the real issue is that the commoner is level 5. Why is it level 5? Is it because it has whole bunch of +LAs? If it's got +15 LA that is quite a bit of power when the party is going to be fighting level 16 encounters. So, I wouldn't call the character ineffective just like that. Not to mention, there are other ways to balance a game outside of thought experiments. There are a lot of factors that could lead the commoner to be the stronger of the party members in some ways. Yes, mechanically a commoner is lesser than the base classes. It is an NPC after all. However the game is more than just rules and mechanics. Those rules and mechanics are supposed to exist within a world and some of the most powerful things human kind has experienced don't abide by rules we wish to place on them.

This is a lot of words for "if we pretend that the problem is underspecified, I can make a point that doesn't contradict the original one". Which, sure, but not something I find it terribly productive to worry about.

[Crake]

Fair, and I am really bad with context in general, but… the BBEG Archmage uses d4 for HD. Unless you’re arguing that “the Barbarian is fighting with their bare hands, and the Wizard took Eschew Materials” level of “no items”, the Barbarian could still have had a bow*, or thrown weaponry**, or a flying mount, or any number of completely mundane options, to allow them to totally own this BBEG, if the party Wizard was doing their job, and keeping the BBEG from wrecking the team.

Well, in fairness, a bow and thrown weaponry are made irrelevant as early as level 5 with a combination of fly and wind wall. A flying mount could work, but may not be a viable option depending on the campaign and where the fight is taking place.

Also, the level of "no items" I play with is pathfinder's automatic bonus progression using the no items variant, where the party literally get no magic items by default (they might get a handful across the entire party over the course of an entire campaign, and there'd be definitely no way for them to go out and just buy items), but get effectively full big 6 progression through mundane means.


So, while I somewhat agree that items don’t balance the lack of class features, in that I believe that everyone should start with a roughly equal number/value of class features, and the presence or absence of items does not change that assertion, items do allow a character to cover whatever particular weakness(es) they choose, to allow them to stretch outside their defined niche, to balance to the table, and to work with the party.

True, I never argued that items cannot shore up weaknesses, merely that they are not required to do so (and personally think it's just unhealthy for the game to do so), because such weaknesses can instead be covered through party dynamics.


Nobody has “healing” as a class feature? There’s an app items that can cover that.

If there's no healer in the party, I'll usually run the wounds/vitality ruleset so that recovery becomes less of an issue.


Everybody else is stealthy? There’s an app items that can cover that. The BBEG is an Archmage, and the party Wizard can’t afford to buff you? There’s an app items that can cover that.

And I consider that a good thing.

Agree to disagree then I guess. The sheer abundance of magic items is by far my biggest gripe with the system. 5e has had massive success by significantly limiting the presence of magic items in the game and as a result encouraging more interparty dynamics rather than everyone trying to be a one man island.


So, while items may not “make up for” a lack of class features from a class-balance perspective, they can and do (generally) allow a character to ignore “does my class give me X” limitations, giving the players the agency to tailor their characters’ capabilities

Wouldn't it be better though, if players could tailor their character's capabilities in an inherent way? Through better class balance and more class options?


The problem is that the specific scenario you have devised does not primarily present a question of balance or class features, but of entitlement and planning.

Well, it does. It outlines the true difference between the classes, rather than the imagined difference when the classes are instead all made into pseudo-casters by decking themselves out in magic items.


Can items be used to achieve game balance? That’s actually a really complicated question. Does the specific implementation in 3e D&D of classes and items and WBL expectations serve to make the classes balanced? Well, no. Does it facilitate “balance to the table”? Yes.

They can be used to achieve game balance, but not class balance, and they achieve it through homogenization of characters, and create this unhealthy desire to essentially build a solo character. It also creates a reliance on non-inherent parts of your character, which then in turn makes it "bad sport" for those parts of the character to be specifically targetted.


Regardless of the above, “class disparity” does not entitle the Barbarian to buffs, and it especially does not entitle them to ignore the benefits items can give them in terms of both self-sufficiency, and in attempting to close the overall power gap between themselves and the Wizard.

I dunno, to me this sounds like a healer player in an mmo saying "just because your class can't heal, doesn't mean you're entitled to my healing" in the middle of a dungeon run. It's not entitlement, you're playing a team game, you're supposed to be working together.


So, while, sure, the existence of items in 3e does not inherently mean that the Wizard and the Barbarian will be balanced, it does mean that they could be, and that there’s no excuse for the exceptionally horrific lack of planning, lack of self-sufficiency, and sense of entitlement (to the point of likely causing a TPK) of the Barbarian in your example.

Except if it's a no magic item game? Your readiness to always chalk it up to entitlement says something about the way you play, and your lack of cooperative spirit. The barbarian may never actually ask for anything, but when a weakness of one of the party members is being exploited, it would make sense for the rest of the party to help? If the wizard is being overrun by a bunch of goblins, the barbarian with cleave should come by and drop them all so the wizard is free to cast, but in your mind that would be entitlement on the wizard's behalf?


If we can tease those apart, I believe it can be good, both for the health of the game, and for the productivity of conversations related to improving the game - this thread (with its proposal that would worsen balance in several ways) included.

I'm just sick of seeing people say "just give X class Y item and it's fine". It promotes the 3.5 narrative of the christmas tree adventurer, and also forces the notion that all magic items need to be available to all characters at all times for the game to be functional, which doesn't work for a whole swathe of the gradient of game themes. It also apparently seems to generate players who want to play entirely on their own, but within the context of other people seeing their "cool stuff", rather than playing the game as a cooperative, team experience.


* if we’re playing annoying “information games”, then the Barbarian should never have used or even carried this bow before the final encounter with the BBEG, so that said Archmage has no reason to have Wind Wall, Protection from Arrows, etc, as active defenses against us. In this scenario, the Barbarian is actually entitled to buffs throughout the campaign, and extra-entitled, for keeping the party secret… just not during the final fight.

(Again with the entitlement talk) Not ever BBEG fight will take place at at "information games" levels, or even with a bbeg that knows the party is coming. A smart wizard would simply have those things prepared in any case, and maybe have some way to spontaneously convert them if they're not necessary. Who's to say the party doesn't hire an expert marksman at the last moment before the fight anyway?


** Ok, against a properly paranoid flying Archmage, this probably works on about 1 build, not for the general Barbarian. But it might have helped see them through up until this point.

Look, I'm not saying the barbarian shouldn't have some method to deal with ranged targets, but a level 6 whirling frenzy pounce barbarian could quite possibly one turn ko even a level 9 archmage bbeg, and you don't think its worth the spell to enable him to do that? You might need to orchestrate an opening to actually pull it off (if he has dispels prepared, or counterspels readied for example), but it's may likely be one of your best opportunities on taking him down.

[Darg]

It can do that. But for it to do that there have to be situations where one character outshines the other and vice versa. That's fairly easy to achieve if you're talking about, like, a Wizard and a Beguiler. Just throw some social or stealth challenges at the party. It gets harder when you've got a Fighter and a DMM Cleric and you're trying to figure out how to get the Fighter a niche that isn't "and here we have an AMF cage match that is arbitrarily tuned to be exactly hard enough for the Fighter to beat with no items or buffs".

There are other options such as targeted dispel and counterspell. It doesn't have to be a cage match. All it takes is a little action or resource economy manipulation. Subtlety is best. Magic is meant to be powerful and yet there are so many counters to most of it. It happens. Not all the time, but sometimes and that is enough. If players are abusing flying, you don't just keep sending melee only grounded challenges their way. Sometimes it's good that they can fly and overwhelm an encounter, but other times they need to fall out of the sky, go against flyers, or be stuck in a single story room.


This is a lot of words for "if we pretend that the problem is underspecified, I can make a point that doesn't contradict the original one". Which, sure, but not something I find it terribly productive to worry about.

The question is unanswerable. All it takes is one moment of pulling the sword from the stone for it to be an enjoyable experience. People get caught up in these thought experiments which are meant to have no exception, but the fact of the matter is that there is always an exception in reality. Most people don't find it fun? Oh well. The point is to have options. If that option isn't fun for a player, then it simply isn't fun. People have such varying degrees of skill and familiarity it's simply impossible to reduce things down to "wizard is theoretically stronger than fighter; so wizard is more fun than fighter." Which makes these arguments pop up of people never seeing eye to eye because of the vast differences in experiences. Of course it's unproductive. It's as productive as saying that the grass is greener on the other side.

[Remuko]

(what’s the difference between fiancé and fiancée?)


It's like armor and armour. No difference. It's just how people spell things. Similar to how bestial is spelled instead of "beastial" even though the root word is beast. Somewhere in the past it was spelled one way and people started copying it. That's all.

A fiancé is man who is engaged to be married. One way that French words specify gender is with their endings. In this case, the extra E at the end of fiancée indicates that the betrothed is a woman. You will find this all over the place in the French language.

[RandomPeasant]

There are other options such as targeted dispel and counterspell.

Targeted dispels don't really hurt casters, at least not ones that are playing like casters rather than trying to out-Fighter the Fighter. If you take off the Wizard's greater mirror image or whatever, he's slightly easier to kill, but you haven't done anything to kill him or stop him from killing you. Conversely, dispelling the Fighter (while honestly still not great) can remove buffs or items he needs to be able to be effective.

Counterspelling is better at pushing a caster down, but it doesn't particularly help the Fighter. It just makes it so that one specific caster can't do anything, which helps whoever else happens to be in the party pretty homogenously. If the Wizard casting finger of death is better than the Fighter making a full attack, having that finger of death counterspelled still leaves the Dread Necromancer casting a second one better than the Fighter making a full attack.


All it takes is a little action or resource economy manipulation. Subtlety is best.

I love the confidence you say this with, having provided two examples which don't actually put non-casters ahead in any real way. It's actually quite hard to "subtly" manipulate the "resource economy", and the primary way of manipulating the action economy is just "there are more dudes on the other team". Which is about the least subtle thing you can imagine, and in fact advantages casters again because they have better AoE tools. An Ubercharger charges one target. A Wizard could cast finger of death on that target, or they could cast acid fog on a whole bunch of targets.


The question is unanswerable. All it takes is one moment of pulling the sword from the stone for it to be an enjoyable experience.

Again, you are describing a situation in which the end result is balanced to argue against a hypothetical demonstrating the value of balance. Like, yes, you could put your thumb on the scale for the Commoner. But the point isn't that you can't do that. The point is precisely that you want to do that.


The point is to have options.

What an utterly facile point. Suppose the character in question were a 5th level Wizard (or some other class that might be balanced if it were of equal level). Would it be any harder to engage in your "actually no I want to play a guy who sucks" hypotheticals? No it would not. But it would be much easier for someone who simply wants to play that particular class to play a balanced character: they could do it by playing a character of equal level. The status quo provides less options than balance does, not more.


Which makes these arguments pop up of people never seeing eye to eye because of the vast differences in experiences.

You would think these arguments popping up in a thread where someone made a very specific and concrete proposal to address them would suggest that they are not, in fact, simple "differences in experience" that we don't need to worry about.

[Quertus]

@Crake - we've got some different... biases / expectations? I've tried to pick and choose the bits that were most relevant to finding those differences, figuring we can circle back to the rest of the conversation once we're... if not on the same page, at least able to understand what page each other are on? Never mind, looks like I've stubbornly replied to most of it. :smallbiggrin: I'm not very good at "focusing", am i? :smallredface:


Look, I'm not saying the barbarian shouldn't have some method to deal with ranged targets, but a level 6 whirling frenzy pounce barbarian could quite possibly one turn ko even a level 9 archmage bbeg, and you don't think its worth the spell to enable him to do that? You might need to orchestrate an opening to actually pull it off (if he has dispels prepared, or counterspels readied for example), but it's may likely be one of your best opportunities on taking him down.

6th level party? 9th level "BBEG" (LBEG)? Boy, have I ever got to recalibrate my expectations here. Even "9th level Archmage" isn't something I can say with a straight face (prestige class notwithstanding).

But, sure, if the Wizard is not holding an action to counterspell the LBEG, he could... um... Hold Monster? Nope, single-target in 3e. Lesser Rod of Chaining Hold Person the party, and Quickened Charm Person on anyone who made their save. Or Wall of Iron (which maybe his undead then push over onto us). Or Cloud Kill. Or Dominate Person. And I suspect that a dominated level 6 whirling frenzy pounce barbarian could quite easily spell TPK.

I don't know how this LBEG was built, but it looks like there's numerous likely TPKs, just in 5th-level spells in the PH.

Heck, an Empowered Fireball and Quickened Magic Missile might be enough to do it, depending on the optimization level of the party. With Reserves of Strength (largely to make the math produce whole numbers, and to keep me from having to look up other feats or class features to further optimize such spells), that's an average of 63 AoE, and 21 targeted damage. How would random 4-man parties of the PHB iconic PCs do against that at 6th level?


Also, the level of "no items" I play with is pathfinder's automatic bonus progression using the no items variant, where the party literally get no magic items by default (they might get a handful across the entire party over the course of an entire campaign, and there'd be definitely no way for them to go out and just buy items), but get effectively full big 6 progression through mundane means.

Eh, I guess that's common enough that I shouldn't get... um... there's a phrase that involves "panties" or "nickers" that I just can't quite seem to remember. Anyway, while that's not exactly unique to your table, it's not the default gameplay, either. So (unless I missed context, which is... not unlikely), it's not exactly fair to expect that everyone's talking about a no items automatic progression game.

Anyway, in this variant, are item creation feats (which are an Intrinsic ability to produce such Extrinsic abilities) still a thing?


Well, in fairness, a bow and thrown weaponry are made irrelevant as early as level 5 with a combination of fly and wind wall. A flying mount could work, but may not be a viable option depending on the campaign and where the fight is taking place.

Might just be a table thing, but I've seen Wind Wall used never*.

* outside of "it was printed in the module", or "information games" (or, more often, "false information games", where the opponents knew things they shouldn't have, because Roleplaying is a dying art, especially among GMs) where the party had a noticeable archer.


Wouldn't it be better though, if players could tailor their character's capabilities in an inherent way? Through better class balance and more class options?

In a word, no.

Now, before you think I've gone mad again, and try to find my meds, hear me out. (Then you can do those things :smalltongue:)

It's a matter of "Intrinsic vs Extrinsic", a matter of "theme", a matter of... how did you put it... "homogenization of characters, and... this unhealthy desire to essentially build a solo character", a matter of versamilitude/"suspension of disbelief", and, (IMO most of all) a matter of timing.

Imagine that the two of us get Isekai'd to "in town the night before the final battle with the (apparently 9th level) BBEG LBEG (who has been rebuilt by an outside source, btw, so it might not statistically or RP-ly match your foreknowledge, in case this is an actual example from your play experience)".

I don't know about you, but I suspect that my Intrinsic abilities map to an NPC class, like "Commoner" or "Expert". Maybe I could claim Monk 1. Maybe.

We're not likely to be able to realistically change who/what we are before the big battle. Sure, we get buffed by the world granting us Automatic Progression. Maybe we can get the party Rogue to teach us that first rank of UMD. Maybe you have an equivalent to Lucid Dreaming, and can use that to try to spy on the BBEG in his/her/<attack helicopter pronoun> dreams. But, otherwise, our Intrinsic abilities just aren't up to snuff.

However, hand me some shape sand, let me create a modern weapon I'm proficient in, and I can demonstrate that I'm a fair shot - possibly better than these apparently 6th level characters. Hand us some potions, and we can Fly, or Polymorph, or have more HP, or gain any number of other abilities.

If the BBEG suddenly decided that they wanted to relocate to underwater environs, no one in the party can simply grow gills - it's not possible to change one's Intrinsic abilities fast enough to adapt to this new challenge. But Extrinsic abilities, OTOH, can be changed on the fly, can be used to allow one to adapt.

So, because I'm absolutely not a fan of... how did you put it... "expecting to be able to just do the one tactic every fight and win every time," I want characters to be able to not just have multiple options, but to be able to evolve multiple options, to choose what tools are in their toolkit. To not have to say, "whelp, this part of the adventure is underwater / involves stealth / happens on a plane that's on fire / requires flight, I guess I'll just have to sit this one out". To instead have the option to be able to continue playing the character through the next stage of the adventure, by virtue of being able to add abilities through Extrinsic capabilities.

So, in a word, no, I don't think that the game would be better if all of a character's abilities were tied to their (race and) class, regardless of what options they had to customize that class.

I can only see removing adaptation and limiting abilities to those chosen at character creation working if the players read the adventure before making characters, and all build stealthy fliers capable of surviving both underwater and in fire for extended periods of time... and (other than spoiling the fun of Discovery) that just sounds too contrived for my tastes.


True, I never argued that items cannot shore up weaknesses, merely that they are not required to do so (and personally think it's just unhealthy for the game to do so), because such weaknesses can instead be covered through party dynamics.

The LBEG just relocated to his underwater base. The party Wizard doesn't know Water Breathing.

The PC carrying the McGuffin just got turned to stone. Nobody is playing a character with Stone to Flesh on their spell list.

The party Wizard is holding an action to counterspell the LBEG, and can't afford to cast a buff on the Barbarian.

The party Wizard is being played by the same idiot who plays Quertus, and they just didn't register how useful a particular ability would be right now.

The party Wizard is being played by the same person who plays Quertus, and this character is being roleplayed as a different kind of suboptimal non-Determinator, who (unlike Quertus, who is happy to buff people) dogmatically follows "standard imperial procedure" from some book series / video game / whatever (which also involves not knowing any buff spells).

There is no party Wizard, it's just another Barbarian, incapable of buffing anyone.

These can all be solved with items. How would you solve these with "party dynamics"?


Well, it does. It outlines the true difference between the classes, rather than the imagined difference when the classes are instead all made into pseudo-casters by decking themselves out in magic items.

Eh, no. It might in automatic-progression "poverty world" (I have no experience with that (I believe - darn senility), so I can't say one way or the other), but it says nothing about the game as printed, played by its defaults. There, it only makes the Barbarian out as an entitled whiner with a fatal inability to plan.


Except if it's a no magic item game? Your readiness to always chalk it up to entitlement says something about the way you play,

Uh, yeah it does say something about the way I play, and about what I expect from a conversation on the Playground: "RAW / game defaults", where, in 3e, items are a thing, and everyone gets to play their character rather than playing a vestigial appendage to an underperforming action sponge incapable of operating on their own.


I'm just sick of seeing people say "just give X class Y item and it's fine". It promotes the 3.5 narrative of the christmas tree adventurer, and also forces the notion that all magic items need to be available to all characters at all times for the game to be functional, which doesn't work for a whole swathe of the gradient of game themes.

And a realistic WW2 simulator doesn't work for the "superheros who solo an army" theme. Personally, I'm a fan of picking themes that work with the system and the mechanics, rather than complaining that choosing invalid themes makes the system incoherent. And I tend to use words like "expectations" rather than "themes".

Regardless, 3e D&D is a system that does generally require characters to have items. Otherwise, they can't survive underwater / on the elemental plane of fire / wherever else the adventure takes them.

Or, from a less linear/railroady perspective, the game includes items Extrinsic factors that facilitate and enable the characters' ability to go places and do things even when their Intrinsic abilities are lacking.

I own a car. This enables me to have "where I live" and "where I work" be further apart than would be feasible if I walked to work. I consider this Extrinsic ability to be... mostly a good thing? (I mean, it would be super cool if I hand the Intrinsic ability to just Teleport to work every day, right?!) That's the world we live in. I don't see how you can reasonably get upset that people who talk about the real world keep bringing up cars, promoting the Christmas Tree of Commercial Ownership in the Real World, instead of talking about a world where we all can just Teleport to work through our Intrinsic abilities.

I think that the expectation of the theme of "everything is done through Intrinsic Abilities" is misplaced in both the real world, and 3e as written. And, unless the characters are extremely omnicompetent solo characters, I struggle to imagine how an arbitrary party handles adventures that occur under water, in places that are on fire, or even more exotic environs with even greater entry requirements, without utilizing Extrinsic abilities.


The barbarian may never actually ask for anything, but when a weakness of one of the party members is being exploited, it would make sense for the rest of the party to help? If the wizard is being overrun by a bunch of goblins, the barbarian with cleave should come by and drop them all so the wizard is free to cast, but in your mind that would be entitlement on the wizard's behalf?

Remember I said that you had given just the worst scenario? To parallel your example, the Wizard would need to know that the goblins will be attacking the left flank, and choose to position themselves on the left flank, and have the attitude that the Barbarian must come and save them using that Cleave (really? Cleave? not Great Cleave?) ability of theirs, rather than have taken any of the obvious other actions or obvious precautions (like Flight), and regardless of how utterly suboptimal a use of the Barbarian's time that killing the goblins is in this particular scenario (which we'd need to flesh out, like them having half-killed the dragon (and needing to soak AoOs to get to the Wizard), or having the choice between pasting the Archmage LBEG vs clearing out the Goblins for the Wizard).

And, yes, in that scenario, I would call the Wizard entitled, for just expecting such from the Barbarian. What would you call them?


(Again with the entitlement talk) Not ever BBEG fight will take place at at "information games" levels, or even with a bbeg that knows the party is coming. A smart wizard would simply have those things prepared in any case, and maybe have some way to spontaneously convert them if they're not necessary. Who's to say the party doesn't hire an expert marksman at the last moment before the fight anyway?

Look, I can see the LBEG having Flight up and running before the encounter - it has a nice long duration, and is useful when carving that 30' stature of their own ego. But Wind Wall? It's 1 round / level. That's not something he should have up before the fight. Which means that, if the Barbarian isn't begging for buffs, the LBEG never gets their Wind Wall up in the first place vs the counterspell-specialist PC Wizard. Win/win.

Also, again, I've never seen Wind Wall used in real play; if I had, I'd probably just walk away and wait for the duration to expire. Further, your expected optimization level seems all over the place, with Wizards being expected to know every spell and convert them at a moment's notice, but the Barbarian having 0 clues about the existence of flight or ranged attacks. It's no wonder the party is fighting a LBEG at level 6, as I'm not sure how you'd keep things balanced once these omni-competent Wizards got ahold of real spells, if the Barbarian is incapable of growth. (yes, I know that was actually a pretty optimized Barbarian, they just sound dunce-cap levels of suboptimal because of the artificially grayed-out items screen)


They can be used to achieve game balance, but not class balance, and they achieve it through homogenization of characters, and create this unhealthy desire to essentially build a solo character. It also creates a reliance on non-inherent parts of your character, which then in turn makes it "bad sport" for those parts of the character to be specifically targetted.

Game balance. I'll take it.

But, as to your complaints/issues... they're valid, but it's more complicated than that. Senility/sanity willing, I'll show how your statements are equivalent to, "giving characters combat abilities turns them into murderhobos". Sure, there's some connection, but it's not an inherent inevitability - there's more factors at play, and some of those other factors (like "the GM views background NPCs as 'meat hooks' rather than respecting them having any other value") play a bigger role in producing those states.

So, what are your issues? I'm going to break them down a bit, hopefully you won't consider this a straw man of your position.
Solo Characters
The "unhealthy" desire to build solo characters
Reliance on Extrinsic abilities
The ability of Extrinsic abilities to be "targeted"
The response to targeting Extrinsic abilities
The dissonance between CaW and the gentleman's agreement


Actually... before I go through these points, so I don't waste effort, or sound like I'm intentionally strawmanning your position, do you agree with this list? Anything you'd want to add/change?

I will put forth the effort to define a few terms, however - mostly in an effort to evoke a "that's not what I meant" response if I'm... barking up the wrong tree. I think I remembered that phrase correctly.

So, a Solo Character is, surprisingly, a bit tricky to nail down.It could mean a character that could get a roughly 100% rating on the "Same Game Test". It could mean a character designed for a solo adventure, who doesn't need a party. It could mean a character who has a response to every scenario. It could mean a character who is omnicompetent. It could mean a character who is always fun to play, who never has to just stand there doing nothing. It could mean a character who is self-sufficient, who is seldom-to-never a drain on their allies. And there's noticeable overlap between those categories.

Targeting Extrinsic abilities is also tricky to define in a D&D context. Presumably, it means "take away", although it should be noted that supposedly Intrinsic abilities can be taken away in D&D - "ability to cast spells" can be taken away by grappling or antimagic; "ability to attack" can be taken away by grappling or disarming; "ability to sneak" can be "taken away" by opponents with scent or Tremorsense; etc.


and your lack of cooperative spirit.

Dead wrong on this one.

Now, to be fair, I think I'd be sorted into Erudite, not Abnegation (or Dauntless, with "meh, could work" for Candor or Harmony). But plenty of my characters are mechanically buff-bots, enabling me to focus on the roleplaying aspect while others focus on the mechanical side of things. And I hate the competitive aspect of MtG - I much more enjoy team games, like Emperor or 2-headed giant, over free-for-all or standard 1-on-1 play.


It also apparently seems to generate players who want to play entirely on their own, but within the context of other people seeing their "cool stuff", rather than playing the game as a cooperative, team experience.

Speaking of MtG, imagine a team game in MtG. Everyone is playing their own deck, getting to show off their "cool stuff", yes... but the team that actually supports one another, that actually groks teamwork will do much better. So... I don't see those as mutually exclusive; rather, they support one another.

Now, let's imagine that these players keep playing these decks together for a long period of time. There's some weaknesses - like, say, if you're playing a mono-black deck, and you don't have artifact removal - where it's reasonable to expect that other decks might take up that slack. OTOH, if this mono-black deck needs the green deck to enchant their swamps with Wild Growth, because they don't have enough mana, because they only put 7 swamps in the deck? That's more what this Barbarian's ineptitude and lack of answers sounds like (at least from the PoV of 3e; I'm unfamiliar with automatic poverty progression, but, even there, a) bows, mounts, etc make the Barbarian's needs questionable; b) the likely TPK if the Wizard doesn't counterspell the LBEG makes the Barbarian's needs unimportant).


I dunno, to me this sounds like a healer player in an mmo saying "just because your class can't heal, doesn't mean you're entitled to my healing" in the middle of a dungeon run. It's not entitlement, you're playing a team game, you're supposed to be working together.

More "Just because your class can heal, I'm devoting myself 100% to what I enjoy doing with the character, and forcing you to spend all your actions healing whenever I tell you, because I don't care about your fun, or what you wanted to do with the character."

Imagine if the Whirling Frenzy blah blah blah Barbarian class had a healing ability, and the Wizard insisted (demanded, expected, had a player who posted online about what a **** the Wizard was for not suicidally buffing them in the fight against the LBEG, whatever) that your character stayed within 5' of them, to heal them if they took damage, even if it would be tactically optimal for you to go paste the monster.

That's the "entitlement" I'm talking about, demanding others act a certain way without care for their fun, or for the big picture.


A fiancé is man who is engaged to be married. One way that French words specify gender is with their endings. In this case, the extra E at the end of fiancée indicates that the betrothed is a woman. You will find this all over the place in the French language.

Well, that's a bit of a difference. Won't that be a Slaanesh-worthy surprise on their wedding night! :smalleek::smallbiggrin:

[martixy]

And so does everyone else care about their lines, which is how you get to balance.
Non sequitur.



I don't believe you. I just flat don't believe that you'd be perfectly happy with another character who could do all the things your character does but better and for free. Perhaps you are fundamentally different from myself and every with which I have played personally, but simply being competent is almost never sufficient. You have to exercise that competence, and some level of balance is necessary for that to happen (or deliberate sandbagging by the rest of the party, but that's really just ad hoc balancing).
We already covered the concept of ability and opportunity.



This is just Oberoni Fallacy-ing the problem. You want a thing (for everyone to have an opportunity to use their skills). The natural way to get that thing is to have the rules provide it (by making it mechanically optimal for different people to use different skills at different times, which we call balance). If the rules don't provide it, you can sorta pretend they do, but it's not really clear to me how that's anything less than a general argument that you don't need rules.
You've misinterpreted the fallacy and/or my response. I do not claim it's not a problem. I claim it's a problem that can also be solved other ways.




This is like saying effective spinal surgery is the reason you don't care about seatbelts.
How effective are we talking about? Because yes, I might not care. In a world like the movie Surrogates, totally don't care about seatbelts.


Unfortunately my will to argue any of this has drained completely and you'll see no more responses from me on the topic. Cherio.

[Crake]

Since this back and forth is getting rather bloated, I'm not going to address everything in your post, or else I'll probably pass the character limit. Let me address a few key points.


Regardless, 3e D&D is a system that does generally require characters to have items. Otherwise, they can't survive underwater / on the elemental plane of fire / wherever else the adventure takes them.

Characters in both previous and future iterations of the game have managed to do well enough without the reliance on items. To a degree, items for plot reasons can make sense, if the players know they need to go to the elemental plane of fire, it wouldn't be unreasonable to give them rings of fire resistance, likely as part of the plot, same goes in general for any sort of plot device. Or, if not items, then finding a means to ritual cast something like that one spell that gives you the fire subtype permanently, or location feats that give you the shape soulmeld feat for a soulmeld that gives fire resistance. Being able to survive on the elemental plane of fire in the first place would become a sub-plot, rather than something that's just "oh, we go and buy some rings of fire protection from the local magic-mart".


6th level party? 9th level "BBEG" (LBEG)? Boy, have I ever got to recalibrate my expectations here. Even "9th level Archmage" isn't something I can say with a straight face (prestige class notwithstanding).

Campaigns going from level 1-6 with short, local, personal level stories are totally within scope of a dnd game. Not every big bad has to be world spanning, reality threatening mega characters. I know most of my players actually rather dislike high level play because it gets rather convoluted, and so disconnected that they don't feel a connection to anything.


Lesser Rod of Chaining Hold Person the party, and Quickened Charm Person on anyone who made their save.

The no magic items thing swings both ways, the BBEG wouldn't have a lesser rod of chaining.


Anyway, while that's not exactly unique to your table, it's not the default gameplay, either. So (unless I missed context, which is... not unlikely), it's not exactly fair to expect that everyone's talking about a no items automatic progression game.

I'm aware it's not default gameplay, that's part of my point. I'm demonstrating that lack of items does not intrinsically break the game to it's core, it simply requires the party to be more interlinked, and the DM to not pit the party against anything they cant handle without also giving them room to escape, prepare, and reengage at a later time. As said before, items can still be used as a plot device, but I don't think they should ever be "I need this magic item to handle myself".


Anyway, in this variant, are item creation feats (which are an Intrinsic ability to produce such Extrinsic abilities) still a thing?

I allow magic item crafting, yes, however, I don't allow you to just waltz into town and "buy 10,000gp worth of magic item crafting materials", and start crafting whatever. Crafting magic items becomes a plot thing, you'd need to go out and find materials relevant to what you want to make. For example, with the elemental plane of fire, perhaps you would want to craft something with fire resistance, you could go hunt salamanders, and create a suit of salamander scale armor using the best scales that you find, and that can be imbued with fire resistance.


However, hand me some shape sand, let me create a modern weapon I'm proficient in, and I can demonstrate that I'm a fair shot - possibly better than these apparently 6th level characters. Hand us some potions, and we can Fly, or Polymorph, or have more HP, or gain any number of other abilities.

Look, don't get me wrong, I love the idea of a toolkit that can cover your bases, and there's actually a tonne of great items to cover that, even at mundane/alchemical levels. I will be honest that I have taken liberties on making some wondrous items like silversheen, universal solvent, and sovereign glue into mundane, alchemical items. But things like cyrite for overcoming magic DR, serrenwood for striking ghosts, auran masks can cover things like limited water breathing, healing salves (the alchemical item from tome and blood, not the magic item from MIC), firestones, thunderstones, acid and alchemical fire are just a handful of fun alchemical items that can produce all manner of useful effects.

Heck, in my campaign setting, I even have an alchemical item called weirdstone water, which is collected from a river that was infused with weirdstone effects to create an area that was planar locked to close a planar rift to the shadow plane. People gather the water into flasks, and you can use it like a vial of acid. If it hits, the target cannot teleport until they wash themselves off.


Speaking of MtG, imagine a team game in MtG. Everyone is playing their own deck, getting to show off their "cool stuff", yes... but the team that actually supports one another, that actually groks teamwork will do much better. So... I don't see those as mutually exclusive; rather, they support one another.

Now, let's imagine that these players keep playing these decks together for a long period of time. There's some weaknesses - like, say, if you're playing a mono-black deck, and you don't have artifact removal - where it's reasonable to expect that other decks might take up that slack. OTOH, if this mono-black deck needs the green deck to enchant their swamps with Wild Growth, because they don't have enough mana, because they only put 7 swamps in the deck? That's more what this Barbarian's ineptitude and lack of answers sounds like (at least from the PoV of 3e; I'm unfamiliar with automatic poverty progression, but, even there, a) bows, mounts, etc make the Barbarian's needs questionable; b) the likely TPK if the Wizard doesn't counterspell the LBEG makes the Barbarian's needs unimportant).

In the MtG analogy: If there were two teams of players, one team had built synergistically such that each can focus on the features of their deck that they excel at, vs a team that each play individually with a common goal, that overlap in capabilities just for the sake of not having to rely on their team mate, I would root for the former.

The way you word it, I can tell you're trying to make it sound bad, but two decks that are built around each other and synergize will have an advantage over two decks that are just standard solo decks.

The more you specialize into your given role, the better you will be at it, but the less room you'll have to cover other bases, but if your team as a whole builds their characters together, you can, as a unit, cover all the bases, without each individual having to cover all those bases themselves. That's the nature of synergy and specialization.

[RandomPeasant]

Being able to survive on the elemental plane of fire in the first place would become a sub-plot, rather than something that's just "oh, we go and buy some rings of fire protection from the local magic-mart".

There's a limitation to that, though. It's reasonable to have situations where "the adventuring location is exotic" is a meaningful driver of the plot, and you have to go out and do some stuff to deal with that. But it's also reasonable to have situations where the adventuring location being exotic is just background scenery, because characters have progressed to the point that "fire world" doesn't have to be a big deal. Obviously you can accomplish that without items, but "we can just buy the gear" is an easy solution to that problem.


The way you word it, I can tell you're trying to make it sound bad, but two decks that are built around each other and synergize will have an advantage over two decks that are just standard solo decks.

I think this is much stronger in the abstract than it is in practice, at least as it pertains to 3e. Yes, synergy is good, and covering your bases helps. But synergy is good because it makes you more powerful overall, and in many cases in 3e the amount of power you get by just doing "your thing, but more" is going to be larger than you'd get from synergy. You could build a party where one guy was a War Weaver and he buffed three other characters with various martial builds at very high efficiency to make them better at doing their things. That party would have a lot of synergy. But would it really be any better than a party that was just four casters who had gone out and found the most individually-degenerate things to do with their builds?

[Crake]

But would it really be any better than a party that was just four casters who had gone out and found the most individually-degenerate things to do with their builds?

This statement is based on an argument of "caster>barbarian", which as I have stated earlier in the thread, is not relevant to this conversation. Four casters who do individually degenerate things is weaker than four casters who degenerate as a group. The argument remains the same regardless of what pieces you have. Using the pieces in synergy is better than making all the pieces stand alone.

[Quertus]

The way you word it, I can tell you're trying to make it sound bad,

This is, I believe, the one most important thing for me to address: no, I'm not trying to make it (specialization, having a niche, playing a defined color in MtG, whatever) sound bad. I'm trying to distinguish between good implementations and bad implementations thereof - thus the "black deck that can't destroy artifacts" vs "black deck that absolutely has to have a mana boost because it's only playing 7 lands". And my point was, your Barbarian finding himself helpless against the most telegraphed threat, the BBEG LBEG, and needing help in ways that his "deck color" shouldn't have needed help, especially when the specifics of the scenario involve utterly gutting the very important usefulness of the other decks, was a bad implementation thereof.

I mean, I agree with an awful lot of your sentiment, and, once I got past "that's not how you do things in 3e", I loved a lot of your implementation of Automatic Poverty Progression, especially the idea of making things a quest over simply picking things up at a store. That really puts the magic back in magic, in a lot of ways.

But in taking issue with how this seemed the absolutely worst example you could have possibly used to try to make your point, and from your explanations about how you run your Automatic Poverty Progression mod to 3e, I feel I've learned a thing or two about designing types of games / mods I'd never considered before.

I just still disagree that, in that one very specific scenario, it is likely that the Wizard's best course of action is to assist the Barbarian, rather than that the Barbarian should have made themselves as useful as possible and let the Wizard do their thing. Because even if that LBEG is an illusion, or has a Contingent Teleport, or has custom spells (or RAW 2e jank) that lets them control the Barbarian when they try to attack, or starts Blinking (through Contingency, or is already through the effects of an item they found or created themselves) or self-duplicates with Mirror Image (through Contingency), or whatever other defensive trick they might pull before they pull out a legal under your rules Rod of Chaining that they themselves found or crafted, or some other TPK-inducing, LBEG-worthy trick, that readied action to counter their spell should still be useful, whereas the Barbarian's charge might well not be. (I may not be used to Wind Wall, but I have seen and used lots of other defensive measures, and I kinda expect a... "whirling frenzy pounce barbarian" is likely up against a fairly high-op LBEG (even if I myself don't tailor the optimization level of the campaign to the PCs, I do recognize that most people do)).

So while I may generally agree with your point, I think that the example you chose happens to fall flat, because it's simultaneously just about the worst possible time for the Wizard to be empowering the Barbarian (opening the party up for a TPK), and just about the best possible time for the party to have planned for, and a Barbarian with even an ounce of competence and self-sufficiency to not need the Wizard's help in the first place.

Even at 6th level, in Automatic Poverty Progression world.

That said... I'm struggling to decide... no, to understand? to map my experiences to Automatic Poverty Progression world. That is, IME, 6th level Wizards don't generally memorize Flight / cast Flight on their party members. And 6th level characters don't normally "fight the BBEG". So I'm struggling to find "6th level characters go into a planned fight against a powerful enemy Wizard" experience to reference. Perhaps more importantly, I'm struggling to translate into "potentially workable 3e with 'no' items", to know whether, even if a Wizard did prepare one or more buffs with their very limited highest level spell slots, whether "Flight" or "Haste" would be better for a pouncing Barbarian... and/or the rest of the party. That is, I'm struggling to imagine whether it's reasonable to expect that the Wizard would even know the spell that would be most useful to buff the Barbarian with, let alone choose to memorize a copy of it over Dispel Magic (which is the best way to assist the Barbarian in some instances of this setup) when going up against a Wizard LBEG.

I know what I would do with "Generic Wizard in normal 3e" based on parties I've been in. I know what my individual characters would do based on RP considerations. I just don't know how a generic Wizard's tactics might have evolved in Automatic Poverty Progression world. Would they favor giving the Barbarian a 50%-100% damage boost against ground forces (and, technically, the same boost with the bow they'd introduce the Barbarian to against ranged / flying foes), or would they favor the more general-purpose if less impressive Flight, or ignore them both in favor of other 3rd level spells? Honestly, I think, based on "MtG color" principles, I lean towards "Haste" as a buff, since it's so very strong in this (general, not specific) scenario, and because "dealing with things at range" sounds like "the artillery's Wizard's job", what their spells were designed for in the first place.

[Crake]

This is, I believe, the one most important thing for me to address: no, I'm not trying to make it (specialization, having a niche, playing a defined color in MtG, whatever) sound bad. I'm trying to distinguish between good implementations and bad implementations thereof - thus the "black deck that can't destroy artifacts" vs "black deck that absolutely has to have a mana boost because it's only playing 7 lands". And my point was, your Barbarian finding himself helpless against the most telegraphed threat, the BBEG LBEG, and needing help in ways that his "deck color" shouldn't have needed help, especially when the specifics of the scenario involve utterly gutting the very important usefulness of the other decks, was a bad implementation thereof.

I mean, I agree with an awful lot of your sentiment, and, once I got past "that's not how you do things in 3e", I loved a lot of your implementation of Automatic Poverty Progression, especially the idea of making things a quest over simply picking things up at a store. That really puts the magic back in magic, in a lot of ways.

But in taking issue with how this seemed the absolutely worst example you could have possibly used to try to make your point, and from your explanations about how you run your Automatic Poverty Progression mod to 3e, I feel I've learned a thing or two about designing types of games / mods I'd never considered before.

I just still disagree that, in that one very specific scenario, it is likely that the Wizard's best course of action is to assist the Barbarian, rather than that the Barbarian should have made themselves as useful as possible and let the Wizard do their thing. Because even if that LBEG is an illusion, or has a Contingent Teleport, or has custom spells (or RAW 2e jank) that lets them control the Barbarian when they try to attack, or starts Blinking (through Contingency, or is already through the effects of an item they found or created themselves) or self-duplicates with Mirror Image (through Contingency), or whatever other defensive trick they might pull before they pull out a legal under your rules Rod of Chaining that they themselves found or crafted, or some other TPK-inducing, LBEG-worthy trick, that readied action to counter their spell should still be useful, whereas the Barbarian's charge might well not be. (I may not be used to Wind Wall, but I have seen and used lots of other defensive measures, and I kinda expect a... "whirling frenzy pounce barbarian" is likely up against a fairly high-op LBEG (even if I myself don't tailor the optimization level of the campaign to the PCs, I do recognize that most people do)).

So while I may generally agree with your point, I think that the example you chose happens to fall flat, because it's simultaneously just about the worst possible time for the Wizard to be empowering the Barbarian (opening the party up for a TPK), and just about the best possible time for the party to have planned for, and a Barbarian with even an ounce of competence and self-sufficiency to not need the Wizard's help in the first place.

Even at 6th level, in Automatic Poverty Progression world.

That said... I'm struggling to decide... no, to understand? to map my experiences to Automatic Poverty Progression world. That is, IME, 6th level Wizards don't generally memorize Flight / cast Flight on their party members. And 6th level characters don't normally "fight the BBEG". So I'm struggling to find "6th level characters go into a planned fight against a powerful enemy Wizard" experience to reference. Perhaps more importantly, I'm struggling to translate into "potentially workable 3e with 'no' items", to know whether, even if a Wizard did prepare one or more buffs with their very limited highest level spell slots, whether "Flight" or "Haste" would be better for a pouncing Barbarian... and/or the rest of the party. That is, I'm struggling to imagine whether it's reasonable to expect that the Wizard would even know the spell that would be most useful to buff the Barbarian with, let alone choose to memorize a copy of it over Dispel Magic (which is the best way to assist the Barbarian in some instances of this setup) when going up against a Wizard LBEG.

I know what I would do with "Generic Wizard in normal 3e" based on parties I've been in. I know what my individual characters would do based on RP considerations. I just don't know how a generic Wizard's tactics might have evolved in Automatic Poverty Progression world. Would they favor giving the Barbarian a 50%-100% damage boost against ground forces (and, technically, the same boost with the bow they'd introduce the Barbarian to against ranged / flying foes), or would they favor the more general-purpose if less impressive Flight, or ignore them both in favor of other 3rd level spells? Honestly, I think, based on "MtG color" principles, I lean towards "Haste" as a buff, since it's so very strong in this (general, not specific) scenario, and because "dealing with things at range" sounds like "the artillery's Wizard's job", what their spells were designed for in the first place.

Well, in fairness, the scenario wasn't one that I concocted, it was an example another user brought up in response to my initial assertion, likely, as you said, trying to find a worst case scenario.

I'm not saying flight is the only answer, but in any case, the answer may well lie completely out of the barbarian's capability to prepare for. Dispelling the enemy archmage's buffs (flight included), could well be another answer to the problem, perhaps getting the ranged character some cyrite tipped arrows (to pierce through protection from arrows) so they can focus on interrupting the archmage's spells, while you focus on dispelling instead of countering, whatever it might happen to be. Whatever the solution is, the point is that it doesn't need to involve items, as long as you and your party plan accordingly and play in a way that enables each other.

[Promethean]

Agree to disagree then I guess. The sheer abundance of magic items is by far my biggest gripe with the system. 5e has had massive success by significantly limiting the presence of magic items in the game and as a result encouraging more interparty dynamics rather than everyone trying to be a one man island.

Okay, slight tangent from the argument, but this stuck out to me.

This is just wrong.

One of the Biggest Gripes most people have with 5e is the lack of magic items. It's a common complaint because at the end of the adventure when the players ask "what do we get?" the game throws up its hands and non-committedly says "I dunno, here's some gold with nothing to really spend it on". Even people people who love the recognize the lack of loot as a major problem.

5e is successful because it's 3e simplified to the point that a new person can make a character in 30 minutes and be playing the same day without missing a beat. It's success is not to do with the way it handles magic items and I would go as far as to say it's successful In Spite of it's terrible handling of magic items.

[Crake]

5e is successful because it's 3e simplified to the point that a new person can make a character in 30 minutes and be playing the same day without missing a beat. It's success is not to do with the way it handles magic items and I would go as far as to say it's successful In Spite of it's terrible handling of magic items.

You don't think removing probably half of the biggest choices (if not more) of character creation counted toward that simplification? There's sooo much minmaxing that goes into magic items, and the way 3.5 handled it it created an expectation that magic items would practically be falling from the sky, or buyable around every corner.

Also, I'm not sure I've ever heard people complain about the lack of magic items in 5e, except for people who have played 3.5e. They're super happy when they get one, but they aren't EXPECTING one. Also, most people will spend those vast amounts of gold on rp stuff, like buying land, or a castle, or a base of operations or whatever.

[Promethean]

You don't think removing probably half of the biggest choices (if not more) of character creation counted toward that simplification? There's sooo much minmaxing that goes into magic items, and the way 3.5 handled it it created an expectation that magic items would practically be falling from the sky, or buyable around every corner.

Most games in general already build that expectation. I'd imagine most 5e players have played a video game before, and comparitively, 5e is the odd one out for Not giving out magic loot every encounter.

3.5 players are honestly such a small minority of 5e players at that I don't think most players know, or care, that 3.pf exists. 5e is just "D&D" to them.

I bring that up because it means most players perspectives are going to have Nothing to do with 3.5. What 3.5 did to set expectations doesn't matter, most 5e players don't play it.



Also, I'm not sure I've ever heard people complain about the lack of magic items in 5e, except for people who have played 3.5e. They're super happy when they get one, but they aren't EXPECTING one. Also, most people will spend those vast amounts of gold on rp stuff, like buying land, or a castle, or a base of operations or whatever.


I here it all the time on d&d 5e/next reddit, in giantitps own 5e forumns, in the gaming stores I go to, at conventions, when I play with friends who DGAF about 3.5, etc.

If you've never heard the complaints, IDK what to tell you. Complaints about lack of magic items is up there with DMs complaining how they have to explain "This isn't Skyrim" to new players.

[Crake]

Most games in general already build that expectation. I'd imagine most 5e players have played a video game before, and comparitively, 5e is the odd one out for Not giving out magic loot every encounter.

3.5 players are honestly such a small minority of 5e players at that I don't think most players know, or care, that 3.pf exists. 5e is just "D&D" to them.

I bring that up because it means most players perspectives are going to have Nothing to do with 3.5. What 3.5 did to set expectations doesn't matter, most 5e players don't play it.




I here it all the time on d&d 5e/next reddit, in giantitps own 5e forumns, in the gaming stores I go to, at conventions, when I play with friends who DGAF about 3.5, etc.

If you've never heard the complaints, IDK what to tell you. Complaints about lack of magic items is up there with DMs complaining how they have to explain "This isn't Skyrim" to new players.

Sounds more to me like theres some overlap between the sorts of people who discuss dnd online and people who want to play around with character builds, which includes magic items. The vast majority of dnd players will probably never post let alone even read a dnd related forum in their life, meanwhile, those that do, are more concerned with the mechanics than others, so it would make sense that those who engage in discussion forums would want more access to magic items.

In practise though, I’ve played and observed enough 5e games to feel confident in not calling my observation an isolated incident or an anecdote. How often have you heard players in the wild complain about it? Because discussion forums are a rather biased indicator.

The complaint I hear the most is actually that character building is boring, and that there are levels where you literally get nothing but hp, which makes for an unfun level up experience.

Also, the mention of 3.5 players is because we’re on the 3.5 forums, so its not unreasonable to imagine, if you play with a core group of friends, that they too might have played 3.5. Also, because the 3.5 generation probably introduced a lot of 5e players into the hobby, who then impressed their expectations of how a game should run, which then further perpetuates as they introduce other people, and while youre right that this is probably a minority, i expect this minority is probably the sorts of people you would be interacting with due to your overlapping exposure.

[RandomPeasant]

This statement is based on an argument of "caster>barbarian", which as I have stated earlier in the thread, is not relevant to this conversation. Four casters who do individually degenerate things is weaker than four casters who degenerate as a group. The argument remains the same regardless of what pieces you have. Using the pieces in synergy is better than making all the pieces stand alone.

No it's not. You get the exact same dynamic if you're talking about "a War Weaver buffs a martial Cleric, a Druid, and a gish Sorcerer" versus "a Wizard, a Cleric, a Druid, and a Sorcerer optimize individually". The point is that "optimizing for synergy" is just a form of optimizing, and it may or may not have higher returns for any other form of optimizing. You can improve performance by picking options that help everybody else so that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts, but you can also improve performance by just performing better so that the sum of the parts is a larger number.


You don't think removing probably half of the biggest choices (if not more) of character creation counted toward that simplification? There's sooo much minmaxing that goes into magic items, and the way 3.5 handled it it created an expectation that magic items would practically be falling from the sky, or buyable around every corner.

Honestly that's not the problem I'd identify with magic items in 3e. The issue is, IMO, that figuring out how much plus to put on your sword or your armor or your amulet isn't interesting except as a tedious bit of numeric fiddling. You want a bigger number, and the item with a bigger number is not meaningfully different from the smaller numbers except that it's bigger. It seems to me that there's an obvious middle ground where you get less magic items, but they do things that are more interesting.

[Promethean]

Sounds more to me like theres some overlap between the sorts of people who discuss dnd online and people who want to play around with character builds, which includes magic items. The vast majority of dnd players will probably never post let alone even read a dnd related forum in their life, meanwhile, those that do, are more concerned with the mechanics than others, so it would make sense that those who engage in discussion forums would want more access to magic items.

A bit of a fallacious assumption considering the prevelance of social media in everyday life.

I don't think there's a person in the US, canada, or europe who hasn't heard of reddit. Is it really that much of a logical leap to think the average 5e player at least Browses the main d&d subreddit?

If there's a tendency for people on d&d related social media to complain about lack of loot, I think it's a common issue.



In practise though, I’ve played and observed enough 5e games to feel confident in not calling my observation an isolated incident or an anecdote. How often have you heard players in the wild complain about it? Because discussion forums are a rather biased indicator.

Any time I went to a convention. I DM booths for 5e either for adventure events or small scale and it's common to hear people wishing for more magic items, loot, or not really having anything to spend gold on between sessions.



The complaint I hear the most is actually that character building is boring, and that there are levels where you literally get nothing but hp, which makes for an unfun level up experience.

That's very much number one on the complaint list.

Granted, it doesn't stop people from looking at me like I grew a second head whenever I suggest a different edition or other system entirely.



Also, the mention of 3.5 players is because we’re on the 3.5 forums, so its not unreasonable to imagine, if you play with a core group of friends, that they too might have played 3.5. Also, because the 3.5 generation probably introduced a lot of 5e players into the hobby, who then impressed their expectations of how a game should run, which then further perpetuates as they introduce other people, and while youre right that this is probably a minority, i expect this minority is probably the sorts of people you would be interacting with due to your overlapping exposure.

I Wish I had a core friend group who likes 3.5.

I'm the odd one out for actually trying out other systems than 5e.

[Crake]

A bit of a fallacious assumption considering the prevelance of social media in everyday life.

I don't think there's a person in the US, canada, or europe who hasn't heard of reddit. Is it really that much of a logical leap to think the average 5e player at least Browses the main d&d subreddit?

If there's a tendency for people on d&d related social media to complain about lack of loot, I think it's a common issue.

No, I'm saying that there's a silent majority of people who just play and enjoy the game and don't post on those boards. They may be aware of them, they may occasionally browse them for funny stories, but they don't post on them saying that everything is fine in their games. There's a propensity for people to amplify things they are unhappy with, but you won't hear from the people who ARE happy with the game as is, because they aren't going to post about it.


Any time I went to a convention. I DM booths for 5e either for adventure events or small scale and it's common to hear people wishing for more magic items, loot, or not really having anything to spend gold on between sessions.

I dunno what the demographic would be of conventions, but again, I imagine it's a bit more of a hardcore demographic.


That's very much number one on the complaint list.

Granted, it doesn't stop people from looking at me like I grew a second head whenever I suggest a different edition or other system entirely.

People tend to prefer what they're familiar with, you'd probably be better off making adjustments to 5e to make it more like 3.5, than actually trying to drag them all the way over to 3.5


I Wish I had a core friend group who likes 3.5.

I'm the odd one out for actually trying out other systems than 5e.

Well, if you actually wanna play 3.5, your best bet will be to put on the DM hat.