I finally understood the caster/martial divide

[King of Nowhere]

everyone talks of how strong casters are, and how martials cannot have nice things, and how utterly powerless are the poor martials against magic.
I always saw it as a huge exaggeration, martials in my world have plenty of tricks.
but then, I always played high magic, high wealth campaigns.

for a short campaign, the dm told us to make 14th level characters with 300k gp as starting wealth. which is already significantly above wbl.
let's start with a +5 weapon. actually, i have a build requiring a double weapon, so I have 2 weapons. getting it +5/+5 would require 100k gp, one third of my total wealth. better keep it +4.
I need a magical shield, armor, various trinkets. a belt of strenght +6, something I always take as a given in any martial build, eats up a signficant chunk of what I have left.
Despite a cloak of resistance +5, I still have low will save; I need a continuous protection from evil effect, if I don't want to be easy prey for any enchanter. by raw it would cost 2k, but we all agree it's one of those cases where the guidelines don't work; eventually we decide 25k would be a reasonable price. And to afford it, I already have to sacrifice some of my +5 stuff and get it only to +4.
I need teleport, to get out of forcecages. see invisibility is a must. true sight would be cool. flight. death ward. freedom of movement. And I'm sure I'm forgetting a lot of things. And it's all so damn expensive!
I got used to illusion becoming virtually useless in my campaign because there are items that give true sight for limited duration, swift activation, and everyone had them past a certain level. nope, anything like that is too expensive. If I want to hit things, I can't afford any of that stuff. Even if I spent all my money on that kind of utility, I'd still leave myself open to some effects.
I bought some potions, it's the best I can do.
If an invisible opponent attacks me, he gets a surprise round, and then if I'm still alive I need to drink a potion of see invisibility and then the enemy gets a second round, and I don't really think I can survive that. if I'm attacked by someone invisible I'm dead, I'm drinking the potion only to remove some loot from my killer.
I have absolutely zero answers to mirror image. A first level spell screws me up entirely, and there's nothing I can do. I could buy dust of apparition? very expensive, and I'd have to waste a round to use it.
Flying opponent? I'd have to waste a round drinking a potion. Then dispelling the potion would be trivial.
I don't even remember the last time someone tried web in my campaign, freedom of movement being commonplace. I could not afford it.

I am level 14, well above wbl guidelines I don't have any defence for any of a bunch of low level spells, because while there are counters for that, they are all too expensive. Even for the stuff I do have defences for, it generally requires me to spend rounds taking potions. meaning that by the time I get to act, the combat will be probably already decided. I could at least afford to not become a pupper for the first enchanter passing by, but that's all.

So, I now finally understand what it is like to play in a normal campaign, limited by wbl, and not having access to any of the neat stuff that used to keep the martials in the same league of casters.
And I appreciate high magic even more

[Biggus]

but then, I always played high magic, high wealth campaigns.

for a short campaign, the dm told us to make 14th level characters with 300k gp as starting wealth. which is already significantly above wbl.


I'm curious, if double standard WBL feels low to you, how much do you usually have at level 14?



I got used to illusion becoming virtually useless in my campaign because there are items that give true sight for limited duration, swift activation, and everyone had them past a certain level. nope,

The Scout's Headband (MIC p.132) gives See Invisibility for 10 minutes or True Seeing for 1 minute (once per day) for 3,400GP. It's a standard action to activate though.

[pabelfly]

There's a lot to go over here. A lot of this seems to be going from a situation where you had enough money to have everything, to not. But there's some stuff we can still discuss.

Low will saves:
Martials have a bunch of decent options to deal with low will saves. Here's a few:
- Fighters get Resolute ACF. With this, the Fighter should have the best Will save of the party. A lot of mundane fighters can easily fit in two levels of Fighter.
- Moment of Perfect Mind. One manoeuvre or a martial study feat and you can roll a Concentration check instead of a Will save once per encounter.
- Paladins get Divine Grace. Serenity is an option if you don't want the Charisma stat. Crusader also has a weaker version of this.
- Characters with Endurance can pick up the Steadfast Determination feat and dump Will entirely. I'm partial to Frostblood Orc and Frostblood Half-Orc.
- Pick martials/gishes with high Will saves or High WIS score requirements. I like Psychic Warrior, but Ardent and Binder are options too. I'm forgetting a bunch I'm sure.

If you can't do that, there are various items that help mitigate poor will saves.



Hitting things: You shouldn't have any trouble hitting things. Besides templates that greatly boost your STR for just 1 LA, this has a lot of different solutions: https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?134446-3-5-Person_Man-s-Guide-to-Optimizing-To-Hit


I'd also look at cheaper item options for what you want on this thread: https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?187851-3-5-Lists-of-Necessary-Magic-Items. This thread will help you optimize how you spend your money and may be helpful here.

[Twurps]

everyone talks of how strong casters are, and how martials cannot have nice things, and how utterly powerless are the poor martials against magic.
I always saw it as a huge exaggeration, martials in my world have plenty of tricks.
but then, I always played high magic, high wealth campaigns.
.....
So, I now finally understand what it is like to play in a normal campaign, limited by wbl, and not having access to any of the neat stuff that used to keep the martials in the same league of casters.
And I appreciate high magic even more

Shouldn't it be the high WBL that you now appreciate, instead of the high magic? or are those intertwined?

Nothing wrong with high magic, but have you considered it's because of the high magic that you need the high wealth? I've played in plenty a campaign at/below WBL, and our martials did just fine. Then again Force-cages were never a thing, invisible opponents extremely rare, death effects non-existend or far forewarned, etc.
Low magic low WBL I guess. works equally fine.

[KillianHawkeye]

No answer for mirror image? You're a level 14 martial character with a double weapon, you've got 5 or 6 attacks in a Full-Attack? That's your answer!

Spend a round drinking a potion? No, spend a round Full-Attacking!

[Darg]

Most of the things mentioned are solved just by having a party that supports one another.

A custom 2 per day overland flight item that lasts 9 hours each time is only 32,400 for basically all day flight.

A death ward scroll is 700
PfE potion is 50 gp
See invis isn't a valid option for a potion, scroll or wand for 150 each scroll or 4500 for the wand for 1500 min of up time. Getting it extended only costs 50% more for 100% more time.
FoM is able to be made into a potion for 1500.

The blind fight feat can help you defeat mirror image if you close your eyes when you attack. It also helps against gazers.

The DM is supposed to keep you stocked up on wealth even as you spend consumable wealth. So relying on consumables for things you know you'll need is generally a cheaper option than simply buying reusable or permanent items. You only need 1 rank to UMD and a +10 competence bonus item is only 10,000. Wear it when you use your wand.

[Crake]

I think your issue is youre trying to make yourself a one man island. You want a solution to all the problems, all the time. Casters cant do that either. Sure they can prepare spells for any given encounter, but they arent getting permanent see invis anymore than you are.

Also, since protection from evil is 1min/level, by raw a continuous item would be 4k, not 2k. However, im 90% sure theres like, a battle standard or something that has it as an actual effect somewhere.

Anyway, point is, I dont see how this is particularly indicative of the martial/caster divide.

[KillianHawkeye]

Casters cant do that either. Sure they can prepare spells for any given encounter, but they arent getting permanent see invis anymore than you are.

Permanency + See Invisibility is pretty trivial for a 14th level Wizard...

[King of Nowhere]

I'm curious, if double standard WBL feels low to you, how much do you usually have at level 14?

Frankly, I'm not sure. Never tracked it, and I don't have any old datasheet at the relevant level.
When I am dm, my campaigns have npcs as main enemies, and every time you defeat them, you get their gear, so you get stuff pretty fast.
I did check my data on npcs, and I gave 250-300k to 13th level generic npcs (no, my campaign does not pop generic 13th level people out of bushes; but it is assumed that a major empire would be able to gather a couple dozens of those in case of need, with one 20th level group to serve as main antagonist and a couple groups in the 15th-17th range). boss level npcs - people with names, backstories, and an agenda - usually had more.
I would wager by level 14 the party wealth was between 500k and one million each.
And when I was player, the campaign started with the intention of keeping with the wbl, but then we started taking detours and side quests, and to avoid getting all to level 20 too fast we slowed down xp progression; we still got loot, though, so we gradually went overboard.



Hitting things: You shouldn't have any trouble hitting things.

I suppose +24 on a two-handed build (with the option to use stormguard warrior to really pump myself for a second round) is fine at level 14 by most standards. it's certainly enough to hit normal monsters from the manual.
Hosting a high wealth campaign that lasted two years, though, skewed my perception. Everyone could afford to spend a lot on protective items, and AC well above 30 were common at those levels. my generic npcs have listed ac between 34 and 39. And for the last year the party was level 17+ with extra plot buffs, and I was just used to consider any AC lower than 40 equal to instant death against a full attack.
Yeah, +24 will be fine in this campaign. I'll just have to get used to it:smallbiggrin:


Shouldn't it be the high WBL that you now appreciate, instead of the high magic? or are those intertwined?

I see those as interwined, at least in my campaign. the society has advanced to the industrial age, public schools diplomate swarms of low level casters, and magic items are aplenty, hence adventurers get more magic items. That's my in-world justification for 10th level people running around with +5 swords.
However, now that you point it out, the other campaign - where I was a player - was still high wealth, but the world was less wealthy. Which made the party more powerful in comparison.


Nothing wrong with high magic, but have you considered it's because of the high magic that you need the high wealth? I've played in plenty a campaign at/below WBL, and our martials did just fine. Then again Force-cages were never a thing, invisible opponents extremely rare, death effects non-existend or far forewarned, etc.
Low magic low WBL I guess. works equally fine.
More or less, you are correct. My campaign needs the high wealth because the party is expected to face high level npc parties on a regular basis, and in this kind of direct confrontation the caster-martial divide would be more evident. In a more normal campaign where most enemies are monsters with little to no tricks, it matters a lot less.

Heck, my gaming group is made of good people, we are all cooperative, it's not like I actually need to be able to face a full array of caster tricks. my casters will easily cast the necessary buffs on me without complaining that I'm stealing their build resources - probably remarking something like "no need to waste my high level slots on those paesants" or "don't bother me for anything with a CR lower than X". they are not going to try and bully me because their character could kill my character easily.
It's just that I always took for granted that a martial would be immune to all the common "I win" tricks and would be, if still less powerful than a caster, at least capable of giving some serious troubles to one. And now suddenly I understood why people consider martials to be nearly powerless against an optimized wizard instead.

[Anthrowhale]

My experience with martials is that it is possible for them to keep up with game most of the time, but it requires some fairly significant optimization to do so. Some examples: Team Mundane (https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?635794-Team-Mundane), Whale Wrestler (https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?632927-The-Whale-Wrestler-an-AMF-Grappler) and the Core Fighter 20 (https://forums.giantitp.com/showsinglepost.php?p=22350680&postcount=1481). It also helps quite a bit to have spellcasters around willing to buff.

[Maat Mons]

I have a certain fondness for Paladin of Freedom for martial builds. At 3rd level, you gain immunity to Compulsions instead of immunity to Fear. You can regain Fear immunity with, e.g., the Fearless regional feat. If you can tolerate the loss of Turn Undead, Dragon 349 has the Aura of Sanctity ACF, which gives you immunity to Death effects. Admittedly, you’d have then invested four levels and a feat just to cover some basic vulnerabilities.

But yes, level 14 is well past where I’d personally build a pure mundane. For me, it’s not even really a question of if they can perform adequately. I just don’t find mundane characters very interesting compared to the plethora of options casters have at high levels.

[NichG]

I guess if I felt I needed to hit all those competencies at that level, I'd be trying to lean on feats and class levels and race and so on to achieve at least some of it rather than doing it purely with gear.

At that level mostly I guess I'd probably just worry about a source of flight and rely on Tome of Battle stuff for saves/breaking conditions, get a source of miss chance, and then mostly focus on things like X stat to Y, action economy considerations, and potentially try to nab a source of self-resurrection over the raw plusses on my weapon/armor. So given 300k I'd probably burn the 118k on the Ring of Solar Wings (or maybe pay half that for Wings of Flying...), 32k on +4 Str/Con, a +20 to Concentration item for 40k (to drive Diamond Mind stuff) which I'd also make an Item Familiar for even more Concentration stacking, a +5 Resistance shirt, maybe a Cloak of Etherealness, maybe pay for a Permanencied Enlarge Person on myself, then the remaining on weapon/armor stuff...

Maybe consider something exotic with 1-2LA if the campaign is starting at that level and I can get some nice fill-in stuff for it - sensory powers, movement modalities, etc.

Not saying that'd match the versatility of any caster, but that feels like it would be playable in most campaigns I've been in in which 300kgp at that level would be reasonable.

[RandomPeasant]

Most of the things mentioned are solved just by having a party that supports one another.

Which means a party of casters. The most "support" you get out of a martial-type is white raven tactics, which you can get out of followers from Leadership at 14th level. Not your cohort, the random dudes who you're not even really supposed to care about in a fight.


A custom 2 per day overland flight item that lasts 9 hours each time is only 32,400 for basically all day flight.

In my experience most campaigns do not allow you to craft arbitrary custom items. Also I'm not really convinced most 14th level characters value two 5th level spell slots more than 32k GP, even in a relatively high-wealth campaign.


My experience with martials is that it is possible for them to keep up with game most of the time, but it requires some fairly significant optimization to do so.

Then you're not actually keeping up. Yes, you could put together some bizarre stack of obscure templates that bumps you up a ways. Guess what? The Wizard can make up whatever ground you've gained by casting a spell from the PHB (planar binding) to summon a creature from the MM (a Glabrezu) one more time than he was previously planning to. Mundanes "keep up" by being allowed an explicitly greater latitude to optimize, but that only works in pretty narrow ranges, because the percentage of DMs who evaluate optimization purely in terms of "what power level you reach" and not "how you reach it" is just not very large.


But yes, level 14 is well past where I’d personally build a pure mundane. For me, it’s not even really a question of if they can perform adequately. I just don’t find mundane characters very interesting compared to the plethora of options casters have at high levels.

They also, contrary to a lot of conventional wisdom, play much more to "Rocket Launcher Tag" than casters do. The way you make a high level mundane is you take all the stuff that stacks on charging (or sometimes archery or sneak attack, but mostly charging), and it does really staggering amounts of damage that eliminate anything that you hit. But that leaves you with a character whose relation to encounters is basically "I can do my thing and I trivialize the encounter, or I can't and I am trivialized". Whereas an optimized caster will simply have a wide range of options that lend themselves to varied tactical responses when particular solutions don't work. It's just a legitimately healthier dynamic for the game.

[Crake]

Permanency + See Invisibility is pretty trivial for a 14th level Wizard...

a) thats dispellable, so potentially an easy waste of 1000xp, and b) a fighter can buy a scroll of permanency, hire a wizard to cast magic jar, see invisibility, and then use the scroll on himself for only a little bit extra compared to the wizard. Or, if theres a wizard in the party, just ask them to do it for free.

[Mordante]

Sorry to go of topic. But everything in this topic reminds why high wealth, high magic, high level DnD 3.5 sucks IMHO. The game transforms form simple adventuring to optimizing and book keeping your uber undefeatable character. With all my characters, regardless of level I try to make it so that I can have all my worldly possessions on my character. So you I can just walk away at any moment.

[Gruftzwerg]

Sorry to go of topic. But everything in this topic reminds why high wealth, high magic, high level DnD 3.5 sucks IMHO. The game transforms form simple adventuring to optimizing and book keeping your uber undefeatable character. With all my characters, regardless of level I try to make it so that I can have all my worldly possessions on my character. So you I can just walk away at any moment.

I kinda disagree with this. Imho the difficulty is just increasing for both parties (DM / the players).
It's just that what is commonly seen as EPIC (story) is roughly something between lvl 4-10ish.
At least still 10 lvls to go before 3.5 reaches "EPIC" content.

There is a reason why E6 was given birth by the community. Because most stories just end there.

Then there is the problem that the higher lvls need system mastery and metagaming (for planning your character build) to a degree. If you just randomly build your character, he will suck. If you spend to much on optimization, it becomes to easy.

The higher lvls of 3.5 are more like a professional chess game. If both sides aren't at the same lvl it ain't fun.
The problem is further extended by the fact that one side in 3.5 consists of ~4 players, and you kinda need to find a balance there too (to prevent playing Angel Summoner & BMX Bandit (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zFuMpYTyRjw)).
The higher the lvl is, the higher everybody's system mastery has to be. Otherwise you will run into to many rule discussions and have to rely an homebrew/DM decisions to save the game from breaking apart. And the DM has the biggest burden here, since it is his duty to manage the game balance at a table.

[Beni-Kujaku]

Sorry to go of topic. But everything in this topic reminds why high wealth, high magic, high level DnD 3.5 sucks IMHO. The game transforms form simple adventuring to optimizing and book keeping your uber undefeatable character. With all my characters, regardless of level I try to make it so that I can have all my worldly possessions on my character. So you I can just walk away at any moment.

Oh, don't worry, 3.5 allows that kind of things much earlier than that. E6 isn't foreign to optimization, and most groups do not play super-optimized characters even at high-levels. I've DMed the same 14th level One-Shot for two different groups, one being extremely RP-oriented and one being kinda optimization-happy. In the second case, I had to buff half the enemies, and i still knew that if they played their cards well, the One-Shot could be over in an hour. The first group spent 30 minutes talking to an unimportant NPC in the corner to gain some intel and bypass one of the fights. The second used their abilities to dodge unnecessary fights and finish the necessary ones quicker. Both discussed in the end for the "end-of-game dilemma". Still, I had fun, and they had fun in both cases. Maybe for different reasons, but who cares? D&D is an extremely diverse game, and players, as well as DMs, can and will adapt to have the most amount of fun possible, regardless of the tier of play.

[Mordante]

Oh, don't worry, 3.5 allows that kind of things much earlier than that. E6 isn't foreign to optimization, and most groups do not play super-optimized characters even at high-levels. I've DMed the same 14th level One-Shot for two different groups, one being extremely RP-oriented and one being kinda optimization-happy. In the second case, I had to buff half the enemies, and i still knew that if they played their cards well, the One-Shot could be over in an hour. The first group spent 30 minutes talking to an unimportant NPC in the corner to gain some intel and bypass one of the fights. The second used their abilities to dodge unnecessary fights and finish the necessary ones quicker. Both discussed in the end for the "end-of-game dilemma". Still, I had fun, and they had fun in both cases. Maybe for different reasons, but who cares? D&D is an extremely diverse game, and players, as well as DMs, can and will adapt to have the most amount of fun possible, regardless of the tier of play.

We usually play very open sandbox. doing any pre work as DM is nigh impossible. The DM just sets the scene and the players work from there. In our current group is described the scenery. Told them most houses in the city used straw roofs or wooden planks, often covered in tar of some kind. Since the party was looking for a steady stream of income and came from an another part of land they decided this local city needs a roof tile business. So the next few sessions the went looking for clay, potters, building ovens, etc etc. They also did some proper adventuring.

Now after 2 years of playing were are level 7, we started at 2.

I totally agree with you that the game is very diverse. My idea of of DnD is probably really colored by the people I play with. Our wizard is such a pacifist that she doesn't have any offensive spells ( In a level 16 to 17 party)

[King of Nowhere]

Sorry to go of topic. But everything in this topic reminds why high wealth, high magic, high level DnD 3.5 sucks IMHO. The game transforms form simple adventuring to optimizing and book keeping your uber undefeatable character. With all my characters, regardless of level I try to make it so that I can have all my worldly possessions on my character. So you I can just walk away at any moment.

that does not happen because of high wealth, high magic, high level. in fact, my fist campaign as a dm had a bunch of extremely casual players, to the point that they couldn't even remember what their powers actually did. the wizard was just casting the most plain direct damage effects. it was still high wealth, high magic, high level.

no, the transition to bookkeeping your undefeatable character happen because you start as a casual player, then you discover some way to be more effective, and then some other way to be more effective, and you gradually change... until at some point you have 20 pages of annotations and you wonder how the heck you got there.
but you can't just go back. my first character was a gnome cleric with exotic weapon proficiency: katana, who kept on charging into battle - not buffed - even at high level. I cringe at the thought. But now that I know to play better, I can't just willfully ignore what I know. I can't enjoy a game where I'm intentionally playing bad. I can decide to take a suboptimal concept, and then optimize it. I can see a certain combo and decide it's way too powerful for the power level I want to play at. But I could not avoid optimization entirely.



Otherwise you will run into to many rule discussions and have to rely an homebrew/DM decisions to save the game from breaking apart. And the DM has the biggest burden here, since it is his duty to manage the game balance at a table.
what's wrong with that? my entire philosophy about how the game should run relies on houserules, homebrew and dm decisions (discussed and concerted with the players) to keep the game from breaking apart. and it worked pretty well at balancing the game between players with different levels of system mastery. it does require some talking and some decision-making, and it does require that everyone is a reasonable individual that can be talked to.
but what are the alternatives? you can't avoid optimization just by pretending that you don't know it. you can't unlearn the game. once pandora's box is open, you can't close it and pretend nothing happened. all you can do is sit down with your pals, decide on a power level, and try to stick to it - fixing problems as they arise

[Gruftzwerg]

what's wrong with that? my entire philosophy about how the game should run relies on houserules, homebrew and dm decisions (discussed and concerted with the players) to keep the game from breaking apart. and it worked pretty well at balancing the game between players with different levels of system mastery. it does require some talking and some decision-making, and it does require that everyone is a reasonable individual that can be talked to.
but what are the alternatives? you can't avoid optimization just by pretending that you don't know it. you can't unlearn the game. once pandora's box is open, you can't close it and pretend nothing happened. all you can do is sit down with your pals, decide on a power level, and try to stick to it - fixing problems as they arise

There is nothing wrong with houserules. Everybody uses em to some more or less degree.
But it should still be kept at a normal lvl imho. Because rules should be predictable and players shouldn't have to guess how you might rule things.
For that, the DM needs enough system mastery to make predictions about rule interactions, build power lvl and stuff. Without that, the adjustments will be made when things start to become a problem. This bears the risk that the adjustment may break the fun for the player who invested time and thoughts into making and playing the build so far.
As said, the biggest burden is on the DM here, since he has to show a lot of foresight to prevent undesirable situations from occurring at all.

[King of Nowhere]

There is nothing wrong with houserules. Everybody uses em to some more or less degree.
But it should still be kept at a normal lvl imho. Because rules should be predictable and players shouldn't have to guess how you might rule things.
For that, the DM needs enough system mastery to make predictions about rule interactions, build power lvl and stuff. Without that, the adjustments will be made when things start to become a problem. This bears the risk that the adjustment may break the fun for the player who invested time and thoughts into making and playing the build so far.
As said, the biggest burden is on the DM here, since he has to show a lot of foresight to prevent undesirable situations from occurring at all.

fair enough, but there are a few caveats. the above is based on the idea that a player will pick a build 1-20 and follow it exactly. all shall agree on their power level and the builds will express it.
which in my experience is sort of the case, but not really.
people start with a generic build idea, centered around a concept, but it has a lot of free room to change. predicted power level - which is as much a player's responsibility as it is the dm - is often inaccurate. in an ideal world, those concepts would work, the group would predict every power interaction perfectly, and there would be no need to houserule. in practice, i have experience for 5 years as dm and 3 years as player, my players have almost as much table experience as me, and still we often make bad calls (though only once I really screwed up: when I thought allowing a pc with 4 arms would be ok as long as he didn't gain precision damage. But he only broke the power level near the end of the campaign, so we decided to just let it fly).

which is why my gaming theory puts a lot of emphasis on houseruling as the game goes. the idea is that yes, we alll start with an idea of a power level and certain builds, we aim for a certain outcome. but hitting the target outcome is vrtually impossible; for all that we are experienced players, we are not that good at predicting everything. And so we have to nudge the power level back on target as the campaign moves on. or perhaps we have to prevent unpredicted interactions from contradicting the worldbuilding, or some other reason. the purpose of those fixes is to play the campaign that we set out to play in session zero.
I think what you are objecting to is horror stories of dm suddenly banning core pieces of somebody's build because that guy is too powerful, making his whole character moot. players starting with the idea of playing something, and then having their powers banned overnight - or depending on dm interpretation for how their powers work.
but that's not at all what I suggest doing. i never make balance houserules without consulting my players first, and it's generally either some small numerical changes, or regarding some specific interactons that nobody foresaw.

[icefractal]

Sorry to go of topic. But everything in this topic reminds why high wealth, high magic, high level DnD 3.5 sucks IMHO. The game transforms form simple adventuring to optimizing and book keeping your uber undefeatable character. With all my characters, regardless of level I try to make it so that I can have all my worldly possessions on my character. So you I can just walk away at any moment.High-level to an extent, in that there's simply more parts to assemble, but IMO the other two are orthogonal to optimizing / book-keeping.

Like if you want to or need to optimize, then it's going to likely involve more book-keeping and possibly be a bigger focus of your attention. But that's just as true in a low-power game as a high-power one - potentially more so, because if the GM is playing hard-ball you may be forced to optimize to survive, where-as in a game with more "slack" you could just pick a decent core and not worry about every feat/item.

I don't quite get what you mean about having all worldly possessions on the character, because IME that's usually correlated with somewhat paranoid PCs who are highly-optimized. The kind who'd consider a mansion to be pure liability and would rather put all resources into gear, the harder to remove the better.

[Crake]

but you can't just go back.

actually, you most certainly can. You just choose not to. You find building a powerful, optimized character to be a higher priority than just sitting down and enjoying the game.

I certainly went through that phase in my life in the past, but if you actually just value rp and storytelling, you can most certainly go full circle and just make things that you like, rather than succumbing to the compulsive need to optimize everything.

Might i suggest you go spend some time in some RP circles doing freeform-ish roleplay to reignite your passion for the character development and storytelling side of this hobby? Because if you’re so bogged down in the numbers that you cant even imagine life without them, then you might need a bit of a proverbial detox.

[Gruftzwerg]

Might i suggest you go spend some time in some RP circles doing freeform-ish roleplay to reignite your passion for the character development and storytelling side of this hobby? Because if you’re so bogged down in the numbers that you cant even imagine life without them, then you might need a bit of a proverbial detox.

There is imho no right way to play 3.5
And if we look at its core design, it more a Hack 'n Slash Looter game.
Imho compared to other pen & paper RPGs, 3.5 has a lesser focus on roleplaying and doesn't encourage it as much as other systems do. Further the classes aren't that strict when it comes to "character archetypes". And if you look at the mundanes, unless a T1 support caster backs em up at higher lvls, they are heavily item dependent. 3.5 punishes you for not being prepared at higher lvls.

Imho the higher lvls are like a difficult expedition, e.g. into the arctic regions. If you aren't prepared, you are going to die. Or you would need some kind of special power (magic) to survive what is to come.

Sure, you can play 3.5 and focus more on RP. But you'll still get punished for the lack of system master at higher lvls (or need to rely on DM fiat). Imho it's best to find a good compromise for each table and maybe even each separate campaign (how much optimization is fine).
In my experience it is best to talk every now and then about this and see if there is any need for adjustments.

And finally, not every campaign has to end at lvl 20+
As I said before, imho most epic stories from media fit into the lvl 5-10 range (more on the lvl 5 side than lvl 10).

[Crake]

There is imho no right way to play 3.5
And if we look at its core design, it more a Hack 'n Slash Looter game.
Imho compared to other pen & paper RPGs, 3.5 has a lesser focus on roleplaying and doesn't encourage it as much as other systems do. Further the classes aren't that strict when it comes to "character archetypes". And if you look at the mundanes, unless a T1 support caster backs em up at higher lvls, they are heavily item dependent. 3.5 punishes you for not being prepared at higher lvls.

Imho the higher lvls are like a difficult expedition, e.g. into the arctic regions. If you aren't prepared, you are going to die. Or you would need some kind of special power (magic) to survive what is to come.

Sure, you can play 3.5 and focus more on RP. But you'll still get punished for the lack of system master at higher lvls (or need to rely on DM fiat). Imho it's best to find a good compromise for each table and maybe even each separate campaign (how much optimization is fine).
In my experience it is best to talk every now and then about this and see if there is any need for adjustments.

And finally, not every campaign has to end at lvl 20+
As I said before, imho most epic stories from media fit into the lvl 5-10 range (more on the lvl 5 side than lvl 10).

I’m not even talking about high level here. As people said, there are those who will optimize e6 out the wazoo, its not just an issue isolated at high level.

And sure, you’re right, plenty of people enjoy playing the game in different ways, but it sounds to me like they don’t necessarily enjoy the compulsive need to optimize, but its just that, a compulsion they cant ignore, else they wouldnt sound like they were lamenting the more ignorant days.

[Gruftzwerg]

I’m not even talking about high level here. As people said, there are those who will optimize e6 out the wazoo, its not just an issue isolated at high level.

And sure, you’re right, plenty of people enjoy playing the game in different ways, but it sounds to me like they don’t necessarily enjoy the compulsive need to optimize, but its just that, a compulsion they cant ignore, else they wouldnt sound like they were lamenting the more ignorant days.

The problem I see is that the higher the lvls become, the more you have to optimize (unless the DM always picks the easiest encounters for a lvl). Because the magical aspects of 3.5 play Rocket-tag by default.

The common dangers of the higher levels:

1) Unless your DM totally avoids Death Magic, at some point you want to have some kind of protection against it. Be it straight up Death Ward or just simply having high saves.
2) Melee characters should always start with a ranged backup option and at some point invest into an option to fly (unless the party's caster takes care of that).
3) some kind of (out of combat) healing is also almost always needed to ensure the parties safety.
4) you should have an answer to regeneration and possible immunities.
5) there are dozens of "conditions" that can quickly end deadly at higher lvls. You need to be prepared for these situations.
...

You can ignore these to some degree, but not completely (unless the DM makes it easy).

Again the comprehension with the arctic expedition. You can't ignore the dangers.
But nobody forces to go on an arctic expedition. You could do something else that is less dangerous, but still demanding, fun and heroic/epic.
The same in 3.5. Nobody forces you to play at those risky levels.
Most plots fit into E6. Actually the higher the lvls gets, the higher the chance that the plot doesn't work anymore. Because 3.5 offers an endless arsenal of abilities and spells to skip or trivialize many possible plot devices.

[Crake]

The problem I see is that the higher the lvls become, the more you have to optimize (unless the DM always picks the easiest encounters for a lvl). Because the magical aspects of 3.5 play Rocket-tag by default.

The common dangers of the higher levels:

1) Unless your DM totally avoids Death Magic, at some point you want to have some kind of protection against it. Be it straight up Death Ward or just simply having high saves.
2) Melee characters should always start with a ranged backup option and at some point invest into an option to fly (unless the party's caster takes care of that).
3) some kind of (out of combat) healing is also almost always needed to ensure the parties safety.
4) you should have an answer to regeneration and possible immunities.
5) there are dozens of "conditions" that can quickly end deadly at higher lvls. You need to be prepared for these situations.
...

You can ignore these to some degree, but not completely (unless the DM makes it easy).

Again the comprehension with the arctic expedition. You can't ignore the dangers.
But nobody forces to go on an arctic expedition. You could do something else that is less dangerous, but still demanding, fun and heroic/epic.
The same in 3.5. Nobody forces you to play at those risky levels.
Most plots fit into E6. Actually the higher the lvls gets, the higher the chance that the plot doesn't work anymore. Because 3.5 offers an endless arsenal of abilities and spells to skip or trivialize many possible plot devices.

Most of the monsters that have all these special effects that you need to prepare for are more narratively geared toward being set piece encounters with build up, not just random encounters. And you’re right, preparation is a big part of 3.5, but if youre building up to a big fight with a lich who’s favourite spell is finger of death, and has wight minions, youll know to prepare a bunch of death wards, or maybe even get the fighter a suit of soulfire armor. Thats not optimization, thats being sensible.

Thats NOT comparable to trying to make your character immune to every effect under the sun, and having an answer to every problem at the tip of your fingers, because the above lich is a random encounter on your DM’s tables.

So youre right and wrong. High level play DOES require preparation and careful planning, but thats not the same as blind optimization.

[Gnaeus]

They also, contrary to a lot of conventional wisdom, play much more to "Rocket Launcher Tag" than casters do. The way you make a high level mundane is you take all the stuff that stacks on charging (or sometimes archery or sneak attack, but mostly charging), and it does really staggering amounts of damage that eliminate anything that you hit. But that leaves you with a character whose relation to encounters is basically "I can do my thing and I trivialize the encounter, or I can't and I am trivialized". Whereas an optimized caster will simply have a wide range of options that lend themselves to varied tactical responses when particular solutions don't work. It's just a legitimately healthier dynamic for the game.

I mostly agree with all of RandomPeasant's post, but this, especially, is true. You don't have to be (ab)using Planar Binding to get there. Or be particularly high op. You don't need a 20 build, or odd combinations. We aren't talking Beholder Mage or Tainted Scholar. If a sorcerer or favored soul (let alone a wizard or cleric) is just optimized enough to switch up their spells, taking things to cover abilities they don't have and that sound good, a 14th level T2+caster will have dozens of options. Likely including things like Run Away (and possibly kite), Summon help, Do Damage, Buff a more effective teammate, Lock down the fight, or spam SoLs focused on target weakness. This is something I solidly expect out of a caster by mid-op, maybe the high end of low op. Honestly, I would expect most or all of that by level 8. Combined with out of combat utility the muggle can't match. As opposed to the T4-5 mundanes who tend to be either optimized to do one thing well, or not optimized to do nothing well. Less than that isn't so much optimization, as aggressive anti-optimization, like choosing to make a sorcerer with only Necromancy spells.

[King of Nowhere]

actually, you most certainly can. You just choose not to. You find building a powerful, optimized character to be a higher priority than just sitting down and enjoying the game.

I certainly went through that phase in my life in the past, but if you actually just value rp and storytelling, you can most certainly go full circle and just make things that you like, rather than succumbing to the compulsive need to optimize everything.

Might i suggest you go spend some time in some RP circles doing freeform-ish roleplay to reignite your passion for the character development and storytelling side of this hobby? Because if you’re so bogged down in the numbers that you cant even imagine life without them, then you might need a bit of a proverbial detox.

... what?

have you ever heard of stormwind fallacy?

in case you didn't, you may be surprised to learn that you can build an optimized character and like to have hard, engaging combat requiring strategy, and also enjoy roleplaying and story. In fact, I find that the story is a lot more coherent when the stuff your character is supposed to be doing and the stuff your character actually does are aligned. like, if a villain is introduced as a genius but he uses his spells like a moron because somebody didn't think to apply some strategy, I'm all "this is no evil genius; how did he even learn to cast spells in the first place?". If my pc is jailed into "the most secure prison ever", and there's nothing stopping somebody with a flight spell - much less a teleport - to get in and out at will, it kills my suspension of disbelief. and let's not even talk of a fantasy world where every decent wizard could produce multiple tons of perfectly good iron every day and it somehow has no effect on the economy.
because the thing I can't choose to do is shutting down my brain. Once I realize there is a smarter way of doing things, I can't just pretend to not know it. I have to either adapt into the worldbuilding the fact that it can be done, or I have to houserule it out.

Might i suggest you go spend some time in some RP circles where they realize story and numbers are not antagonistic to each other? Because if you can't even imagine someone may want to have a good build AND a good story at the same time, there may be some deep disfunction in your usual rpg environment.



They also, contrary to a lot of conventional wisdom, play much more to "Rocket Launcher Tag" than casters do. The way you make a high level mundane is you take all the stuff that stacks on charging (or sometimes archery or sneak attack, but mostly charging), and it does really staggering amounts of damage that eliminate anything that you hit. But that leaves you with a character whose relation to encounters is basically "I can do my thing and I trivialize the encounter, or I can't and I am trivialized". Whereas an optimized caster will simply have a wide range of options that lend themselves to varied tactical responses when particular solutions don't work. It's just a legitimately healthier dynamic for the game.

true, though I do try to use houseruling and power control to avoid that outcome. on one hand I limit the damage that can be stacked - my core balance principle is "nobody can destroy an equally leveled foe in one round without giving some reasonable defence/counterplay"; on the other hand, wealth means there are a lot more defensive/utility options available. as a result, martials in my games tend to come off not as much as insta-gib glass cannons and more like guys that lack flexibility and nova capacity, but are hard to kill and hard to stop.

[Darg]

I mostly agree with all of RandomPeasant's post, but this, especially, is true. You don't have to be (ab)using Planar Binding to get there. Or be particularly high op. You don't need a 20 build, or odd combinations. We aren't talking Beholder Mage or Tainted Scholar. If a sorcerer or favored soul (let alone a wizard or cleric) is just optimized enough to switch up their spells, taking things to cover abilities they don't have and that sound good, a 14th level T2+caster will have dozens of options. Likely including things like Run Away (and possibly kite), Summon help, Do Damage, Buff a more effective teammate, Lock down the fight, or spam SoLs focused on target weakness. This is something I solidly expect out of a caster by mid-op, maybe the high end of low op. Honestly, I would expect most or all of that by level 8. Combined with out of combat utility the muggle can't match. As opposed to the T4-5 mundanes who tend to be either optimized to do one thing well, or not optimized to do nothing well. Less than that isn't so much optimization, as aggressive anti-optimization, like choosing to make a sorcerer with only Necromancy spells.

Define "well." Most out of combat utility is available to every character to some level. Instead of a diplomacy check, maybe some small tasks to raise attitude for example. Yes, magic allows you to bypass a lot of things. That does not mean casters are necessary to do things. They just make it easier.

[NichG]

because the thing I can't choose to do is shutting down my brain. Once I realize there is a smarter way of doing things, I can't just pretend to not know it. I have to either adapt into the worldbuilding the fact that it can be done, or I have to houserule it out.


This does sound like a limit to your ability to roleplay though, if every character has to behave as though they have the experience of every character you've played up to that point with regards to being aware of what could be possible.

Personally this is why I generally prefer to play games where I don't know all the rules and haven't played much with the rules I do get to know. So if I make it through a 2 year campaign without ever being exposed to an Instant Death attack, I can take that as how the world is vs 'the DM is playing softball'

[Quertus]

everyone talks of how strong casters are, and how martials cannot have nice things, and how utterly powerless are the poor martials against magic.

for a short campaign, the dm told us to make 14th level characters with 300k gp as starting wealth. which is already significantly above wbl.

I need a continuous protection from evil effect, if I don't want to be easy prey for any enchanter. by raw it would cost 2k, but we all agree it's one of those cases where the guidelines don't work; eventually we decide 25k would be a reasonable price. And to afford it, I already have to sacrifice some of my +5 stuff and get it only to +4.

I am level 14, well above wbl guidelines I don't have any defence for any of a bunch of low level spells, because while there are counters for that, they are all too expensive. Even for the stuff I do have defences for, it generally requires me to spend rounds taking potions. meaning that by the time I get to act, the combat will be probably already decided. I could at least afford to not become a pupper for the first enchanter passing by, but that's all.

So, I now finally understand what it is like to play in a normal campaign, limited by wbl, and not having access to any of the neat stuff that used to keep the martials in the same league of casters.
And I appreciate high magic even more

OK. Yeah, optimization is expensive and time-consuming. But it's not like most Wizards have answers to all those things that don't take them rounds to cast, too - meaning that, by this logic, the battle should be decided before they get See Invisibility up, too, no?

And, while it may take the Fighter some effort to get a defense against low-level spells, IME even most high-level Wizards have no real defense against a bunch of low-level swords, and may easily be removed from the battle in the first round by things the Fighter all but ignores.

But I'm not a fan of making it harder on the Fighter by making things like Wings of Flying or Ring of Protection from Evil Good cost more than their 3.0 printing price - I'm all about letting the Muggles have nice things! OTOH, I'm all about the puppet life... :smallbiggrin:

Party synergy can help with these prices, if, say, a party Cleric can buff your weapons and armor, and you just buy +1 versions, as a common example.

Lastly, I'd love to hear how your "short campaign" goes, and how its party Wizard(s) respond to all these threats. Because while Schrödinger's Wizard can do a lot of things, in practice, real Wizards rarely do. Even if they're not tactically inept like my signature academia mage.

[noob]

OK. Yeah, optimization is expensive and time-consuming. But it's not like most Wizards have answers to all those things that don't take them rounds to cast, too - meaning that, by this logic, the battle should be decided before they get See Invisibility up, too, no?

And, while it may take the Fighter some effort to get a defense against low-level spells, IME even most high-level Wizards have no real defense against a bunch of low-level swords, and may easily be removed from the battle in the first round by things the Fighter all but ignores.

But I'm not a fan of making it harder on the Fighter by making things like Wings of Flying or Ring of Protection from Evil Good cost more than their 3.0 printing price - I'm all about letting the Muggles have nice things! OTOH, I'm all about the puppet life... :smallbiggrin:

Party synergy can help with these prices, if, say, a party Cleric can buff your weapons and armor, and you just buy +1 versions, as a common example.

Lastly, I'd love to hear how your "short campaign" goes, and how its party Wizard(s) respond to all these threats. Because while Schrödinger's Wizard can do a lot of things, in practice, real Wizards rarely do. Even if they're not tactically inept like my signature academia mage.

An huge part of campaigns I played was planning to clean up entire dungeons (or completing all targeted goals) in five minutes so that all the running buffs would still be active.
Get 2 wizards, 1 cleric and 1 barbarian(needed because antimagic fields are a thing) and you solve a lot of problems because the spell lists can complete each other (we also did get a lot of magical items to complement our lacks so it would be an issue if wbl was lower).

[Gnaeus]

Define "well." Most out of combat utility is available to every character to some level. Instead of a diplomacy check, maybe some small tasks to raise attitude for example. Yes, magic allows you to bypass a lot of things. That does not mean casters are necessary to do things. They just make it easier.

In that context, with numbers that are relevant compared with what a caster can do, at similar level and op. A barbarian can do melee damage well. A Samurai can do intimimancy well, maybe melee damage ok. A chain tripper can control pretty well. A fighter who builds for archery and melee is likely to not be competitive in either. A sor/wiz, past about level 8-10, can probably compete in multiple types of combat as well as or better than a specialized muggle. Chain trippers are fun, although on the optimized end of fighters, but they can't control an area as large, or as many areas, or lock down as completely as a wizard can with a handful of mid level spells.

As far as out of combat utility, there is a wide spectrum, and whether the muggle can compete at all varies. Like, the fighter has a swim skill. It is reasonable to assume that, with investment, he can swim at 1/4 of his speed. The wizard, with less investment, can swim much, much faster. Can swim to the bottom of a lake, or an ocean. The wizard is better, yes, but so vastly better that the fighter may or may not be able to complete aquatic tasks at all. The wizard and the fighter can both travel to the market to buy gear, or walk into mordor. They both have a move speed. But the wizard can teleport to the market 500 miles away and teleport back. He can plausibly fly to mordor, drop a ring in a volcano from 500 feet, and fly back for tea and pipeweed. For these to be equivalent at all, the DM has to specifically nerf the wizard.

[Crake]

... what?

have you ever heard of stormwind fallacy?

in case you didn't, you may be surprised to learn that you can build an optimized character and like to have hard, engaging combat requiring strategy, and also enjoy roleplaying and story. In fact, I find that the story is a lot more coherent when the stuff your character is supposed to be doing and the stuff your character actually does are aligned. like, if a villain is introduced as a genius but he uses his spells like a moron because somebody didn't think to apply some strategy, I'm all "this is no evil genius; how did he even learn to cast spells in the first place?". If my pc is jailed into "the most secure prison ever", and there's nothing stopping somebody with a flight spell - much less a teleport - to get in and out at will, it kills my suspension of disbelief. and let's not even talk of a fantasy world where every decent wizard could produce multiple tons of perfectly good iron every day and it somehow has no effect on the economy.
because the thing I can't choose to do is shutting down my brain. Once I realize there is a smarter way of doing things, I can't just pretend to not know it. I have to either adapt into the worldbuilding the fact that it can be done, or I have to houserule it out.

Might i suggest you go spend some time in some RP circles where they realize story and numbers are not antagonistic to each other? Because if you can't even imagine someone may want to have a good build AND a good story at the same time, there may be some deep disfunction in your usual rpg environment.

You’re conflating blind, compulsive optimization with in world, sensible decision making.

Having a prison with magical defenses for example, isnt what I would call optimization, especially since, as a DM, you dont need to worry about trying to fit within gp budgets, or character creation limits, since you can include whatever npcs and magical enchantments you want.

And as this user pointed out:


This does sound like a limit to your ability to roleplay though, if every character has to behave as though they have the experience of every character you've played up to that point with regards to being aware of what could be possible.

While optimization and roleplay arent INHERENTLY at odds, by your own description, your need to optimize characters to have defenses against every possible circumstance does appear to have an impact on your rp.

The stormwind fallacy states that optimization and rp are not INHERENTLY at odds, but that doesnt mean they ARE NEVER at odds.

[icefractal]

While optimization and roleplay arent INHERENTLY at odds, by your own description, your need to optimize characters to have defenses against every possible circumstance does appear to have an impact on your rp.

The stormwind fallacy states that optimization and rp are not INHERENTLY at odds, but that doesnt mean they ARE NEVER at odds.YMMV obviously, but often I find that IC reasons are what's pulling me to optimize more when OOC it's already enough.

Because OOC, I know that I only need to be as well-defended as the rest of the group, that the GM's not going to throw a TPK at us without warning. That it might in fact be undesirable to improve my defenses too much. That a cakewalk isn't really desirable.

IC, none of that is the case. Most characters don't want a challenging fight they might lose, they want an easy win, because this is their actual life on the line! And IC you can't assume that deadly stuff will come with any warning - after all, those peasants who got incinerated by the dragon didn't get any warning, did they? So it makes sense to grab any and all defenses that are free/cheap, and put a decent amount of resources in as well. Which can end up being (OOC) an excessive amount of defense.

[Crake]

YMMV obviously, but often I find that IC reasons are what's pulling me to optimize more when OOC it's already enough.

Because OOC, I know that I only need to be as well-defended as the rest of the group, that the GM's not going to throw a TPK at us without warning. That it might in fact be undesirable to improve my defenses too much. That a cakewalk isn't really desirable.

IC, none of that is the case. Most characters don't want a challenging fight they might lose, they want an easy win, because this is their actual life on the line! And IC you can't assume that deadly stuff will come with any warning - after all, those peasants who got incinerated by the dragon didn't get any warning, did they? So it makes sense to grab any and all defenses that are free/cheap, and put a decent amount of resources in as well. Which can end up being (OOC) an excessive amount of defense.

Right, but how much of that IC desire manifests via IC options, rather than just OOC “we go to the cornershop and buy xyz item”? If its just a thing you buy, rather than some kind of involved research into the problem, and looking for a solution, its not really much of any character growth.

Furthermore, the desire to be well protected should stem from the threat of attacks, but if youve never in your life come across an enchantment wizard for example, nor would you be expecting to, why would immunity to mind affecting even be on your radar? The only reason it would be, would be due to, to use the technically correct term, metagaming.

[NichG]

I mean, the ridiculously overprepared character is a valid archetype too. Choosing to play that is fine and then playing into it and hamming it up is fine.

Being unable to play anything other than that/being unable to come up with characters who would approach the world with any other philosophy or mindset (at high level) does seem like a limitation however.

[RandomPeasant]

Like if you want to or need to optimize, then it's going to likely involve more book-keeping and possibly be a bigger focus of your attention. But that's just as true in a low-power game as a high-power one - potentially more so, because if the GM is playing hard-ball you may be forced to optimize to survive, where-as in a game with more "slack" you could just pick a decent core and not worry about every feat/item.

3e is a really complicated system, and while it's true that at the limit any individual character will tend to involve more effort, book-keeping, and complexity to optimize, it's also true that there are a lot of specific optimizations you can do that reduce those things. Imagine you're playing a Ranger. It's true that you could optimize by going down the Swift Hunter path and picking up all the feats and items and skip tricks and class dips and whatever that increase the effectiveness of that character. But it's also true that you could optimize by just playing a Beguiler instead of a Ranger, and that would be about as complicated as the Ranger and way less complicated than the Swift Hunter. This, again, is a place where casters excel. It's true that you could juggle your WBL to make sure you have an answer to everything. You could also just roll a party of a Wizard, a Cleric, a Druid, and a Beguiler and have answers to everything on tap while building basically however you want.


Most of the monsters that have all these special effects that you need to prepare for are more narratively geared toward being set piece encounters with build up, not just random encounters.

I mean, not really. At high levels, it really is pretty much true that all the opposition has some of the rocket-style abilities. It's dragons and outsiders and aberrations. In the CR 15+ range, the only (Core/SRD) monsters without a buffet of SLAs or actual spells are the Greater Stone Golem, a couple of Behemoth animals spilling over from the ELH, and the Tarrasque -- which is honestly more a set piece encounter than a lot of things. The reality of high level play is that as a 20th level character a Balor is a thing you just fight. You aren't expected to have any special preparation to fight one, and it is entirely within the realm of possibility that you will have to fight four in a row one day. The Balor literally is a monster on the random encounter table.


This is something I solidly expect out of a caster by mid-op, maybe the high end of low op. Honestly, I would expect most or all of that by level 8. Combined with out of combat utility the muggle can't match. As opposed to the T4-5 mundanes who tend to be either optimized to do one thing well, or not optimized to do nothing well. Less than that isn't so much optimization, as aggressive anti-optimization, like choosing to make a sorcerer with only Necromancy spells.

The simplest example of this is probably the fixed-list casters. As an 8th level character, a Dread Necromancer has permanent minions (animate dead), temporary minions (giant vermin, summon undead IV), single-target debuffs (bestow curse, contagion, enervation, poison), battlefield control (black tentacles), AoE SoL (fear), single-target SoD (phantasmal killer), and direct damage (inflict critical wounds). Yes, some of those effects are varying degrees of crappy, but they're all there in a way they just aren't for mundanes. And that's just 4th level spells, and not even the class's full list of 4th level spells (they also get a buff and generic anti-magic). You get all of that at whatever optimization level "don't use your casting stat as a dump stat" is.


Define "well." Most out of combat utility is available to every character to some level. Instead of a diplomacy check, maybe some small tasks to raise attitude for example. Yes, magic allows you to bypass a lot of things. That does not mean casters are necessary to do things. They just make it easier.

And what if your DM doesn't allow you to do small tasks to raise a NPC's attitude? The difference between having an ability that does a thing and not having an ability that does that thing is the difference between "you can do it if your DM doesn't come up with a reason to stop you" and "you can do it if your DM comes up with a reason to let you". That is a very real difference in player agency and how the game works. And people can tell this when they complain about "game breakers", so there's really no excuse for claiming these abilities aren't worth anything when we observe that mundanes don't have them. If they weren't worth anything, we wouldn't get demands that teleport be nerfed.


Chain trippers are fun, although on the optimized end of fighters, but they can't control an area as large, or as many areas, or lock down as completely as a wizard can with a handful of mid level spells.

In the specific context of the thread, they've also lost basically all their luster by 14th level. Tripping doesn't really mean much when you're fighting a Beholder that is perfectly happy to engage from a range longer than your threatened radius and doesn't particularly care if it's prone.

[Crake]

I mean, the ridiculously overprepared character is a valid archetype too. Choosing to play that is fine and then playing into it and hamming it up is fine.

Being unable to play anything other than that/being unable to come up with characters who would approach the world with any other philosophy or mindset (at high level) does seem like a limitation however.

Yeah, this is basically what I was getting at. If you want to play that character, fine, but if you’re finding that your compulsion to optimize is leaving only that character, then you need to re-evaluate.

[Jay R]

I’ve played most editions from the original three pamphlets in the white box to 5e. And originally, nobody though the game was (overall) more fair to one class than to another. At first, the martials were more powerful. Then later in the game the casters would become more powerful. But the game has changed, and a lot of the changes have quietly eliminated the advantages martials used to have and the disadvantages casters used to have.

First of all, in early D&D, PCs died fairly often. Obviously, the PCs with the fewest hit points were the one most likely to die. That meant the wizards. When the game developed to the point when players expect that their characters will never die, then the huge advantage of having more hit points no longer matters.

Back in the 1970s, we all knew that wizards were the weakest characters in the early part of the game, at low levels. That was their drawback. The martials played awhile with the most power, then eventually the casters played with the most power, which (more-or-less) balanced out. In the first adventure, the wizard would put some goblins to sleep, then stay back and maybe throw daggers or distract the enemy while the fighters jumped into the melee and took the glory. Later, those same fighters would keep the enemy off the wizard while the wizard cast heavy enchantments. Starting as high-level characters is taking away the parts of the game when the martials had the most power.

Also, the player’s own cleverness was the most important factor in how well the PC succeeded. In some groups I played with, I could take the objectively weakest PC, and still be more effective, just because I knew tactics, fantasy literature, and game theory. All attempts to eliminate player intelligence and wisdom as a factor in the game made the difference in mechanics matter more.

At ninth or tenth level, Fighting Men* were expected to settle down, build a keep, gather a large army, and now encounters would come to them, in the form of raiders and invading armies. About the time that casters became too powerful to find a challenge in searching dungeoms or facing dragons, the game was supposed to change. We never did it, but that was the plan -- and wizards woudn't get an army. They would settle down in the castle of some Lord**, and help defend his lands.

*Yes, "Fighting Man" was the name of the class. The world has changed, and good for it.

**A high-level Fighting Man was a Lord, and got a keep and an army. A high-level magic-user was a Wizard.

And finally, the spell lists kept expanding. There is no equivalent expansion in what martials could do.

I’m not speaking in favor of one style of play over another. I’m just pointing out that more powerful casters is an automatic result of
making PC death rare or non-existent, so a lower hit point total doesn’t matter as much,
playing only at high levels,
increasing the spell lists,
Taking away high-level Fighters' armies, and
decreasing the value of player intelligence.

Overall, this have proven to be a great boon to the hobby. Tens of millions now play a game once restricted to a few thousand hobbyists.

But the huge advantage of casters over martials wasn’t automatic; it was created over time by the changes in the game.

[icefractal]

Right, but how much of that IC desire manifests via IC options, rather than just OOC “we go to the cornershop and buy xyz item”? If its just a thing you buy, rather than some kind of involved research into the problem, and looking for a solution, its not really much of any character growth.

Furthermore, the desire to be well protected should stem from the threat of attacks, but if youve never in your life come across an enchantment wizard for example, nor would you be expecting to, why would immunity to mind affecting even be on your radar? The only reason it would be, would be due to, to use the technically correct term, metagaming.I mean, buying things is like the most IC form of advancement PCs have in D&D.

Gaining levels? Maybe it represents study and intentional effort to be that class, but XP is very wibbly-wobbly in what it represents, and then how do you explain multiclassing? I mean usually I consider someone like a Rogue/Gunslinger to be a single path of training that includes elements of both classes, but it's also possible to change course, and the level system doesn't really make a distinction.

Feats? Same problem, it's not clear how much these represent conscious IC choices to train a certain way, vs unconscious breakthroughs, vs representing factors that the character doesn't even know about (luck feats and such).

But buying stuff? That's 100% IC, even if it's sometimes abstracted. IC, you decide that you want a Headband of Intellect. You save up gold for it, you find someone who has one and buy it from them, and then you have it, all IC.

Learning new spells as a Wizard is also IC. But not necessarily as a Sorcerer - it could be because your character dreams of flying and pushes their own power to learn Fly, or it could be an OOC decision that the character dislikes - "Damn it, Infernal Healing? I wanted something bright and shiny. Stupid devil bloodline, people are going to distrust me even more now."

And how do you know about things like Enchantment spells existing? Well, Knowledge skills, for one thing. But also having friends with Knowledge skills, being part of a guild who shares information, or simply keeping your ears open in the right company.

[Darg]

And what if your DM doesn't allow you to do small tasks to raise a NPC's attitude? The difference between having an ability that does a thing and not having an ability that does that thing is the difference between "you can do it if your DM doesn't come up with a reason to stop you" and "you can do it if your DM comes up with a reason to let you". That is a very real difference in player agency and how the game works. And people can tell this when they complain about "game breakers", so there's really no excuse for claiming these abilities aren't worth anything when we observe that mundanes don't have them. If they weren't worth anything, we wouldn't get demands that teleport be nerfed.


This works both ways. The DM has to be caster friendly to even get casters to be so dominating. The DM not letting you be people inside of a game about being just that is like telling the wizard they can't cast spells. I won't say not to play those games, but it sounds like such a one dimensional experience the only thing I feel is pity for how shallow it would feel.

[Crake]

I mean, buying things is like the most IC form of advancement PCs have in D&D.

Sorry, im and work and am typing on my phone, so I wasn’t particularly clear in what I meant. I was more speaking from a narrative character growth perspective. If your character pre-empts literally every possible avenue of attack against their character, even when theres no real, logical reason to do so, thats not an IC motivation, its an OOC one.

[RandomPeasant]

First of all, in early D&D, PCs died fairly often.

Well, yes, but also the expectation was that those deaths would drive natural selection that was typically expected to push people towards classes like Magic User and away from classes like Fighting Man.


When the game developed to the point when players expect that their characters will never die, then the huge advantage of having more hit points no longer matters.

But so does the advantage of being able to fight with full effectiveness from the back line.


Starting as high-level characters is taking away the parts of the game when the martials had the most power.

Yes, that's why "power now for power later" is a bad balancing scheme. You aren't guaranteed that the game will start at a low enough level for the Fighter to get his day in the sun, nor end at a high enough level for the Wizard to get hers. Even if you do tune that perfectly, you're still left with the psychological reality that people don't really like being overshadowed for extended periods of time, and you're intentionally structuring the game to ensure they are.


And finally, the spell lists kept expanding. There is no equivalent expansion in what martials could do.

This matters vastly less than people seem to think. The Sorcerer knows a much more limited number of spells than the Wizard. It is still better than every martial. A Beguiler or Dread Necromancer knows a far more limited range of spells than a Sorcerer or a Wizard. They are still better than every martial (and the Warmage is better than most). A Wizard who only learns core spells is better than every martial. So is one that only learns spells from a single school. So is one that never learns any spells but the ones they get at level-up. So is one that only learns spells that existed in AD&D. People arrow in on "versatility" because the Spell Compendium is an entire book full of caster options and you can plausibly make a character who gets all of them, but the reality is that the amount you can close the gap by taking away spells is basically nothing compared to the amount you can close it by making martials better, even if they're better at the same things.


This works both ways.

No. It doesn't. Having abilities is strictly better than not having them. By definition.


The DM has to be caster friendly to even get casters to be so dominating.

This feels like a claim that you should spend more than one sentence making.


he DM not letting you be people inside of a game about being just that is like telling the wizard they can't cast spells.

Why are you not a person if it happens that the person who's attitude you are trying to influence is not receptive to the tasks you are able to do for them?


Sorry, im and work and am typing on my phone, so I wasn’t particularly clear in what I meant. I was more speaking from a narrative character growth perspective. If your character pre-empts literally every possible avenue of attack against their character, even when theres no real, logical reason to do so, thats not an IC motivation, its an OOC one.

There's always a logical reason to pre-empt forms of attack against you: they're ways that people can attack you. You can make the argument that, from an IC perspective, characters might prefer some luxuries rather than their 17th layer of defenses, but even unoptimized characters tend to massively under-consume luxuries relative to what you'd expect them to from an IC perspective.

[Crake]

There's always a logical reason to pre-empt forms of attack against you: they're ways that people can attack you. You can make the argument that, from an IC perspective, characters might prefer some luxuries rather than their 17th layer of defenses, but even unoptimized characters tend to massively under-consume luxuries relative to what you'd expect them to from an IC perspective.

Thats not logical, its in fact, the opposite of logical. Spending resources on forms of attack that you have never, nor would expect to ever, from an IC perspective, encounter is not logical, its just plain and simple metagaming.

Its one thing to say “we’re going into an enchanted fey forest, we should bring some mind protection” or “we’re going into the desecrated temple of a death god, we should get soulfire armor for everyone”, but its another thing to say “well, I might one day encounter mind control, so I should get an item of mind blank, and i might run across some life draining undead someday, so I should get a soulfire armor set, oh, and something big might grab me one day, so i guess I should get a ring of freedom, and while I’m at it, let me get a gem of seeing, just in case we come across some illusions, and may as well slap a periapt of health combined with a protection from poison. It doesnt exist, but ill say it does, so the store has some in stock. I’ve no reason to anticipate we run into any of this, but *just in case*”

And really, for half that stuff, why would it even cross your character’s mind? Think about it irl. Do you wear a ballistic vest at all times? No, because you’re not anticipating to get into a gunfight. Why would an adventurer wear a proverbial ballistic vest against a proverbial gun they arent anticipating on encountering, or may not even realistically know exists in character?

[Maat Mons]

In a world where mind control is known to exist, it's surprising governments don't mandate that powerful individuals protect themselves against it.

[Crake]

In a world where mind control is known to exist, it's surprising governments don't mandate that powerful individuals protect themselves against it.

In a standard world, thered only be a handful of people even capable of casting such spells, let alone people capable of casting mind blank to defend against it. Most kingdoms probably wouldnt have to deal with them for centuries, if they even have someone capable of providing such magical defenses.

Remember that level 11 is considered legendary, so really, beyond that, youre not really dealing with kings and kingdoms, youre dealing with angels and demons and the fate of the world.

[icefractal]

Thats not logical, its in fact, the opposite of logical. Spending resources on forms of attack that you have never, nor would expect to ever, from an IC perspective, encounter is not logical, its just plain and simple metagaming.You don't need to personally have encountered something to have heard of it though.

Like, I've never been mountain climbing. But if I was going to try to climb Everest for some reason, I'd bring a bunch of supplies I've never used before - supplemental oxygen, extreme cold weather gear, climbing gear, etc. Now sure, I do have the internet to look that up, but if I didn't, and this was a matter of life and death, I'd talk to other climbers, look for books they'd written, and so forth.

I mean obviously this depends on the character. Some are going to be more interested in preparation than others. But it's not like being somewhat paranoid about stuff that can kill you is some weird metagame position that nobody could actually have.

[Maat Mons]

Dominate Person is 4th level in the Domination domain. Necrotic Domination is 4th level without need of any particular domain. That puts both just barely out of reach of an e6 game. In a non-e6 game, a 3rd-level Artificer can make a scroll of Dominate Person because the Thayan Slaver PrC exists.

You don’t need Mind Blank to protect you from Dominate Person et al. Protection from [Alignment] suffices. Though getting that in a form that’s both permanent and portable doesn’t tend to be cheap. The most reasonably-priced item I can think of is Pathfinder’s Mind Buttressing armor, which can be had for less than 10,000 gp, depending on the particulars.

[Crake]

You don't need to personally have encountered something to have heard of it though.

Like, I've never been mountain climbing. But if I was going to try to climb Everest for some reason, I'd bring a bunch of supplies I've never used before - supplemental oxygen, extreme cold weather gear, climbing gear, etc. Now sure, I do have the internet to look that up, but if I didn't, and this was a matter of life and death, I'd talk to other climbers, look for books they'd written, and so forth.

Correct, and this is analogous to the group going into a death cult's temple bringing along soulfire enchantments on their armor.


I mean obviously this depends on the character. Some are going to be more interested in preparation than others. But it's not like being somewhat paranoid about stuff that can kill you is some weird metagame position that nobody could actually have.

Right, but you don't take a hazmat suit and gieger counter on your hike up everest "just in case I come across some radiation, because I'm paranoid about radiation killing me", do you?


Dominate Person is 4th level in the Domination domain. Necrotic Domination is 4th level without need of any particular domain. That puts both just barely out of reach of an e6 game. In a non-e6 game, a 3rd-level Artificer can make a scroll of Dominate Person because the Thayan Slaver PrC exists.

Reaching for extremely niche cases only really helps to illustrate my point that, while these things CAN happen, they're very unlikely to happen, and unless a kingdom has had a very long dynasty, where protective trinkets have been crafted and passed down over dozens, if not hundreds of generations, they probably wouldn't expect to be able to blow a budget on such things right away.

Also, keep in mind, if you want to sneak into the king's court and cast a spell like that, you're going to at least need silent spell, probably still spell as well. And better hope there isn't a court wizard with arcane sight permanencied on him. You'd have been better off using charm person as your example, being a level 1 spell, much easier to metamagic silently.


You don’t need Mind Blank to protect you from Dominate Person et al. Protection from [Alignment] suffices. Though getting that in a form that’s both permanent and portable doesn’t tend to be cheap. The most reasonably-priced item I can think of is Pathfinder’s Mind Buttressing armor, which can be had for less than 10,000 gp, depending on the particulars.

Hallowing the king's castle is probably your best bet there, not portable, but depending on your interpretation of the acorn of far travel spell, if the courtyard has an oak tree, you could use that to carry the hallow effect around with you. And that's something perfectly reasonable to do, however, I probably wouldn't call it particularly high level optimization.

Furthermore, that only protects against domination effects, not other compulsions like suggestion, or charms.

Honestly, most of these problems are best dealt with by just having a court wizard who can figure out when something is amiss. Of course, that becomes an issue when it's the court wizard himself who begins trying to take over the kingdom, but that is, in itself, a popular narrative trope, so I wouldn't call that a bad thing.

[RandomPeasant]

Thats not logical, its in fact, the opposite of logical. Spending resources on forms of attack that you have never, nor would expect to ever, from an IC perspective, encounter is not logical, its just plain and simple metagaming.

It's only metagaming if you expect them from a OOC perspective, and "I know this is coming OOC but have no reason to suspect it IC" is a pretty narrow slice of scenarios. Otherwise it's just "your character is paranoid", which might be an annoying thing to roleplay if the table's not on board with it, but isn't metagaming.


Why would an adventurer wear a proverbial ballistic vest against a proverbial gun they arent anticipating on encountering

Because going into a firefight thinking "well I bet they don't have grenades" and therefore completely ignoring the possibility of grenades is a really good way to get yourself killed by a grenade. I don't take precautions against physical violence because I don't anticipate dealing with physical violence, and if I find myself doing so my strategies are "run away" and "call be cops". But if I were to put myself in a violent situation, I absolutely would take precautions against as many forms of physical violence as I could.

So, yeah, you probably should stock up on some mental protection when you're going to fight the Death Cultists, because fear is right there on the Dread Necromancer spell list and if they're Orcus cultists they may well have demonic allies that show up with explicit mind control. I mean, really, if your complaint is about "metagaming" isn't it massively more metagame-y to say "this place is a death cult, everyone here is probably strongly on-theme as death cultists, I don't need to worry about them having a guy who is professionally an illusionist but religiously Orcusite"?


In a standard world, thered only be a handful of people even capable of casting such spells, let alone people capable of casting mind blank to defend against it.

By "world" do you mean "large city"? Because according to the standard demographic tables, you'd expect any place with 15,000 people in it to have a few 11th level characters, and it might even have some people who can cast mind blank. When you get up to a metropolis, "no one there can cast mind blank" is a vanishingly unlikely result (you have to roll eight straight 1s in a row when generating Wizards, and no Cleric with the relevant domain). And cities these sizes are not uncommon even by medieval standards. It's true that you're not going to encounter someone who can cast dominate person every day, but they are also not some massively rare threat no one needs to think about unless they have pissed one off specifically.

[NichG]

If the DM has run a game where even after 14 levels mind control hasn't come up once, then 'but I know the spell lists of these classes, and it could have been on the table' or 'I've read the demographic charts and there should be 15 people who could use that in a city of this size' are, in fact, metagaming.

Badly executed and self-defeating metagaming even, since it's ignoring the fact that the DM seems to have chosen to de-emphasize those effects in their world.

[icefractal]

Obviously the setting makes a difference, but none has been specified. While the concept of a "standard D&D setting" is rather ambiguous, it's all we have to go on when we're trying to speak in general rather than about a particular campaign.

By the same token, since this whole conversation has been in generalities, IDK how applicable "after 14 levels, mind control hasn't come up" is. Is the complaint about characters who - after being in a campaign for an extended time - decide to stock up on unnecessary defenses? Or about characters whose starting equipment includes unnecessary defenses? Or about characters who aren't even yet in a position to get Mind Blank but are talking about wanting it in the future?

I still feel like the correlation between metagaming and "lots of defenses" is questionable though. The example of "it hasn't come up yet, so the GM is intentionally not including it, so we don't need to defend against it" is metagaming, unless the lack of mind control is a known (to the characters) part of the setting.

Not that metagaming is always bad - benign metagaming is helpful and sometimes necessary, IMO. For example, I know a GM who really dislikes instant-death type effects. Doesn't give them to foes, doesn't like it when players have them. So for her games, I don't pick those effects and I don't worry about defense against those effects. And that's metagaming, which is fine.

[King of Nowhere]

This does sound like a limit to your ability to roleplay though, if every character has to behave as though they have the experience of every character you've played up to that point with regards to being aware of what could be possible.

I can roleplay as a fool or a simpleton, just like I can optimize to a weaker power level. that's a different thing from intentionally playing bad or ignore optimization.
...
at least, in my mind it is. yeah, I realize it's a fine distinction. I can't think of any way to express it better.
In any case, I do like a certain level of optimization, and I do like characters that have flaws and limitations, but are generally competent.




Lastly, I'd love to hear how your "short campaign" goes, and how its party Wizard(s) respond to all these threats. Because while Schrödinger's Wizard can do a lot of things, in practice, real Wizards rarely do. Even if they're not tactically inept like my signature academia mage.

We won't have a schroedinger wizard for this campaign. actually, we have a wu jen with some persistency tricks, focused on buffing. a cleric and a bard. so, I'll probably be buffed a lot and do most of the damage.
I started the thread as a "I finally understand another piece of what makes wizards so powerful - the fact that in normal campaigns, people do not get to buy all the nifty utility items that help fill the gap". it had nothing to do with the expected outcome of the campaign.



While optimization and roleplay arent INHERENTLY at odds, by your own description, your need to optimize characters to have defenses against every possible circumstance does appear to have an impact on your rp.
well, yes and no.
as I said earlier, I can roleplay a fool. but if I decide my character is somewhat competent, I do want him to be actually competent.




Furthermore, the desire to be well protected should stem from the threat of attacks, but if youve never in your life come across an enchantment wizard for example, nor would you be expecting to, why would immunity to mind affecting even be on your radar? The only reason it would be, would be due to, to use the technically correct term, metagaming.

most people who take self-defence lessons have never been assaulted, nor do they expect to. Most people who take a first aid course have never been in the aftermath of an accident where they could have saved somebody had they known better, and do not expect to ever be in such a situation, but they do take the course just in case. most soldiers in western countries do not really expect that they will actually have to go to war someday, but they train nonetheless.

a character that goes into danger for a living has even more incentive to do some research and be prepared. if I am a 14th level adventurer, I know a few things. I am aware that I may be caught in webs, charmed, energy drained, assaulted by an invisible foe, a bunch of other things. perhaps this is the source of our disagreement, because you seem to assume that a seasoned adventurer wanting to have protection from compulsions is metagaming, while I assume that anyone who made it that far in the adventuring business will have a knowledge of possible dangers, regardless of whether it was used against him in the past or not.

that goes specifically for my character, a grumpy old dwarf (i actually made him old, eating a -3 to my main stats just for the fluff) who complains about youngsters nowadays using fighting styles/spellls that didn't exhist in his time, it's not fair and that stuff should be forbidden. so he's a bigot, mildly racist - and since he considers anyone born outside of his tiny, isolated community to be a foreigner, he dislikes pretty much the whole world. he's also reasonably smart, the kind of person who is not liked, but people still have to work with him because he's good at what he does - else he wouldn't have made it to level 14, and wouldn't have been picked for the mission.
with this background, he either adventured alone, or he had temporary groups - he would work with a party for a time, for a specific quest, and then they would part ways. So my character does not have a party he can trust to protect him from stuff he can't handle, and he has a strong incentive to be self-sufficient.
as my character does not like those youngsters and their fancy tricks, he is focused on debuffing. he's got an array of options to impose penalties on an opponent.

And so, we started this tangent because you accused me of sacrificing everything on the altar of mindless optimization, but I hope I can show you how a good optimization serves the story. I used my knowledge - and some suggestions from this forum - to build a fighting guy with a build that had options to debuff enemies, with enough varieties and options to not be a one-trick pony, but also with enough power that those options can be actually useful. Being well-rounded against different threats is not actually required for the mission, as I will have 3 spellcasters to support me - but it's required by my backstory. some of my items are potentially useless - if I wanted to metagame I'd have bought a +1 weapon and trusted the cleric to cast greater magic weapon on it. not to mention, if I wanted to just be powerful I'd never have started at old age. at the same time, while I shot myself in the foot multiple times power-wise, I still retain enough offensive options to be useful - in particular, the stormguard warrior feat gives me an option to deal heavy damage if a target is immune to my debuffs and/or too hard to hit, provided I can attack them two rounds in a row, and I am decently tanky.
optimization is not just "omg you munchkin cheater, you one-shot the final boss". optimization means customizing your fighting style to be something other than just another generic wizard/fighter/cleric/rogue, incorporating your personality quirks around it (I always like to have fighting style and personality influence each other), and have an outcome that is strong enough to be effective and fun to play, but not too strong that it becomes a boring invincible hero.
achieving that requires some effort. I could just be a generic fighter and complain about those youngsters and their fancy tricks and just fight like a normal fighter, but it wouldn't be the same thing.

[Darg]

I started the thread as a "I finally understand another piece of what makes wizards so powerful - the fact that in normal campaigns, people do not get to buy all the nifty utility items that help fill the gap". it had nothing to do with the expected outcome of the campaign.

That's the thing. A normal campaign usually doesn't require a party to be outfitted to handle any danger or environmental trip up they might ever come across over 20 levels at each individual encounter.

It's part of the game to equip yourself of what you will definitely need and maybe handle a few consumables to handle to cover some unlikely scenario. You don't need see invis to take down a tarrasque for example.

[NichG]

I can roleplay as a fool or a simpleton, just like I can optimize to a weaker power level. that's a different thing from intentionally playing bad or ignore optimization.
...
at least, in my mind it is. yeah, I realize it's a fine distinction. I can't think of any way to express it better.
In any case, I do like a certain level of optimization, and I do like characters that have flaws and limitations, but are generally competent.


For me at least the objection or the place where optimization mindset seems to be interfering with roleplay mindset is that it appears to be projecting a preconception of 'how D&D is' that overrides both the possibility of a DM running things differently, and characters as being situated differently within that knowledge while still being competent (vs 'fool' or 'simpleton'). But the space of possibilities is much broader:

- Characters who do not know these things yet, because they've come up very quickly and have not been exposed to those dangers.
- Characters in a world that is being run in a way that biases these effects to be of a different rarity than the books would predict for reasons that are not grounded (or even groundable) in D&D's existing mechanics.
- Characters whose values and goals represent a different perspective on risk. For example I played a character with Immunity to Fear that I interpreted as literally 'unable to experience fear' - they were still (hyper)competent and didn't automatically dismiss danger, but any time I found myself thinking 'if I choose to act, a bad thing could happen to the character' I forced myself to say 'okay, we'll hold as a given that the character is going to act despite that risk - how would he make the most out of that situation?' I can similarly imagine lots of archetypes of various kinds of adrenaline junkies, overconfident individuals, etc whose first consideration wouldn't be that a bad thing could happen (in a negative light), but whose consideration would be more like 'a bad thing could happen, that means that when I survive to the other end its that much more awesome!'. Extreme skiiers, base jumpers, etc are generally competent, skilled individuals who make very poor choices from a zoomed out risk management perspective.
- Characters who are driven by necessity - yes it sucks that maybe you could be mind controlled, but being unable to prevent that doesn't let you escape whatever need is driving you to adventure.
- Characters whose ability and understanding/knowledge are decoupled. Natural geniuses, for example - they didn't become Lv14 adventurers from surviving 14 levels worth of danger, but that Lv14 represents the fact that they're just that kinesthetically skilled. Or, characters who have 'trained up' to that level but lack real-world experience - an elven monk who has trained non-stop in a monastery for two centuries, for example.

You can of course come up with reasons why these things don't make sense to you, but the sort of roleplay skill that would be good to refine is the ability to instead come up with reasons why these could make sense to you, and which you can then in turn play off of.

[icefractal]

That's the thing. A normal campaign usually doesn't require a party to be outfitted to handle any danger or environmental trip up they might ever come across over 20 levels at each individual encounter.

It's part of the game to equip yourself of what you will definitely need and maybe handle a few consumables to handle to cover some unlikely scenario. You don't need see invis to take down a tarrasque for example.Maybe my experiences have been an outlier, but IME, it's not common to know about threats in advance.

Yes, there are divination spells and other information gathering methods that could hypothetically be used before going anywhere dangerous. But IME, they aren't and many GMs would get annoyed and/or actively block that level of foreknowledge - a number of players would be against it too. Even when we're proactively choosing to go somewhere (as opposed to ending up there by surprise), the briefing is more about "here's why we need to go here, and what the area is generally known for" than specific knowledge of the threats there.

And knowing the general theme only goes so far. Not that long ago, we played a module which was investigation of a murder in a magic school. So one of the other players made a character with a lot of anti-caster abilities, and then was irked to find we mostly ended up fighting constructs and aberrations with very little spellcasting involved.

Also there's the factor that knowing what you're up against doesn't guarantee you have the time/resources to prepare. If getting protection against negative energy requires seeking out a powerful enough priest, convincing them to craft you an item, and waiting several weeks for it to be finished, then the time to do that is before you hear that the Lich King's army is approaching the town and will be here by next sundown.

[King of Nowhere]

For me at least the objection or the place where optimization mindset seems to be interfering with roleplay mindset is that it appears to be projecting a preconception of 'how D&D is' that overrides both the possibility of a DM running things differently, and characters as being situated differently within that knowledge while still being competent (vs 'fool' or 'simpleton'). But the space of possibilities is much broader:

- Characters who do not know these things yet, because they've come up very quickly and have not been exposed to those dangers.
- Characters in a world that is being run in a way that biases these effects to be of a different rarity than the books would predict for reasons that are not grounded (or even groundable) in D&D's existing mechanics.

this is how I represented orcs in my ancient age campaign world. coming from a wild place with virtually no arcane casters, knowing only infighting between tribes, they were totally unprepared to handle magic.
which is why, no matter their strenght and numbers, orcs were nothing but a nuisance in that world. Until a pc taught them to use magic support. he was hailed as a prophet and eventually revered as a god for that. in the modern age campaign world, orcs have a country and are civilized like anyone else.



- Characters whose values and goals represent a different perspective on risk. For example I played a character with Immunity to Fear that I interpreted as literally 'unable to experience fear' - they were still (hyper)competent and didn't automatically dismiss danger, but any time I found myself thinking 'if I choose to act, a bad thing could happen to the character' I forced myself to say 'okay, we'll hold as a given that the character is going to act despite that risk - how would he make the most out of that situation?' I can similarly imagine lots of archetypes of various kinds of adrenaline junkies, overconfident individuals, etc whose first consideration wouldn't be that a bad thing could happen (in a negative light), but whose consideration would be more like 'a bad thing could happen, that means that when I survive to the other end its that much more awesome!'. Extreme skiiers, base jumpers, etc are generally competent, skilled individuals who make very poor choices from a zoomed out risk management perspective.

that's pretty much the description of my character in the past campaign. he was insecure, and he handled it by wading into danger and surviving, earning a confidence boost.
he was optimized to be the kind of character that can survive pretty much anything, though. And I still had to resurrect him twice


- Characters who are driven by necessity - yes it sucks that maybe you could be mind controlled, but being unable to prevent that doesn't let you escape whatever need is driving you to adventure.
that's often the case in the first levels. By high level, you have at least enough capacity to plan and take some countermeasures about it.

- Characters whose ability and understanding/knowledge are decoupled. Natural geniuses, for example - they didn't become Lv14 adventurers from surviving 14 levels worth of danger, but that Lv14 represents the fact that they're just that kinesthetically skilled. Or, characters who have 'trained up' to that level but lack real-world experience - an elven monk who has trained non-stop in a monastery for two centuries, for example.
this one is a hard pass. even if you spent two centuries holed up in a monastery or two decades of intensive training with master instructors, you've got to have heard something about the outside world. I suppose a hermit-like monastery could potentially yield someone high level who never adventured before and has many holes in his knowledge. I also suppose he won't have any magic item, I don't see how he could have earned them in the monastery. though it would be considerate from the rest of the party to give the new guy some refresher lecture on the kind of stuff he may encounter. it would require some very specific circumstances to have this kind of ignorance and keep it for long.
in the case of the scion of a noble family who reached high level by training from childhood with the best swordmasters available, it's not believable; a family involved into the world and with access to information will make sure to include some formal education in all that training. of course, as a noble he may have a different array of potential threats from a normal adventurers. more assassins, less monsters.


the sort of roleplay skill that would be good to refine is the ability to instead come up with reasons why these could make sense to you
I've just done that.
I don't understand why some people here got the idea that I can't roleplay just because I find some things unlikely and prefer to take a different approach as default.
or, apparently they think there's something wrong that my fighter wants to have protection against most forms of supernatural attacks. what's wrong with that? why do I have to justify it instead of considering it the norm? this feels like "martials can't have nice things" mentality

[NichG]

that's pretty much the description of my character in the past campaign. he was insecure, and he handled it by wading into danger and surviving, earning a confidence boost.
he was optimized to be the kind of character that can survive pretty much anything, though. And I still had to resurrect him twice


I mean, this does bring up the other side of the equation - the DM. At least speaking for myself, I would be less able to roleplay effectively in campaigns run by DMs (and with player groups) who are mechanical-challenge-focused, competitive, 'killer', etc. I'm not going to have as wide of a palette in a Dungeon Crawl Classics or X-Crawl module as I would in something where the DM isn't specifically trying to keep things as close as possible to what the group can realistically handle.



that's often the case in the first levels. By high level, you have at least enough capacity to plan and take some countermeasures about it.
this one is a hard pass. even if you spent two centuries holed up in a monastery or two decades of intensive training with master instructors, you've got to have heard something about the outside world. I suppose a hermit-like monastery could potentially yield someone high level who never adventured before and has many holes in his knowledge. I also suppose he won't have any magic item, I don't see how he could have earned them in the monastery. though it would be considerate from the rest of the party to give the new guy some refresher lecture on the kind of stuff he may encounter. it would require some very specific circumstances to have this kind of ignorance and keep it for long.
in the case of the scion of a noble family who reached high level by training from childhood with the best swordmasters available, it's not believable; a family involved into the world and with access to information will make sure to include some formal education in all that training. of course, as a noble he may have a different array of potential threats from a normal adventurers. more assassins, less monsters.


But again, these things bring in a particular view of 'the world' that isn't actually situated in in-character stuff, its situated in the zeitgeist of decades of people playing D&D and coming up with truisms about 'how D&D worlds are'. Rather than assuming everyone is in-character aware of every character option, you could choose to interpret the world's relationship with the materials as the materials being something like a omniscient being's codex of the possible, with maybe people on the eastern continent currently developing mental control spells in their labs while a lich up north is known for throwing around death spells that no one else has figured out, etc. So if your character e.g. 'picks Finger of Death' that doesn't represent how easy it is for everyone, but rather it represents your character's specific and involved research into something that interested them.



I've just done that.
I don't understand why some people here got the idea that I can't roleplay just because I find some things unlikely and prefer to take a different approach as default.
or, apparently they think there's something wrong that my fighter wants to have protection against most forms of supernatural attacks. what's wrong with that? why do I have to justify it instead of considering it the norm? this feels like "martials can't have nice things" mentality
[/quote]

Well its because the perspective about 'how the game is' is really against many people's experiences here, and you're stating these things as sort of absolute realities about high level and so on. So that doesn't sound just like e.g. 'this is the kind of character I like to play, and martials make it difficult for me to play that kind of character', it sounds like some objective 'this is the way it must be for everyone'. But for a lot of us, its not like that.

And when you say 'but if you think of this from an optimization point of view, it has to be or everyone has the idiot ball' then that does come off as kind of narrow-minded from a roleplaying standpoint. But using Stormwind to defend that means that the discussion naturally goes to 'do we actually consider this to be good roleplaying, independent of the optimization elements?'. Which is how we are where we are now.

I agree that martials have a lot fewer options than casters in 3.5e, and that under some table environments that causes real problems. But like, 'everyone has to be playing Batman' is too far. You don't have to have all of those things to have a valid character, in general. You might want to have those things, and what sort of game best enables you to have that while still functioning well as a game and setting is a whole other discussion. But to set that as the standard is, IMO, letting the optimization mindset so much importance that it does start to sacrifice other possibilities. The balanced approach would be to say 'okay, this is the reality of the game, this is the sort of thing I want to play, so I can engage an optimization mindset in a purely OOC fashion to make that as viable as possible within the limits I am operating in'.

If the result of engaging an optimization mindset is to say 'now I can't be satisfied with any character I can make within my constraints', something has gone wrong and that skill is less serving you, than you are serving it. Which isn't a position that I think most of us want to be in for ourselves, so in turn there's not much acceptance of the view of the game that seems to derive from it.

[RandomPeasant]

If the DM has run a game where even after 14 levels mind control hasn't come up once, then 'but I know the spell lists of these classes, and it could have been on the table' or 'I've read the demographic charts and there should be 15 people who could use that in a city of this size' are, in fact, metagaming.

Sure, but it's trivial to instead say "because my character has a +20 Knowledge (Arcana) check he is aware that magics like dominate person exist". You can make a more nuanced argument about what specific threats someone might expect based on specific circumstances and the decisions they might make about marginal costs and tradeoffs on that basis, but it gets down into the weeds in a way that doesn't generalized at all very quickly.


By the same token, since this whole conversation has been in generalities, IDK how applicable "after 14 levels, mind control hasn't come up" is. Is the complaint about characters who - after being in a campaign for an extended time - decide to stock up on unnecessary defenses? Or about characters whose starting equipment includes unnecessary defenses? Or about characters who aren't even yet in a position to get Mind Blank but are talking about wanting it in the future?

You might also ask something like "if it does come up, how likely is the party to be able to get it on the spot". Maybe all your adventures are highly thematic, and you've done 14 straight levels of "fire temple" or "undead marsh" or various other non-mind control themes. But mind control exists in the world and that's knowable by your character, so if you don't have confidence you'll be able to get your anti-mind control gear before needing to set out on a quest in the fae woodlands, it's still not irrational or metagaming to go buy some anti-mind control gear.


But IME, they aren't and many GMs would get annoyed and/or actively block that level of foreknowledge - a number of players would be against it too.

Foreknowledge is also not necessarily worth that much. Knowing the specific type of big dumb bruiser you are going to fight won't really tell you much. For divining specific threats to be worth it you have to have enough time that it won't cut into your resources for the adventure itself, be fighting an enemy that results in a meaningfully different loadout for your party, and have a table that will tolerate that. Often it's less time spent preparing to just say "we run mind blank, death ward, and freedom of movement by default".


And knowing the general theme only goes so far. Not that long ago, we played a module which was investigation of a murder in a magic school. So one of the other players made a character with a lot of anti-caster abilities, and then was irked to find we mostly ended up fighting constructs and aberrations with very little spellcasting involved.

There are also some themes that are quite broad. A "demon cult" could include everything from brute force bruisers to stealthy infiltrators to long-range blasters. Undead could mean waves of chaff you have to put down, or a few dangerous templated elites.

[NichG]

Sure, but it's trivial to instead say "because my character has a +20 Knowledge (Arcana) check he is aware that magics like dominate person exist". You can make a more nuanced argument about what specific threats someone might expect based on specific circumstances and the decisions they might make about marginal costs and tradeoffs on that basis, but it gets down into the weeds in a way that doesn't generalized at all very quickly.


You can say 'because my character has a +20 Knowledge (Arcana) check, they are aware of how common magics like dominate person are'. The answer to that in a given DM's world can be 'not actually all that common'. The problem is presuming that the answer has to be a certain way just because that's what an optimizer with access to the D&D books would do. Furthermore, you also have the choice to not play a character with a +20 Knowledge (Arcana) check. Given that the character in question is a fighter/martial type, its not like it would actually be all that unusual for them not to have such a check!

When you start to say 'well, I can use my optimization mindset to figure out what D&D must look like, and I can imagine what a character with a high check would know in that world, therefore I can't play a character with a low check who in turn does not know that thing that I decided and still feel like the character is competent' then you've allowed your optimization mindset to interfere with your ability to roleplay, because you're no longer just using optimization to do a thing well, you're starting to use it to override other considerations about how the world could be. And that is actual bad roleplaying.

[Crake]

I mean, this does bring up the other side of the equation - the DM. At least speaking for myself, I would be less able to roleplay effectively in campaigns run by DMs (and with player groups) who are mechanical-challenge-focused, competitive, 'killer', etc. I'm not going to have as wide of a palette in a Dungeon Crawl Classics or X-Crawl module as I would in something where the DM isn't specifically trying to keep things as close as possible to what the group can realistically handle.



But again, these things bring in a particular view of 'the world' that isn't actually situated in in-character stuff, its situated in the zeitgeist of decades of people playing D&D and coming up with truisms about 'how D&D worlds are'. Rather than assuming everyone is in-character aware of every character option, you could choose to interpret the world's relationship with the materials as the materials being something like a omniscient being's codex of the possible, with maybe people on the eastern continent currently developing mental control spells in their labs while a lich up north is known for throwing around death spells that no one else has figured out, etc. So if your character e.g. 'picks Finger of Death' that doesn't represent how easy it is for everyone, but rather it represents your character's specific and involved research into something that interested them.


Well its because the perspective about 'how the game is' is really against many people's experiences here, and you're stating these things as sort of absolute realities about high level and so on. So that doesn't sound just like e.g. 'this is the kind of character I like to play, and martials make it difficult for me to play that kind of character', it sounds like some objective 'this is the way it must be for everyone'. But for a lot of us, its not like that.

And when you say 'but if you think of this from an optimization point of view, it has to be or everyone has the idiot ball' then that does come off as kind of narrow-minded from a roleplaying standpoint. But using Stormwind to defend that means that the discussion naturally goes to 'do we actually consider this to be good roleplaying, independent of the optimization elements?'. Which is how we are where we are now.

I agree that martials have a lot fewer options than casters in 3.5e, and that under some table environments that causes real problems. But like, 'everyone has to be playing Batman' is too far. You don't have to have all of those things to have a valid character, in general. You might want to have those things, and what sort of game best enables you to have that while still functioning well as a game and setting is a whole other discussion. But to set that as the standard is, IMO, letting the optimization mindset so much importance that it does start to sacrifice other possibilities. The balanced approach would be to say 'okay, this is the reality of the game, this is the sort of thing I want to play, so I can engage an optimization mindset in a purely OOC fashion to make that as viable as possible within the limits I am operating in'.

If the result of engaging an optimization mindset is to say 'now I can't be satisfied with any character I can make within my constraints', something has gone wrong and that skill is less serving you, than you are serving it. Which isn't a position that I think most of us want to be in for ourselves, so in turn there's not much acceptance of the view of the game that seems to derive from it.

This pretty well sums up my stance, thanks NichG for taking the time and effort to summarize this side of the argument so eloquently. Unfortunately I don’t have too much spare time to post at length responses to the arguments being brought up by others, but to a few people’s points about how many people exist at various levels, you need to remember that wizards only get 2 spells per level, and clerics have dozens of domains to choose from, so the while there may be “a lot” of these characters at the appropriate level, the likelihood of them ALSO having the spells in question are still incredibly slim.

NichG’s description of the mind control research and the finger of death lich is a very good analogy of that point.

[Mordante]

The problem I see is that the higher the lvls become, the more you have to optimize (unless the DM always picks the easiest encounters for a lvl). Because the magical aspects of 3.5 play Rocket-tag by default.

The common dangers of the higher levels:

1) Unless your DM totally avoids Death Magic, at some point you want to have some kind of protection against it. Be it straight up Death Ward or just simply having high saves.
2) Melee characters should always start with a ranged backup option and at some point invest into an option to fly (unless the party's caster takes care of that).
3) some kind of (out of combat) healing is also almost always needed to ensure the parties safety.
4) you should have an answer to regeneration and possible immunities.
5) there are dozens of "conditions" that can quickly end deadly at higher lvls. You need to be prepared for these situations.
...

You can ignore these to some degree, but not completely (unless the DM makes it easy).

Again the comprehension with the arctic expedition. You can't ignore the dangers.
But nobody forces to go on an arctic expedition. You could do something else that is less dangerous, but still demanding, fun and heroic/epic.
The same in 3.5. Nobody forces you to play at those risky levels.
Most plots fit into E6. Actually the higher the lvls gets, the higher the chance that the plot doesn't work anymore. Because 3.5 offers an endless arsenal of abilities and spells to skip or trivialize many possible plot devices.

I think the role of the DM is very important in this. If you a level 18 party is not optimized the DM should not give them CR18 fights but maybe 16 or 15. Whatever is appropriate. Since no one ever want to play a healer I tens to keep my fights short and few. It's also the role to keep everyone busy in the game. If a character has no combat skills find something else for them to do.

[Elenian]

The two main positions in this thread appear to be:
1) there is a martial/caster disparity that can profitably be understood in terms of ease of access to 'solutions' to certain threats.
Vs.
2) a disparity of the sort contemplated by (1) is not necessarily a bad thing from a game experience point of view.

These positions are not inconsistent, so if I've understood them correctly (which I may well not have!) I guess I struggle to see what the argument is about?

[Gnaeus]

And really, for half that stuff, why would it even cross your character’s mind? Think about it irl. Do you wear a ballistic vest at all times? No, because you’re not anticipating to get into a gunfight. Why would an adventurer wear a proverbial ballistic vest against a proverbial gun they arent anticipating on encountering, or may not even realistically know exists in character?

I'm not a murderhobo. If my worst enemy decides to come at me, I will receive a strongly worded chat. If I killed monsters for a living, I would have defenses all the time. The only way that argument makes sense is if the characters are dumber or less invested in their survival than the players. Now, it would probably be more IC for Wally Wizard (with his godlike intelligence and PhD knowledge of demons, dragons and undead) to be telling Bert Barbarian what he should be buying for defenses. But that's not fun for ooc reasons for most groups.

[Satinavian]

Thats not logical, its in fact, the opposite of logical. Spending resources on forms of attack that you have never, nor would expect to ever, from an IC perspective, encounter is not logical, its just plain and simple metagaming.The thing is, if it was not reasonable to expect such an attack from an IC perspective, then it is also likely not reasonably to expect it from an OOC perspective and preparing for this would not be a good optimisation move.
Because otherwise the character must be clearly in the wrong about the world he lives in. And "clueless idiot" is rarely part of the character concept.
Sure, surprises might exist anyway and sometimes there is some new threat that people are unaware of that is part of the campaign. But in regular cases character expectation should not mismatch the reality all that much.


And really, for half that stuff, why would it even cross your character’s mind? Think about it irl. Do you wear a ballistic vest at all times? No, because you’re not anticipating to get into a gunfight. Why would an adventurer wear a proverbial ballistic vest against a proverbial gun they arent anticipating on encountering, or may not even realistically know exists in character?Why would adventurers not anticipate an encounter with someone actually dangerous though ? Picking fights with dangerous people/beings is basically their job. And trying to cover weaknesses that might cost them their life is quite reasonable.
If you go back a couple of centuries, you will find that mercenaries and other professional fighters often invested quite a fortune in their armor and equipment. Even during peacetime. And generally it was the rich that had the best stuff, not the most experienced ones who had seen all the dangers firsthand.

[Gnaeus]

The two main positions in this thread appear to be:
1) there is a martial/caster disparity that can profitably be understood in terms of ease of access to 'solutions' to certain threats.
Vs.
2) a disparity of the sort contemplated by (1) is not necessarily a bad thing from a game experience point of view.

These positions are not inconsistent, so if I've understood them correctly (which I may well not have!) I guess I struggle to see what the argument is about?

Personally, I don't have a problem with classes at different power levels. But having all the most powerful classes be casters and most of the weaker ones be warriors is problematic. Wizard>Fighter doesn't actually hurt my feelings, as long as:
1. This is predictable. If I make a butler, and I'm weaker than merlin, that makes sense. But if I design my character to be the world's best swordsman, and I am routinely shown up by the druids pet, thats unfortunate. As the game continues to age, this becomes less of a problem.
2. There are options for most kinds of character at most power levels. If I am in a party where balance is a major concern, I want playable caster options that do not overshadow martials, and martial options that can play at wizard power levels. Maybe thats not "fighter". Maybe thats "Dragon Knight", who gets a free dragon pet and a slew of cool effects from his draconic bond. This is fixable, but being a fixable problem doesn't mean it isn't a problem.

[King of Nowhere]

Well its because the perspective about 'how the game is' is really against many people's experiences here, and you're stating these things as sort of absolute realities about high level and so on. So that doesn't sound just like e.g. 'this is the kind of character I like to play, and martials make it difficult for me to play that kind of character', it sounds like some objective 'this is the way it must be for everyone'. But for a lot of us, its not like that.

And when you say 'but if you think of this from an optimization point of view, it has to be or everyone has the idiot ball' then that does come off as kind of narrow-minded

'everyone has to be playing Batman' is too far.

If the result of engaging an optimization mindset is to say 'now I can't be satisfied with any character I can make within my constraints', something has gone wrong

now this is really weird.
Because I didn't say any of those things - in fact, I did argue myself against such perspectives at times. It appears people are taking limited statements I made and expanding them to something else.

I started this thread to share an epiphany I had about optimization and this forum.
two weeks ago I would read on the forum that casters are incredibly superior to martials, because they could do this and that and martials had no answer. And I was like, this is so wrong, martials are fully capable of competing! if the caster used mirror image, the martial has true sight; if the caster flies, the martial has a flight item too. if the caster tries to target the weak will save of the martial, the martial is immune to anything that really hurts. all of the stuff that is listed as an "i win" button doesn't really work, because item.
then I made a character with some wealth limitation closer to most campaign, and I discovered I could not afford any of that stuff.
So I was like, "haha! I finally understood why everyone else says that casters are so powerful"

never, ever I said that every table is like that. in fact, the two common assumptions when discussing optimization - that the party is optimized, and that the party is playing a normal campaign against normal monsters - are at odds, because in such a campaign there would be zero challenge involved. I stated in many other threads that every table should pick a power level it's comfortable with.

nor did I say that I wanted to play a character immune to everything (though the insecure adrenaline junkie had more or less that as a goal), and that martials limit my choices. There is a huge difference between "I want to be immune to everything" and "I want to spend a reasonable fraction of my character wealth to protect myself against stuff". it's not a binary choice where you either completely neglect a bunch of magic defences, or you're trying to be invincible. you can try to have a well-rounded character without trying to be batman. I am arguing that everyone in the adventuring business would realistically devote some thought into how to be more effective. it's a far cry from advocating total OP for everyone.

Finally, I didn't even come close to stating that I can't be satisfied with my constrains. Did I ever say that I was unhappy with my character being vulnerable to a high-op caster? Did I ask for wasy to compensate? I didn't. What I said was basically "I now understand why everyone says martials are so underpowered" and "this is a weird new experience that will take some getting used to" and "in light of this experience, I think giving everyone huge wealth makes for a more balanced game". Everything else, it was either wrongfully extrapolated, or it was taken out of context because we were clearly talking about different things.

And now I also had a second epiphany, in that I understood why people were making those weird - and frankly insulting - remarks about my gaming preferences

The two main positions in this thread appear to be:
1) there is a martial/caster disparity that can profitably be understood in terms of ease of access to 'solutions' to certain threats.
Vs.
2) a disparity of the sort contemplated by (1) is not necessarily a bad thing from a game experience point of view.

These positions are not inconsistent, so if I've understood them correctly (which I may well not have!) I guess I struggle to see what the argument is about?
yeah, that also sums it up nicely.


Sure, but it's trivial to instead say "because my character has a +20 Knowledge (Arcana) check he is aware that magics like dominate person exist". You can make a more nuanced argument about what specific threats someone might expect based on specific circumstances and the decisions they might make about marginal costs and tradeoffs on that basis, but it gets down into the weeds in a way that doesn't generalized at all very quickly.

Do one need a +20 to knowledge to know that mind control exhist? people in the real world don't need a +20 to knowledge to know about tanks and fighter planes.
You need the knowledge check to know how to protect against those. But if you are just an ignorant fighter, you can ask out. "fellow party wizard, I am concerned that an enemy enchanter may mess with my mind. Can you kindly suggest something to protect myself?". Or "kind merchant that I've been regularly selling my loot to, I'm concerned about being mind controlled; do you have anything against it?". In this second scenario the merchant may try to scam you, but you are both 1) a regular client that brings him lots of money, and 2) a highly trained professional killer that's better not to have an an enemy, so most merchants would take the safe option.
In any case, I wouldn't ask for a knowledge check. It's the kind of stuff that you can reasonably find out if you spend some time on it.



If you go back a couple of centuries, you will find that mercenaries and other professional fighters often invested quite a fortune in their armor and equipment. Even during peacetime. And generally it was the rich that had the best stuff, not the most experienced ones who had seen all the dangers firsthand.

I'll also add that it was normal for a nobleman fearing assassinations to walk around and even go to church with a chain mail under your regular clothes.

[RandomPeasant]

You can say 'because my character has a +20 Knowledge (Arcana) check, they are aware of how common magics like dominate person are'. The answer to that in a given DM's world can be 'not actually all that common'.

But that doesn't actually move the needle. Unless the DM is explicitly saying "there is no mind control, you do not have to worry about this, you know this both in and out of character", whether you prepare for mind control that is "not actually that common" is just a matter of personal preference. Maybe you have a risk tolerance such that you would pay 10k GP to prevent a 1/1000 risk. Maybe you don't. But it's not "metagaming" either way, unless your DM is giving you an amount and type of information that is actually very atypical for you to get.

[NichG]

I started this thread to share an epiphany I had about optimization and this forum.
two weeks ago I would read on the forum that casters are incredibly superior to martials, because they could do this and that and martials had no answer. And I was like, this is so wrong, martials are fully capable of competing! if the caster used mirror image, the martial has true sight; if the caster flies, the martial has a flight item too. if the caster tries to target the weak will save of the martial, the martial is immune to anything that really hurts. all of the stuff that is listed as an "i win" button doesn't really work, because item.
then I made a character with some wealth limitation closer to most campaign, and I discovered I could not afford any of that stuff.
So I was like, "haha! I finally understood why everyone else says that casters are so powerful"


Yeah, but the thing that read as weird to me about this is the presumed standard you were holding characters to, of actually being able to have all of those defenses up and available at any given time. Its not that you can't make a character who does achieve that standard, or that its wrong that casters have a much easier time achieving that standard if they want to. It's that feeling that you should expect a viable character to have all of those things that seems like such an unreasonable standard to begin with, so that's the focus of the critique.

Like, if that is the only reason 'why everyone else says that casters are so powerful', then in some sense that undermines the martial/caster divide arguments rather than supports it, because lots of players aren't playing to that standard and lots of DMs aren't running games that require it in order to have a good chance of survival. So it makes the martial/caster disparity argument much more niche, compared to other framings of the same thing which would even apply to low-op tables or low-risk tables.

Edit: To make it more clear why this might matter and not just be nit-picking, it impacts which interventions could be seen as being sufficient to resolve the martial/caster disparity in practice. If for example I hold the standard of the list of things you wanted on your character, then Tome of Battle is insufficient. Yet for me I would feel that basically keeping to Tome of Battle classes and maybe expanding the maneuver list with some homebrew or adding mechanisms for learning new maneuvers without needing to level up would be good enough. There wouldn't be any sort of precise parity - ToB characters aren't going to be chain-gating solars or divining the future for example - but I wouldn't expect there to be problems, because e.g. a Lv14 character not having always-on immunity to domination or always-on ability to pierce invisibility/stealth/etc isn't a 'this character is nonviable in high level play' flag to me.



Finally, I didn't even come close to stating that I can't be satisfied with my constrains. Did I ever say that I was unhappy with my character being vulnerable to a high-op caster? Did I ask for wasy to compensate? I didn't. What I said was basically "I now understand why everyone says martials are so underpowered" and "this is a weird new experience that will take some getting used to" and "in light of this experience, I think giving everyone huge wealth makes for a more balanced game". Everything else, it was either wrongfully extrapolated, or it was taken out of context because we were clearly talking about different things.

This bit is fair enough.



Do one need a +20 to knowledge to know that mind control exhist? people in the real world don't need a +20 to knowledge to know about tanks and fighter planes.


The skill threshold is a red herring here. If you're fighting a war against an enemy who doesn't have tanks and fighter planes, but you say 'but I know that fighter planes exist, lets make sure every squad of infantry has an anti-aircraft rocket in their gear', then you've made a mistake. You didn't adapt your model of the world to the actual situation you were in, but continued on a line of logic beginning from flawed premises.

'I participated in twenty years of D&D theorycraft and I know the biggest threats at high level are these no-save-just-lose spells' doesn't mean that a given DM is going to have NPCs deploy those no-save-just-lose spells or have those spells be common in their world. If that theorycraft leads you to believe that those spells are the things you most need to protect yourself from, without reference to what the DM has actually communicated about the world, then thats you bringing something external in rather than just adventurers naturally wanting to be more prepared. It's a fine line since thinking what the enemy might do is a reasonable in-character thing for many characters to do - but the tricky bit is to base that thinking only on what the character has actually seen in that world and what the DM has (or could in response to questions) explicitly relay about what the character would know about that world, rather than the full external perspective you have as a long-term player and/or DM yourself.


But that doesn't actually move the needle. Unless the DM is explicitly saying "there is no mind control, you do not have to worry about this, you know this both in and out of character", whether you prepare for mind control that is "not actually that common" is just a matter of personal preference. Maybe you have a risk tolerance such that you would pay 10k GP to prevent a 1/1000 risk. Maybe you don't. But it's not "metagaming" either way, unless your DM is giving you an amount and type of information that is actually very atypical for you to get.

The issue I have is with assuming the DM's answer - filling that blank in with forum zeitgeist or 'if our enemies were optimized this is what they would do' kinds of logic - without even asking.

If you're playing a character who doesn't go outside when its cloudy without a ring of electricity resistance on because they're afraid of random lightning strikes, then sure! If you're saying 'high level adventurers should all be like that because its the only thing that makes sense in a risky profession', you're no longer talking about this one particular paranoid character. You're making implicit statements about how common different risks are and 'what being a high level adventurer' means and is like in that world, which are degrees of freedom of the world. When you set those degrees of freedom to some externally held world model you've built up about D&D, that's the thing that's metagaming.

[Crake]

two weeks ago I would read on the forum that casters are incredibly superior to martials, because they could do this and that and martials had no answer. And I was like, this is so wrong, martials are fully capable of competing! if the caster used mirror image, the martial has true sight; if the caster flies, the martial has a flight item too. if the caster tries to target the weak will save of the martial, the martial is immune to anything that really hurts. all of the stuff that is listed as an "i win" button doesn't really work, because item.
then I made a character with some wealth limitation closer to most campaign, and I discovered I could not afford any of that stuff.
So I was like, "haha! I finally understood why everyone else says that casters are so powerful"

The thing is, in-combat capabilities was never what made casters so powerful. It's what they do out of combat that creates that chasm of a divide. What you're describing here is simply generalization vs specialization. You want to have specialist defense vs every single kind of specialist offense, but are starting to realise that specialist defense (IE, having an always on "no" answer) against every sort of specialist offense is just not feasable. And this applies to both casters and martials.

Consider, instead of freedom of movement, anklets of translocation to swift action teleport out of grapples, or instead of a gem of true seeing, a scouts headband to deal with invisible foes and illusions. These are the generalist defenses, ones that aren't always on, and aren't necessarily outright "no" buttons, but serve their purpose.

And then combine that with specialist defenses against the things you're ACTUALLY expecting to come up against frequently.

But again, none of this is actually the root of the caster/martial divide. The issue isn't what casters and martials can do against each other in combat, it's what they each can do OUT of combat, which is to say, martials practically can't do anything of note that any regular other guy couldn't do as well. Meanwhile casters can erect fortresses overnight, collapse mountain passes to halt travel, teleport the party all over the world in an attempt to muster support for a cause from different nations, raise an army of the undead to help slow the tide of an invading horde of.. whatever, bandits, demons, another kingdom. All the while, the martials are just twiddling their thumbs and coming along for the ride.

[Quertus]

I prefer existing characters, but only slightly less well known is this: I prefer worlds that feel lived in, worlds with history, with generations of characters having left their mark.

In such a world, it’s not exactly guesswork or metagaming to have a feel for the “known” threats. Heck, as far back as 2e (and maybe even earlier), even individual spells had a “rarity” rating, and monsters have almost always had such. I mean, the implementation was terrible, but the concept has existed in the game long before 3e’s Knowledge skills.

IME, most people don’t need to experience a break-in to purchase locking doors, or get STDs or an abortion to care about ways to prevent such. There’s threats that, if you’re aware of them, most people will seek some form of protection against them if they are able. And that protection might be as simple as, “sorry, guys, I can’t give you a better deal than I give anyone else, because I’m afraid of mental manipulation magics that would make me treat the caster as a friend”. And, most of those threats, your friends, family, educators, and those entrusted to care for your health are quite likely to make sure you’re aware of the concept.

So, sure, I can buy that a Feral Sorceress, raised by wolves and requiring no training for their abilities, or a clueless bumpkin who sleeps out in the wilds alone with no protections and in the city without locking their doors at night, might not consider protections against commonly known threats. And I’ve met people willing to risk “extreme sports” with no protections, or an MRI without removing piercings, but short of that level of “daring”, I’d wager more people would make themselves sick worrying about not having the funds to afford appropriate defenses than would simply ignore potential threats like mental manipulation, form manipulation, or instant death in a world where those were a thing.

And every D&D world I can remember (Darn senility) playing in for any length of time… one has a gentleman’s agreement against one of those, but, barring that explicitly stated decision, they all included such, and I’d expect characters in (or from) those worlds would be in a position to know about and care about such threats.

So, just as RAW is the default expectation, the “lingua Franca” of the Playground, so too do I feel that having a reasonable respect for the threats of the world they live in - and the world they live in knowably having those threats - is a reasonable default position to take, unless someone gives an explicit reason otherwise, a stated exception for why this character from this world doesn’t care about this threat.

If you were Isekai’d into that world, wouldn’t you care about those threats?

[Gnaeus]

The thing is, in-combat capabilities was never what made casters so powerful. It's what they do out of combat that creates that chasm of a divide. What you're describing here is simply generalization vs specialization. You want to have specialist defense vs every single kind of specialist offense, but are starting to realise that specialist defense (IE, having an always on "no" answer) against every sort of specialist offense is just not feasable. And this applies to both casters and martials.

Consider, instead of freedom of movement, anklets of translocation to swift action teleport out of grapples, or instead of a gem of true seeing, a scouts headband to deal with invisible foes and illusions. These are the generalist defenses, ones that aren't always on, and aren't necessarily outright "no" buttons, but serve their purpose.

And then combine that with specialist defenses against the things you're ACTUALLY expecting to come up against frequently.

But again, none of this is actually the root of the caster/martial divide. The issue isn't what casters and martials can do against each other in combat, it's what they each can do OUT of combat, which is to say, martials practically can't do anything of note that any regular other guy couldn't do as well. Meanwhile casters can erect fortresses overnight, collapse mountain passes to halt travel, teleport the party all over the world in an attempt to muster support for a cause from different nations, raise an army of the undead to help slow the tide of an invading horde of.. whatever, bandits, demons, another kingdom. All the while, the martials are just twiddling their thumbs and coming along for the ride.

This is kind of true, and kind of not true.

On the one hand, even in combat, you want multiple methods of contributing, in case your primary doesn't work. And the closer together your methods are, the worse they are. A barbarian who realizes "run up and hit it" isn't really optimal right now is worse off than a wizard who realizes that target has SR or is immune to his dominate spell.

On the other hand, all those specialist defenses and generalist defenses are more or less interchangeable with $$$. Whether you have flight, or see invisibility, or FoM doesn't really matter in particular. It only matters how many of the boxes you innately check, not which ones. Thats why OP realized this when playing in a lower WBL game. You can fill holes with gear. And with enough $$$ you can fill all the holes that matter to you. There is literally an item to make a fortress overnight. The only question is do you have the gp to buy it after the higher on the list boxes. Adding insult to injury is that in many games casters can get gear cheaper through crafting, or craft when shops aren't available, or use cheaper items to check less priority boxes (scrolls). And this DIRECTLY interacts with combat, because if you need to use X WBL for weapons and armor and combat defenses, you have that much less to use on water breathing or long distance travel or building your merchant empire.

[NichG]

I prefer existing characters, but only slightly less well known is this: I prefer worlds that feel lived in, worlds with history, with generations of characters having left their mark.

In such a world, it’s not exactly guesswork or metagaming to have a feel for the “known” threats. Heck, as far back as 2e (and maybe even earlier), even individual spells had a “rarity” rating, and monsters have almost always had such. I mean, the implementation was terrible, but the concept has existed in the game long before 3e’s Knowledge skills.

IME, most people don’t need to experience a break-in to purchase locking doors, or get STDs or an abortion to care about ways to prevent such. There’s threats that, if you’re aware of them, most people will seek some form of protection against them if they are able. And that protection might be as simple as, “sorry, guys, I can’t give you a better deal than I give anyone else, because I’m afraid of mental manipulation magics that would make me treat the caster as a friend”. And, most of those threats, your friends, family, educators, and those entrusted to care for your health are quite likely to make sure you’re aware of the concept.

So, sure, I can buy that a Feral Sorceress, raised by wolves and requiring no training for their abilities, or a clueless bumpkin who sleeps out in the wilds alone with no protections and in the city without locking their doors at night, might not consider protections against commonly known threats. And I’ve met people willing to risk “extreme sports” with no protections, or an MRI without removing piercings, but short of that level of “daring”, I’d wager more people would make themselves sick worrying about not having the funds to afford appropriate defenses than would simply ignore potential threats like mental manipulation, form manipulation, or instant death in a world where those were a thing.

And every D&D world I can remember (Darn senility) playing in for any length of time… one has a gentleman’s agreement against one of those, but, barring that explicitly stated decision, they all included such, and I’d expect characters in (or from) those worlds would be in a position to know about and care about such threats.

So, just as RAW is the default expectation, the “lingua Franca” of the Playground, so too do I feel that having a reasonable respect for the threats of the world they live in - and the world they live in knowably having those threats - is a reasonable default position to take, unless someone gives an explicit reason otherwise, a stated exception for why this character from this world doesn’t care about this threat.

If you were Isekai’d into that world, wouldn’t you care about those threats?

The point is, those threats may not actually exist in a given world. Whether they exist or not, whether they're common or not, is a question that should be answered in the context of that world, not in the context of the player's overall D&D experiences.

A DM could for example make a world that is truly at peace, where nothing seriously bad actually happens due to extremely interventionist deities who basically prevent it or punish it by fiat, where every 'monster' is sentient, has stable negotiated and compromise-driven relationships with civilization, etc. If you make someone who gets isekai'd into that world and expects the world to follow the tropes of the fiction they've read in their home world, and ends up being surprised by the fact that the world doesn't follow those tropes at all - well, fair enough. But that's a very 'meta' character anyhow.

If you make a character who grew up in that world and declare that 'obviously they should be wanting to protect themselves from instant death attacks, domination effects, and should kill goblins on sight because they're goblins', then you've made a crazy person, not a normal, rational inhabitant of that world.

'I encountered mind control once in one game, so I assume that it will be as common in all other games' is metagaming. Not in the sense that it's cheating or something, but in the literal sense that you are prioritizing your own meta knowledge over knowledge relevant and available to the specific character about the specific world you're playing in. The idea that you should assume a lingua franca version of D&D as a prior until shown otherwise is also meta. It's more subtle because 'how could you not?', but the answer is to ask rather than assume - 'How common is mind control in this world? Do I know any stories of adventurers instantly killed by a glance or gesture?' etc.

[Gnaeus]

'I encountered mind control once in one game, so I assume that it will be as common in all other games' is metagaming. Not in the sense that it's cheating or something, but in the literal sense that you are prioritizing your own meta knowledge over knowledge relevant and available to the specific character about the specific world you're playing in. The idea that you should assume a lingua franca version of D&D as a prior until shown otherwise is also meta. It's more subtle because 'how could you not?', but the answer is to ask rather than assume - 'How common is mind control in this world? Do I know any stories of adventurers instantly killed by a glance or gesture?' etc.

It is true that the gear I would want in Ravenloft, Dark Sun and Dragonlance are not identical lists. But in all cases if I grew up in that world I would want to protect myself against known threats in that world. And if my job were to delve into dangerous locations far from civilization to encounter unpredictable threats, I would want a wide variety of protections from any likely danger. We are generally assuming that characters are adventurers. If I'm a merchant in a peaceful fantasy city I don't need protection from anything that doesn't threaten merchants, like suggestion spells and painted Mounts and detect thoughts. But that game is very unusual, and I don't see why I would want to run it in D&D, rather than some system that is less geared around combat.

[NichG]

It is true that the gear I would want in Ravenloft, Dark Sun and Dragonlance are not identical lists. But in all cases if I grew up in that world I would want to protect myself against known threats in that world. And if my job were to delve into dangerous locations far from civilization to encounter unpredictable threats, I would want a wide variety of protections from any likely danger. We are generally assuming that characters are adventurers. If I'm a merchant in a peaceful fantasy city I don't need protection from anything that doesn't threaten merchants, like suggestion spells and painted Mounts and detect thoughts. But that game is very unusual, and I don't see why I would want to run it in D&D, rather than some system that is less geared around combat.

But you're still assuming what sorts of dangers are likely for an adventurer. Which is fundamentally DM and table dependent.

I almost never have anything use an outright Dominate effect. If there is going to be something like that in play, I always telegraph it in advance, never have it just be a random encounter. I don't forbid players from taking those abilities. If you assumed 'Dominate Person is something I need to protect myself from', then at my table you would simply be objectively wrong.

I do however use a number of agency-narrowing or tradeoff styles of effects that do not exist in the D&D rules at all, and cannot be defended against in the way that you would defend against a Dominate Person - things like taking a penalty if you don't move towards a particular enemy, things where anything you verbally agree to becomes binding, etc. These are also telegraphed. If you were to assume that your knowledge from D&D about which things were possible would extend to these, you would also be objectively wrong.

Someone in those worlds with lots of experience would know that the general rule of mind control and manipulation is that they nearly always rely on some kind of voluntary compliance to work. Sometimes complying is the trap. Sometimes the mental cost imposed by choosing to not comply is the primary tactical use of that ability. The most accessible defense is to be aware of what you are agreeing with both explicitly and implicitly, and to double-check yourself in both word and action when you suspect that kind of force is in play. It's better than a good Will save. I run things this way consistently and, should players actually investigate stuff in world or ask what they or others would know about dangers, I'm open about this kind of information.

The character who believes that they should walk around with Protection from Evil on all the time to protect their mind is the one who is 'the simpleton' or 'the idiot' in those worlds. That metagame knowledge doesn't work and would actively hinder a character.

[King of Nowhere]

Yeah, but the thing that read as weird to me about this is the presumed standard you were holding characters to, of actually being able to have all of those defenses up and available at any given time. Its not that you can't make a character who does achieve that standard, or that its wrong that casters have a much easier time achieving that standard if they want to. It's that feeling that you should expect a viable character to have all of those things that seems like such an unreasonable standard to begin with, so that's the focus of the critique.

you see, while I played continuously for the past 6 years, I only have played 3 campaigns. Each one lasted two years; I am lucky to have a stable group of friends that can actually reach the end of a campaign with a full 1-20 progression - I read a lot of people who can't because they have short-term groups that keep disbanding.
In two of those campaigns I was dm, using the same campaign world, and my campaign world is high magic, high wealth by design. One of those campaigns was with casual players (quite noobs, really) and one was with skilled players, but it didn't make a huge difference.
the other campaign just happened to become high wealth over time.

So, for all that I have a pretty long experience, it is also fairly narrow. Yes, I am aware that other groups have very different conditions for their campaigns, but one thing is knowing, and one thing is experiencing it.

also the "now that I know to optimize and play smart, I could not go back" stems from this context. In the past 4 years I had the same group of players, we like to have combat as a tactical challenge, and we gradually improved with time. so now we are all a lot more savy than when we started, and we build accordingly, and we plan accordingly, and we would not want to go back to being noobs.


Like, if that is the only reason 'why everyone else says that casters are so powerful', then in some sense that undermines the martial/caster divide arguments rather than supports it,

it's not at all the only reason. it is simply the rebuking of my previous counter-argument that martials can get almost the same flexibility, with items.


a Lv14 character not having always-on immunity to domination or always-on ability to pierce invisibility/stealth/etc isn't a 'this character is nonviable in high level play' flag to me.

this is an exaggeration, even in my highest power campaign. all that stuff is stuff that you want to have, but even in my world you don't havemost of it at level 14. I do expect and encourage people to get a temporary pierce invisibility early on, mostly because i'd rather not have to keep track of who can see what. I do encourage people to get a single use teleport tattoo, because it's relatively cheap and it can literally save you from a tpk, so it's the kind of thing everyone should want. Everything else is useful, definitely in the wishlist of any pc, but not something that one absolutely has to have. in fact, nobody in the party had death ward until level 13-14. then they waged war against the empire of nerull, which had a lot of clerics to cast slay living, harm, destruction, and you can see the incentive; they all bought one (sure, you can get the buff, but an item is harder to dispel).
paradoxically, a mind ward is now completely redundant; there's so much expectation that everybody with a weak will save will run to get one, that nobody even tries dominate person anymore. but fighter types have weak will saves, and failing against domination has tragic consequences, and the item to get immunity is cheap enough, so people still want to get a continuous protection from evil.

EDIT:

The thing is, in-combat capabilities was never what made casters so powerful. It's what they do out of combat that creates that chasm of a divide.
I know that very well.
By chance, my campaign world also tended to reduce the impact of that, because players tended to work with powerful nations, and could outsource a lot of downtime casting to npcs as part of their payment.
Anyway, in-combat capabilities have always been a large part of caster power. just because they also have all the utility, it doesn't mean that the chance to be virtually immune to the attacks of a high level foe with just a few low level long duration buffs should be discounted.


The point is, those threats may not actually exist in a given world. Whether they exist or not, whether they're common or not, is a question that should be answered in the context of that world, not in the context of the player's overall D&D experiences.

If you make a character who grew up in that world and declare that 'obviously they should be wanting to protect themselves from instant death attacks, domination effects, and should kill goblins on sight because they're goblins', then you've made a crazy person, not a normal, rational inhabitant of that world.
really, this is a given. so we have session 0 for that, among other things.
On the other hand, some things must be assumed in advance until explicitly stated, and this is especially true in a forum conversation. while you may have a campaign world without domination effects, the general assumption is that those things exhist. just like we assume that we are playing a game where you go around fighting against monsters, or possibly npcs. generally in dungeons or similar environment. If we all had to describe in detail our specific campaigns before arguing for anything, we'd never go anywhere.
furthermore, in the specific case that started the discussion, the character exhists in the same campaign world as the other campaign where I'm player, so I already know what threats that world will entail. And since my character is 240 years old with a long history of adventuring, he knows those threats too.


But you're still assuming what sorts of dangers are likely for an adventurer. Which is fundamentally DM and table dependent.

I almost never have anything use an outright Dominate effect. If there is going to be something like that in play, I always telegraph it in advance, never have it just be a random encounter. I don't forbid players from taking those abilities. If you assumed 'Dominate Person is something I need to protect myself from', then at my table you would simply be objectively wrong.

I do however use a number of agency-narrowing or tradeoff styles of effects that do not exist in the D&D rules at all, and cannot be defended against in the way that you would defend against a Dominate Person - things like taking a penalty if you don't move towards a particular enemy, things where anything you verbally agree to becomes binding, etc. These are also telegraphed.
yes, it is good to be clear with players on what is and isn't expected to happen at the table.
in my case, I know in advance the campaign world, I know that dominate is used, and my character knows it too. how is that supposed to be metagaming?

[Quertus]

But you're still assuming what sorts of dangers are likely for an adventurer. Which is fundamentally DM and table dependent.

I almost never have anything use an outright Dominate effect. If there is going to be something like that in play, I always telegraph it in advance, never have it just be a random encounter. I don't forbid players from taking those abilities. If you assumed 'Dominate Person is something I need to protect myself from', then at my table you would simply be objectively wrong.

I do however use a number of agency-narrowing or tradeoff styles of effects that do not exist in the D&D rules at all, and cannot be defended against in the way that you would defend against a Dominate Person - things like taking a penalty if you don't move towards a particular enemy, things where anything you verbally agree to becomes binding, etc. These are also telegraphed. If you were to assume that your knowledge from D&D about which things were possible would extend to these, you would also be objectively wrong.

Someone in those worlds with lots of experience would know that the general rule of mind control and manipulation is that they nearly always rely on some kind of voluntary compliance to work. Sometimes complying is the trap. Sometimes the mental cost imposed by choosing to not comply is the primary tactical use of that ability. The most accessible defense is to be aware of what you are agreeing with both explicitly and implicitly, and to double-check yourself in both word and action when you suspect that kind of force is in play. It's better than a good Will save. I run things this way consistently and, should players actually investigate stuff in world or ask what they or others would know about dangers, I'm open about this kind of information.

The character who believes that they should walk around with Protection from Evil on all the time to protect their mind is the one who is 'the simpleton' or 'the idiot' in those worlds. That metagame knowledge doesn't work and would actively hinder a character.

Intelligently preparing for the wrong world is IME a fun way to run a suboptimal character. That aside…

<Grumble, grumble, too many variables…>

So, the first question is whether the characters should know how “control” works in that world. Like, even if they’ve experienced the effect, what does it seem like in character?

But let’s ignore that. Let’s assume for the sake of argument that the experience of anyone subject to such an effect makes it obvious how the effect works. Like, literally, all such effects have a “villain must monologue about the effect in order for it to work” prerequisite or something. And the world has common lie detection. And the ability to perceive the physics of Luck and such, as a secondary verification method, that not just do they believe the effect works this way, but we can test it and prove that it’s so.

At this point, we’ve got a world that looks almost entirely unlike D&D, but, sure, it’s one where an intelligent, trained, 7th generation adventurer might be interested in investigating their options for “Protection from Probability Manipulation”. I’ll grant you that.

However, when, on their first night with their first party, the 1st level Sorceress manages to bamboozle merchants and innkeepers into crazy good deals with their “Let’s be best Friends” Spell, because no one in this world recognizes mental manipulation as a concern worth protecting against, despite this character’s grandmother, great aunt, and great-great-grandfather all advancing to the point of possessing Domination magic, and the nation literally being named for their family because their ancestors took control of the former emperor who had no protections from their magics? I think it’s fair to suspect that our sample adventurer might still prioritize the acquisition of mental protection devices almost as much as a “normal” D&D character would.

Unless, of course, you’ve also changed up all the PC abilities, at which point, why are we even calling this game D&D? Let’s be honest about it, and admit that we’re playing a different system, at best masquerading as D&D by using the d20 system and a few common elements. Still technically valid to talk about in a d20 forum, but not in a D&D thread.

But that’s only half of our problems.

See, we’ve also got the issue of telegraphing threats. And while that’s fine and all, and certain versions of this encourage or replace investigation and intelligence-gathering, the question remains, what is the character’s PoV? Should the character expect that all mental manipulation effects will be obvious a mile and three sessions away? Is it part of the physics of the world that manipulation abilities manipulate probability such that anyone who will encounter someone’s manipulation ability will learn about it far enough in advance to make appropriate preparations? Is that really true, and something that the characters can understand? Did grandpa sit the young adventurer-to-be down on his lap, and explain in character, “don’t worry about manipulation effects ahead of time, because the gods themselves have decreed that Fate will ensure that you are informed of their existence long before you ever encounter them, through the divine messenger known as Telegraph.”? If a PC ever picks up such an ability, is it now guaranteed that their foes will always see them coming?

In such a world, it seems like one of the most effective curses would be to grant someone a useless form of that ability. In fact, it’s something I would do to criminals, branding them with a unique Fate power to ensure that local law enforcement always knows when they’re coming to town (or that they’ve been Resurrected, for particularly persistent criminals), that potential targets always have forewarning, and can seek protection, etc.

Additionally, telegraphing Mind control is kinda a strange change, as part of the Horror of Mind magic is that it’s usually, you know, stealthy. It feels really off-brand for the genre of the ability to Telegraph it like this.

If it’s the case that such abilities are telegraphed by game physics, then that’s exploitable, and that’s a lot of work on world building that should go into utilizing that properly. If it’s not the case that the abilities are telegraphed by physics, then using that player knowledge is metagaming, and, in character, the characters should still be preparing “randomly”, in addition to their targeted “I happen to know X is in town” preparations.

In whatever system that isn’t D&D that we’re talking about here.

[NichG]

you see, while I played continuously for the past 6 years, I only have played 3 campaigns. Each one lasted two years; I am lucky to have a stable group of friends that can actually reach the end of a campaign with a full 1-20 progression - I read a lot of people who can't because they have short-term groups that keep disbanding.
In two of those campaigns I was dm, using the same campaign world, and my campaign world is high magic, high wealth by design. One of those campaigns was with casual players (quite noobs, really) and one was with skilled players, but it didn't make a huge difference.
the other campaign just happened to become high wealth over time.


I've probably had... 10+ DMs, and even when I run there are two modes I use. In something like DCC or XCrawl or 1ed D&D I expect everything to kill you with whatever is cheesiest - dire weasel swarm, allips, hellwasps, etc. For that feel, the unfairness is the point and it justifies equal cheese in response. But outside of that, let's see... One DM who used instant death a lot, not so much dominate, but lots of level drain too. One DM whose campaign had a revolving door afterlife as a campaign gimmick, where you could die and be back in the fight in 3 rounds of you were a good teleporter - didn't use dominate or paralysis as an in-combat thing though it existed out of combat, had a lot of non-standard scarier things that we did learn to defend against (time immunity and spirit immunity were sought-after, and paradox-immunity was like a blank check for cheese), another DM did a literal by the book random dungeon approach to 1e as an experiment in absurdity so you could roll psionic aptitude and have a prince of hell gank you in chargen... but while that had killer giraffe stampedes I don't think we actually encountered either mind or death effects. Another DM saved that style of effect for 'dramatic moments' - like, if you lost a fight or got taken prisoner it'd be on the table. Another DM did use them at least enough that it happened once to my character over the course of a campaign...

As far as invisibility, mundane stealth + pass without trace + 500ft range is the nastiest I've encountered (from the DM who liked instant death). The revolving door afterlife game, I'd say it's complicated - even without see invis there were lots of exotic senses we ended up with... Otherwise I don't think it came up too much from the enemy side though we totally used it as PCs.

So yeah, IME it varies a lot.



So, for all that I have a pretty long experience, it is also fairly narrow. Yes, I am aware that other groups have very different conditions for their campaigns, but one thing is knowing, and one thing is experiencing it.

also the "now that I know to optimize and play smart, I could not go back" stems from this context. In the past 4 years I had the same group of players, we like to have combat as a tactical challenge, and we gradually improved with time. so now we are all a lot more savy than when we started, and we build accordingly, and we plan accordingly, and we would not want to go back to being noobs.

it's not at all the only reason. it is simply the rebuking of my previous counter-argument that martials can get almost the same flexibility, with items.

this is an exaggeration, even in my highest power campaign. all that stuff is stuff that you want to have, but even in my world you don't havemost of it at level 14. I do expect and encourage people to get a temporary pierce invisibility early on, mostly because i'd rather not have to keep track of who can see what. I do encourage people to get a single use teleport tattoo, because it's relatively cheap and it can literally save you from a tpk, so it's the kind of thing everyone should want. Everything else is useful, definitely in the wishlist of any pc, but not something that one absolutely has to have. in fact, nobody in the party had death ward until level 13-14. then they waged war against the empire of nerull, which had a lot of clerics to cast slay living, harm, destruction, and you can see the incentive; they all bought one (sure, you can get the buff, but an item is harder to dispel).
paradoxically, a mind ward is now completely redundant; there's so much expectation that everybody with a weak will save will run to get one, that nobody even tries dominate person anymore. but fighter types have weak will saves, and failing against domination has tragic consequences, and the item to get immunity is cheap enough, so people still want to get a continuous protection from evil.

EDIT:

I know that very well.
By chance, my campaign world also tended to reduce the impact of that, because players tended to work with powerful nations, and could outsource a lot of downtime casting to npcs as part of their payment.
Anyway, in-combat capabilities have always been a large part of caster power. just because they also have all the utility, it doesn't mean that the chance to be virtually immune to the attacks of a high level foe with just a few low level long duration buffs should be discounted.


really, this is a given. so we have session 0 for that, among other things.
On the other hand, some things must be assumed in advance until explicitly stated, and this is especially true in a forum conversation. while you may have a campaign world without domination effects, the general assumption is that those things exhist. just like we assume that we are playing a game where you go around fighting against monsters, or possibly npcs. generally in dungeons or similar environment. If we all had to describe in detail our specific campaigns before arguing for anything, we'd never go anywhere.
furthermore, in the specific case that started the discussion, the character exhists in the same campaign world as the other campaign where I'm player, so I already know what threats that world will entail. And since my character is 240 years old with a long history of adventuring, he knows those threats too.



The caution here is that what makes for a forum convenience can be very unwelcome when players bring that to your take. So I have an automatic antipathy towards taking the forum zeitgeist as anything normative about how things should be. And it risks being a bit of a strawman as well when people are not running things in that assumed way



in my case, I know in advance the campaign world, I know that dominate is used, and my character knows it too. how is that supposed to be metagaming?

If you've asked or found out then it's not. I did say upthread that this is DM dependent. If you have a killer DM, defending yourself is natural. It's just awkward when trying to make a more general point, because lots of games are poorly modeled by that and those games are equally valid.

[King of Nowhere]

although, regardless of whether it was telegraphed, I'd still want a protection from evil on a fighter unless I was explicitly told that such effects do not exhist in the world.
because it's a special case. as I said, it combines several unique characteristics: it targets your weakest save, it has terrifying effects, and it is relatively cheap to protect against. freedom of movement, death ward, even see invisibility, none of them is as lethal*, nor it hurts so much, and they are more expensive to take.
furthermore, here I'm talking from personal opinion, but the idea of losing control of my mind, being made a puppet, hurt/betray those I love, I find that idea more scary than death.
so, given the choice to spend 25k to get an additional +2 to AC or spend that money to get protection from evil, I'm always going to pick the second option. from a personal, in-character perspective, I can cope with being hit a bit more often. I can even cope with being killed and going into an afterlife where I'll probably fit. becoming a puppet in my own body, that I cannot cope with.

* for casters, being grappled is something similar; as a caster, I could skip protection from evil due to my high save, but I would want freedom of movement almost as badly.

I've probably had... 10+ DMs, and even when I run there are two modes I use. In something like DCC or XCrawl or 1ed D&D I expect everything to kill you with whatever is cheesiest - dire weasel swarm, allips, hellwasps, etc. For that feel, the unfairness is the point and it justifies equal cheese in response. But outside of that, let's see... One DM who used instant death a lot, not so much dominate, but lots of level drain too. One DM whose campaign had a revolving door afterlife as a campaign gimmick, where you could die and be back in the fight in 3 rounds of you were a good teleporter - didn't use dominate or paralysis as an in-combat thing though it existed out of combat, had a lot of non-standard scarier things that we did learn to defend against (time immunity and spirit immunity were sought-after, and paradox-immunity was like a blank check for cheese), another DM did a literal by the book random dungeon approach to 1e as an experiment in absurdity so you could roll psionic aptitude and have a prince of hell gank you in chargen... but while that had killer giraffe stampedes I don't think we actually encountered either mind or death effects. Another DM saved that style of effect for 'dramatic moments' - like, if you lost a fight or got taken prisoner it'd be on the table. Another DM did use them at least enough that it happened once to my character over the course of a campaign...

As far as invisibility, mundane stealth + pass without trace + 500ft range is the nastiest I've encountered
In my campaign world - given the weird premises about high magic and the constrains of charop pushing for pretty high optimization, but banning most of the strongest attacks, and most meaningful combat being against npcs - save or die effects were extremely common.
everyone was very heavily defended, and unless you managed a good surprise, they'd also be heavily buffed. so you have two approaches: you start dispelling and hitting and try to attrition the enemy, or you try the shortcut and hope they fail their roll. save-or-die represents the high risk, high reward tactic: you risk losing your action for no effect, but if you get lucky you eliminate an enemy. as a high-risk, high-reward tactic, it is often favored by the underdog, who has to take some risks to revert his initial disadvantage. And in a d&d campaign most often the underdogs are the npcs, so they used those effects a lot. and the party had high enough stats that those spells often succeeded, so they also used them a lot.
furthermore, the guideline for acceptable optimization is "you cannot reliably screw up someone of your level in one round without giving them some reasonable defence", which bans instakill builds like an ubercharger or some of the most annoying no-save effects like holy word with buffed caster level. but by the definition of "giving some reasonable defence", anything with a saving throw: negate is fair game.
the spread of death ward at high levels only resulted in shifting to other effects against which there was no such immunity: glass strike, baleful polymorph, implosion. alternatively, you could buff your martials enough to try to enable them to kill in one round. damage spells were rare, though some specific builds used them.
so, it wasn't something we specifically decided, but the conditions we set for our campaign pushed towards a combat where instant-lose effects were commonplace, and immunities were highly desirable.
it made for a high lethality environment, but resurrection was easy enough to get.

oh, mundane stealth also turned out to be far more useful than the magic kind. this was actually intended, in a "give mundanes more niches to be useful".

EDIT: I don't want to give the wrong impression that combat was reduced to slinging save-or-lose until the opponent rolled low (https://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0456.html). standard approach was dispelling buffs and trying to gang up on the opponents one at a time. save-or-lose effects were mostly used by some npc bosses (and the party wizard) who specialized on raising their saving throw dc, or by npcs about to lose hoping for a lucky shot to turn the fight

[NichG]

although, regardless of whether it was telegraphed, I'd still want a protection from evil on a fighter unless I was explicitly told that such effects do not exhist in the world.
because it's a special case. as I said, it combines several unique characteristics: it targets your weakest save, it has terrifying effects, and it is relatively cheap to protect against. freedom of movement, death ward, even see invisibility, none of them is as lethal*, nor it hurts so much, and they are more expensive to take.
furthermore, here I'm talking from personal opinion, but the idea of losing control of my mind, being made a puppet, hurt/betray those I love, I find that idea more scary than death.
so, given the choice to spend 25k to get an additional +2 to AC or spend that money to get protection from evil, I'm always going to pick the second option. from a personal, in-character perspective, I can cope with being hit a bit more often. I can even cope with being killed and going into an afterlife where I'll probably fit. becoming a puppet in my own body, that I cannot cope with.

* for casters, being grappled is something similar; as a caster, I could skip protection from evil due to my high save, but I would want freedom of movement almost as badly.

In my campaign world - given the weird premises about high magic and the constrains of charop pushing for pretty high optimization, but banning most of the strongest attacks, and most meaningful combat being against npcs - save or die effects were extremely common.
everyone was very heavily defended, and unless you managed a good surprise, they'd also be heavily buffed. so you have two approaches: you start dispelling and hitting and try to attrition the enemy, or you try the shortcut and hope they fail their roll. save-or-die represents the high risk, high reward tactic: you risk losing your action for no effect, but if you get lucky you eliminate an enemy. as a high-risk, high-reward tactic, it is often favored by the underdog, who has to take some risks to revert his initial disadvantage. And in a d&d campaign most often the underdogs are the npcs, so they used those effects a lot. and the party had high enough stats that those spells often succeeded, so they also used them a lot.
furthermore, the guideline for acceptable optimization is "you cannot reliably screw up someone of your level in one round without giving them some reasonable defence", which bans instakill builds like an ubercharger or some of the most annoying no-save effects like holy word with buffed caster level. but by the definition of "giving some reasonable defence", anything with a saving throw: negate is fair game.
the spread of death ward at high levels only resulted in shifting to other effects against which there was no such immunity: glass strike, baleful polymorph, implosion. alternatively, you could buff your martials enough to try to enable them to kill in one round. damage spells were rare, though some specific builds used them.
so, it wasn't something we specifically decided, but the conditions we set for our campaign pushed towards a combat where instant-lose effects were commonplace, and immunities were highly desirable.
it made for a high lethality environment, but resurrection was easy enough to get.

oh, mundane stealth also turned out to be far more useful than the magic kind. this was actually intended, in a "give mundanes more niches to be useful".

EDIT: I don't want to give the wrong impression that combat was reduced to slinging save-or-lose until the opponent rolled low (https://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0456.html). standard approach was dispelling buffs and trying to gang up on the opponents one at a time. save-or-lose effects were mostly used by some npc bosses (and the party wizard) who specialized on raising their saving throw dc, or by npcs about to lose hoping for a lucky shot to turn the fight

For my own style at least, I've realized that I have no interest in competitive optimization, doubly so when I'm DM-ing. So my goal is to create a game experience where a player choosing to optimize in different ways feels worthwhile to them, which is not necessarily the same as creating hard optimization challenges for them. I've tended to move away from anything that has the form of 'Did you remember to cover X? No? Then fail/suffer/take a penalty.' - at least for my own experience, that pattern has a lot of bad asymmetries about it. When you fail to correctly anticipate the need, it feels bad; but when you successfully anticipate the need, it doesn't really feel good so much as 'okay, next'. It's a bit better when e.g. you force someone to waste their action as a result of your anticipation, but as you pointed out eventually when it becomes standard to defend against a thing then people stop attacking it, so it ends up just being something like a tax: you have to have this defense because if you didn't there could be a gotcha if someone noticed, but in most cases the defense won't even come up.

So I prefer to tilt the game, system, homebrew, etc towards the idea of 'optimizing towards being able to do something you want to do' rather than 'optimizing towards meeting the challenges of the campaign'. The game should provide 'traction' or 'resistance' to make those optimization decisions matter, but in the sense that there should be limits that can be pushed back or variable heights to which you can climb or the ability to change which things are in/out of scope by virtue of those decisions. But that traction shouldn't be an obligation, so much as a possibility that the players can each choose to engage with to the degree that they're interested. It's not 100% because of this particular design ethos, but that means that generally when I have combats its for one of three reasons: 1. The players are using the choice to have combat as a tool to cause change (e.g. they ask to start a fight), 2. 'Popcorn fight' that is there to help players figure out new abilities and gauge their characters' strengths, 3. Puzzle/gimmick fight, where the goal for me as DM is to create something that has a distinct feel to interact with, making the possibilities of the game world feel richer.

As an example of the third, in the recent campaign I ran there was a Strategist class, and one of the high level abilities let a Strategist model another character and answer the question 'what would they do in this situation?'. The party had a Strategist, and at one point they 'faced off' against an enemy force from halfway across the world that had its own Strategist, which ended up being a back and forth dance of hypotheticals as the PCs' Strategist was trying to figure out the best way to ambush the enemy's ship, and the enemy Strategist was trying to hunt down the PCs. So the benefit of going there was that this sort of conceptual back and forth out-thinking play would feel different than normal D&D combat and it was something that a player had shown interest in through their class choice and power selections and heavy use of that power in other situations. Another puzzle 'fight' in the same campaign was that the party was being openly spied on by an NPC who had a particular 'mythic ability' (the players also had these, it was a general thing in that setting) that meant that within some specific behavioral constraints others could not initiate hostilities or take damaging or aggressive actions against them. Again, trying to engage lateral thinking, make versatility relevant, make things seem deeper so that there's 'more out there than you've encountered yet' even though this was an ability within the setting document that the players had access to.

[Crake]

which bans instakill builds like an ubercharger or some of the most annoying no-save effects like holy word with buffed caster level. but by the definition of "giving some reasonable defence", anything with a saving throw: negate is fair game.

How you come to the conclusion that an insta kill ubercharger is bad, but save or die is okay, when they’re really just the same thing (one targets a save, the other targets AC) is really weird to me. How is high AC and miss chances not considered “a reasonable defense”?

[icefractal]

An Ubercharger is hard to defend against without special-purpose builds that often make martial characters useless entirely. People say "damage is the least thing to worry about" but that stops being true when it's enough damage to one-shot you.

Personally speaking, as a GM I don't use enemies that are custom-built to counter PCs unless they've been spying on the PCs for a while and have the appropriate resources. And I don't like it (as a player) when GMs do so. So IMO, "reliably insta-kills foes that aren't built to counter it" equals broken.

[Crake]

An Ubercharger is hard to defend against without special-purpose builds that often make martial characters useless entirely. People say "damage is the least thing to worry about" but that stops being true when it's enough damage to one-shot you.

Personally speaking, as a GM I don't use enemies that are custom-built to counter PCs unless they've been spying on the PCs for a while and have the appropriate resources. And I don't like it (as a player) when GMs do so. So IMO, "reliably insta-kills foes that aren't built to counter it" equals broken.

The counter to unberchargers is literally high AC and miss chance. Just the same as high save is the counter to save or die, except theres no miss chance for save or dies, so it’s actually easier to defend against.

In either case, the effect is an insta-kill, and the chance of it landing is determined by a d20 roll. If your ubercharger has to hit AC30 with their +20 to hit, its the same as the wizard having a DC24 save or die vs an enemy with +14 to their save.

[Gruftzwerg]

An Ubercharger is hard to defend against without special-purpose builds that often make martial characters useless entirely. People say "damage is the least thing to worry about" but that stops being true when it's enough damage to one-shot you.

Personally speaking, as a GM I don't use enemies that are custom-built to counter PCs unless they've been spying on the PCs for a while and have the appropriate resources. And I don't like it (as a player) when GMs do so. So IMO, "reliably insta-kills foes that aren't built to counter it" equals broken.

When people say "dmg is the least problem to worry about", they are technically indirectly referring to the Henderson Scale of Plot Derailment (https://knowyourmeme.com/photos/2032298-tg)

"Ending any possible (combat) encounter in a single round" doesn't earn you much points there.

Really... there is enough other stuff in 3.5 to worry much more about. Sure, dmg optimization can be annoying or even a problem for some DMs/tables. But it's at the far bottom of things to worry about.

It's just that it's the most common thing to worry about, but that is another topic for itself.
(It's more likely to have a player trying to play an ubercharger, then that any player who wants to play some high lvl OP caster shenanigan build)

edit: Compare an highly optimized Ubercharger against an Apostle of Peace. Both trivialize "combat" and could become annoying for the table. But I bet most DMs will still have more complaints about an Ubercharger, "because it's no fun for the DM". While having lesser issues when an Apostle of Peace can do the same AND MORE (!due to SPELLS!), since that "also takes the fun for the other Players"...?!?..
Mundanes may not have nice things.. QQ

[PhoenixPhyre]

edit: Compare an highly optimized Ubercharger against an Apostle of Peace. Both trivialize "combat" and could become annoying for the table. But I bet most DMs will still have more complaints about an Ubercharger, "because it's no fun for the DM". While having lesser issues when an Apostle of Peace can do the same AND MORE (!due to SPELLS!), since that "also takes the fun for the other Players"...?!?..
Mundanes may not have nice things.. QQ

How about no one should have things that make the game less fun?

"Having nice things" shouldn't mean having broken things. Because broken things are (definitionally) bad. No one should have broken things. Everyone should have nice things. It's not a choice between nothing and broken things...oh wait, this is the 3e forum. Where it really is.

[RandomPeasant]

Like, if that is the only reason 'why everyone else says that casters are so powerful', then in some sense that undermines the martial/caster divide arguments rather than supports it, because lots of players aren't playing to that standard and lots of DMs aren't running games that require it in order to have a good chance of survival. So it makes the martial/caster disparity argument much more niche, compared to other framings of the same thing which would even apply to low-op tables or low-risk tables.

The best arguments for disparity are always the ones based on what it prevents from happening, not what it causes to happen. The fact that it's much harder for martial characters to defend themselves against high level threats means that high level play naturally skews away from that kind of threat. Part of the way low-risk is defined is that it doesn't include these things, because they are much higher risk for some characters than they are for others.


The issue I have is with assuming the DM's answer - filling that blank in with forum zeitgeist or 'if our enemies were optimized this is what they would do' kinds of logic - without even asking.

The issue is that most DMs will not give an answer. Yes, if your DM says "you will never ever take electricity damage ever", your ring of electricity resistance is a bad buy. But the number of DMs who say that rounds to zero. It is true that "prepare for the kinds of things that can remove you from a fight and a reasonably common among the MMs and spell list" is not always the correct strategy. But it is the correct strategy much more often than "don't prepare for mind magic because it seems like this is going to be an Elemental Planes adventure" will be. Shaping your strategies around the DM is metagaming in a much more real and pronounced sense than not doing that.


The thing is, in-combat capabilities was never what made casters so powerful.

Not entirely, but they do matter. On the one hand, they matter because that's the thing people actually see. When it is the case that the Wizard can solve non-combat problems and the Barbarian can't, what tends to happen is that the non-combat problems aren't considered, or are treated as a "Wizard presses a button" situation (rather than a "people use a variety of abilities to build towards a solution" situation, like combat is). That's bad, but it's a subtler kind of bad than "the Barbarian spends their time mopping up crippled enemies that the Wizard could just summon minions to deal with". On the other hand, if it were actually true that the Barbarian had a niche in combat, that would give you a workable (if, I would argue, unsatisfying) solution where the Barbarian solved the combat problems and the Wizard solved the "getting to the combat" problems. The fact that you can make a character who outperforms any martial and also can see the future and summon angels makes martials irrelevant to an even larger degree than if that character was merely "good enough" at the things martials do and had to make up the gap with their foresight and angel-summoning.


How you come to the conclusion that an insta kill ubercharger is bad, but save or die is okay, when they’re really just the same thing (one targets a save, the other targets AC) is really weird to me. How is high AC and miss chances not considered “a reasonable defense”?

Most of the "save or die" effects that exist at most levels have some sort of defense or immunity to them beyond the actual save. We are, indeed, talking about some of them in this thread. You can cast finger of death on someone and have them die if they fail the save, but they could be Undead or have death ward up and stay up even if they blow the save. Whereas the number of creatures that are immune to "damage" is pretty close to nil. It is also practically true that to-hit versus AC is an arms race that favors the attacker to a larger degree than DCsversus saving throws.


How about no one should have things that make the game less fun?

"Having nice things" shouldn't mean having broken things. Because broken things are (definitionally) bad. No one should have broken things. Everyone should have nice things. It's not a choice between nothing and broken things...oh wait, this is the 3e forum. Where it really is.

Best faith 3e critic.

The vast majority of things people call "broken" are just things that allow players to have agency or things that change how the game works at all. teleport is not game-breaking, even if you don't do anything to patch the Teleport Ambush. I can write a dozen adventure premises right now that don't care about teleport, and I'm pretty sure I did that in one of these damn threads. It's just not hard to deal with.

[Darg]

The fact that it's much harder for martial characters to defend themselves against high level threats means that high level play naturally skews away from that kind of threat

It's not a threat if one isn't threatened by it. A bodak isn't much of a challenge if the party uses death ward on the whole party. It isn't mitigating the threat, it's neutralizing what makes the encounter at all threatening. Mitigating is more along the lines of blind fight feat, using mirrors to locate the creature, etc. The fact that it IS harder to defend themselves against high level threats is what makes them a threat.

[Thunder999]

I usually end up seeking those permanent magic items on casters anyway, because 1 minute/CL of very dispellable (unless you've got some serious CL boosting going on) immunity from an actual casting of Death Ward, Freedom of Movement etc. is not very reliable, you don't always know when you'll need them and if you're casting them mid fight then you're not much better off than the guy chugging a Potion of See Invisibility in an earlier post (which doesn't actually exist btw, personal range).
Casters do have some advantages in terms of wealth of course, Flight is often adequate in spell form, Greater Magic Weapon and Magic Vestment are a huge money saver.
Even activated items often win in action economy, e.g. swift action use on Anklets of Translocation.

[Telok]

teleport is not game-breaking, even if you don't do anything to patch the Teleport Ambush. I can write a dozen adventure premises right now that don't care about teleport, and I'm pretty sure I did that in one of these damn threads. It's just not hard to deal with.
You're doing better than at least 75% of the official modules then.


When people say "dmg is the least problem to worry about", they are technically indirectly referring to the Henderson Scale of Plot Derailment (https://knowyourmeme.com/photos/2032298-tg)

Is it wrong that I went through that like a check list? "Been there. Did that one. I told them so. Yup."

[Gruftzwerg]

How about no one should have things that make the game less fun?

"Having nice things" shouldn't mean having broken things. Because broken things are (definitionally) bad. No one should have broken things. Everyone should have nice things. It's not a choice between nothing and broken things...oh wait, this is the 3e forum. Where it really is.

Good that you reminded yourself where you are and that I don't need to do it^^

We are in the 3.5 forum where full casters in CORE "have nice broken things" by default at the higher levels compared to mundanes.

The same 3.5 where still a notable percentage of DMs think that monk's are OP and broken.. ^^



Is it wrong that I went through that like a check list? "Been there. Did that one. I told them so. Yup."

No, you did everything right and get full points for backing up my argument ;)

Imho this just proves my argument.

Even if we would just take a well build core T1 caster, we can trivialize almost any encounter the DM has in his sleeve. But nobody complains about that. But if an Ubercharger trivializes combat, "dear god, judgment day is coming.."

The Ubercharges does its job well, but nothing else. Compare that to core T1 casters that focus on trivializing combat. They still can do a bunch of other useful things out of combat compared to the Ubercharger.

[Crake]

Most of the "save or die" effects that exist at most levels have some sort of defense or immunity to them beyond the actual save. We are, indeed, talking about some of them in this thread. You can cast finger of death on someone and have them die if they fail the save, but they could be Undead or have death ward up and stay up even if they blow the save. Whereas the number of creatures that are immune to "damage" is pretty close to nil. It is also practically true that to-hit versus AC is an arms race that favors the attacker to a larger degree than DCsversus saving throws.

Except that there's usually enough save or die effects of varying levels and with varying sources of effects, some of which aren't even necessarily "save or die", but are practically so, enough so that simply having "death ward" is not gonna give you blanket protection across the board. As for an equivalent defense against an ubercharger, there's the delay death spell, which prevents you from dying of HP damage until the spell is over, and for the to hit vs AC arms race, you gotta remember you can also pair that with miss chance, or even straight up "nope" abilities, like abrupt jaunting out of range of the attack.

End of the day, I wouldn't say that ubercharger is far and away more difficult to defend against than any save or die effects.

[NichG]

The issue is that most DMs will not give an answer.

If you believe this is something that a Knowledge check should tell you, then the vehicle for that information is by asking the DM if you know it, possibly making a check and/or just being told yes or no or 'you tell me' or 'general knowledge won't be representative', and going from there. If the DM isn't going to give you information for your Knowledge skill, then 'my character has a high Knowledge and therefore ...' well, in that game, Knowledge doesn't seem to do anything, so your character doesn't actually know anything more than a character with zero Knowledge. The character's Knowledge is only relevant if it is acting as a means for you to actually receive information about the setting.

'I can imagine a character with a high knowledge score, therefore my DM will run things the way I a priori believe they will be run' is a very strange non-sequitur. Your character having +20 Knowledge(Arcana) is only relevant if that gets you information from the DM, it does not make your preconceptions more correct or accurate.

[Crake]

If you believe this is something that a Knowledge check should tell you, then the vehicle for that information is by asking the DM if you know it, possibly making a check and/or just being told yes or no or 'you tell me' or 'general knowledge won't be representative', and going from there. If the DM isn't going to give you information for your Knowledge skill, then 'my character has a high Knowledge and therefore ...' well, in that game, Knowledge doesn't seem to do anything, so your character doesn't actually know anything more than a character with zero Knowledge. The character's Knowledge is only relevant if it is acting as a means for you to actually receive information about the setting.

'I can imagine a character with a high knowledge score, therefore my DM will run things the way I a priori believe they will be run' is a very strange non-sequitur. Your character having +20 Knowledge(Arcana) is only relevant if that gets you information from the DM, it does not make your preconceptions more correct or accurate.

This is actually further backed up by the fact that spell research is based on a roll, and the DM doesnt have to tell you if a spell is possible or not until AFTER the spell research period is complete. Assuming that having a high knowledge check means your character has de facto knowledge of all the possibilities and outcomes just seems silly.

Your character might know that a spell is theoretically possible, the same that physicists hypothesize different laws of physics, but they need to actually do the research and experimentation to solidify that conclusion. Your entire assumption is based on a cooperative, global academia similar to the real world, where wizards all share information, and its all publicly available, that anyone can tap into and access this body of knowledge, but thats simply not true in most campaigns

[King of Nowhere]

How you come to the conclusion that an insta kill ubercharger is bad, but save or die is okay, when they’re really just the same thing (one targets a save, the other targets AC) is really weird to me. How is high AC and miss chances not considered “a reasonable defense”?

Even when AC is pumped up hard, the first attack is almost always going to hit. As for miss chances, all such effects I know (invisibility, displacement, mirror image, and so on) are defeated by true sight - which, as I stated, is not too difficult to get at the power level of my previous campaign. So, ubercharging is almost always going to succeed.
Save or die, on the other hand, targets a save. I don't know your experience there, but in my campaign, at high level among pcs and bosses, nobody had less than +20 to any save, with +30 on a high save being relatively common. conversely, we don't know many ways to buff a DC, even 20th level character rarely got much past 30. The party wizard put everything into it and reached dc 40 on his best spells, he was the only one to reliably target saves in boss fights.
So, most no-immunity SoD (as I mentioned, glass strike, implosion, polymorph among many) target fortitude; which means that, if you are a fighter type or divine caster, you have a high saving throw there and you can expect to pass most times. If you are a wizard, you can rely on spell turning, moment of insight and contingency to have "ablative protection" against them. So you are at least a couple of actions away from really being in danger. it was harsh on rogues, but still something of a 50/50 chance.
SoD targeting will saves are different, because martials tend to have have poor base save and lackluster wisdom score. but all such effects I know are neutralized by various forms of mind shielding.
Some rare SoD target reflexes, but they never were too much of a problem. the blindness effect of sunburst is the one that comes to mind, and it can be healed at the cost of an action. it never hurt the party much, though it was devastating against the occasional undead.
And let's not forget spell resistance - we also put some limitation to buffing caster level, so you couldn't just reliably overcome it by brute force. if a cleric had the time to precast it on the whole party, your best bet was to start fight with a global dispel or two (a common scenario was disjunction - procs contingency to teleport outside of the disjunction effect - quickened disjunction). otherwise, spell resistance by item is not huge, but it still entails a 10% failure chance or so.

So, SoD effects were dangerous, but they would require a poor roll on the defender, and they had some ablative defences that were often used. even the party wizard failed often enough. ubercharging, instead, would be effective unless the attacker rolled real bad, and there were a lot less ablative defences (ironguard was one, but it would still leave you at 1 hp, easy prey for anything else).

I'm sure in different tables those power dynamics would be different, but this worked in our last campaign.



Good that you reminded yourself where you are and that I don't need to do it^^

We are in the 3.5 forum where full casters in CORE "have nice broken things" by default at the higher levels compared to mundanes.

The same 3.5 where still a notable percentage of DMs think that monk's are OP and broken.. ^^


Even if we would just take a well build core T1 caster, we can trivialize almost any encounter the DM has in his sleeve. But nobody complains about that. But if an Ubercharger trivializes combat, "dear god, judgment day is coming.."
I don't know other tables, but I am fairly sure most of them do complain and do put measures in place to limit T1 power. I am not going to go into a detailed list here, suffice to say that we didn't have any major problems with T1 casters.
paradoxically, being one-trick ponies protected them somewhat; the "can't screw up people too badly without giving counterplay" means that if there was a spell that would completely negate physical attacks, it would be immediately banned - by unanimous consensus of the table - for making martials pointless. So martials enjoied their protected niche of being reliable damage dealers in any fight.
as for out-of-combat utility, it is more often something that enables the plot, not something that stops it.
the party wizard - starting from his backstory of having the power of divinity as its main avenue of study - hijacked the power left in the demiplane of the dead god vecna (killed in the previous campaign) to build his own demiplane where even the gods could not see him. Taking advantage of that, and of secret knowledge found in the aforementioned vecna demiplane, he researched a spell to make a nuclear bomb - something that the gods would directly intervene to stop, if they could see him at all. He finally devised a few spells to hide mortals from the eyes of gods, though they only work once (long story, don't ask).
Using all that stuff, he brought the party in the demiplane of hextor, got close enough to the god, and nuked him. hextor's most loial servant ascended in his place, and the party went again, facing increased security, and nuked him again.
now, all this is ridiculously powerful stuff to do. much past anything else done in the campaign. but this did not broke the campaign in any way. it never trivialized the rest of the party. It merely allowed all of the party to take part in one final big quest, after every other villain was defeated. And once inside the demiplane, with a hostile god that was prevented from outright erasing you from exhistance but could still send nigh-endless numbers of solars against you, everyone's abilities were needed. it actually played out very nicely as a stealth mission.

Finally, another reason why out of combat power is rarely problematic is that even when it's only the wizard doing it, all the party still get to participate. I mean, unless you have a table of toxic players like talekeal, I assume that for most groups it is normal to have at least some discussion between players on what to do. And so, while the fighter cannot scry or teleport, when there is a planning session (we often had a full session before a major boss engagement, gathering information and deciding on how to approach the fight) the fighter can tell "we could scry on this henchman, he's close enough to important stuff but he's not important enough to be protected" or "we could teleport this place to gain this information" or "we could ask this potentially friendly npc for help". So it didn't matter that the casters were the ones with all the tools (with perhaps some skill checks provided by the rogue); every player could contribute equally to the out of combat progress.

[Crake]

Even when AC is pumped up hard, the first attack is almost always going to hit. As for miss chances, all such effects I know (invisibility, displacement, mirror image, and so on) are defeated by true sight - which, as I stated, is not too difficult to get at the power level of my previous campaign. So, ubercharging is almost always going to succeed.

I guess you’re gonna completely ignore the part where any immediate action abilities completely foil an ubercharger? Abrupt jaunt, celerity, or hell, even reach and a trip attack.

As for non illusion miss chance, blink and greater blink both make you go full on ethereal, so their miss chance isnt negated by true seeing.

As for AC vs saves, AC is pretty trivial to optimize, probably moreso than saves, because saves only really scale with ability score and a cloak of resistance, meanwhile AC has like, at least 6 different bonus types each with their own diminishing return track.

Meanwhile, saves is basically capped at +5 cloak of resistance, and +6 ability score item for a total of +8, so unless youre also spending class levels to stack the first level good save bonus by multiclassing a whole bunch, then your saves arent gonna really be all that amazing. Of course, that is countered by the fact that save DCs are equally as difficult to raise, but all that really does is further illustrate my point that the two are fairly equivalent.

[noob]

I guess you’re gonna completely ignore the part where any immediate action abilities completely foil an ubercharger? Abrupt jaunt, celerity, or hell, even reach and a trip attack.

As for non illusion miss chance, blink and greater blink both make you go full on ethereal, so their miss chance isnt negated by true seeing.

As for AC vs saves, AC is pretty trivial to optimize, probably moreso than saves, because saves only really scale with ability score and a cloak of resistance, meanwhile AC has like, at least 6 different bonus types each with their own diminishing return track.

Meanwhile, saves is basically capped at +5 cloak of resistance, and +6 ability score item for a total of +8, so unless youre also spending class levels to stack the first level good save bonus by multiclassing a whole bunch, then your saves arent gonna really be all that amazing. Of course, that is countered by the fact that save DCs are equally as difficult to raise, but all that really does is further illustrate my point that the two are fairly equivalent.

You do not get celerity on your ubercharger to counter the celerity with a celerity?
With the optional rule that says using wands takes the casting time of the spell you can probably get a partially charged wand of celerity for the two or three encounters where you need celerity to kill that wizard trying to jaunt away.

[NichG]

I guess you’re gonna completely ignore the part where any immediate action abilities completely foil an ubercharger? Abrupt jaunt, celerity, or hell, even reach and a trip attack.

As for non illusion miss chance, blink and greater blink both make you go full on ethereal, so their miss chance isnt negated by true seeing.

As for AC vs saves, AC is pretty trivial to optimize, probably moreso than saves, because saves only really scale with ability score and a cloak of resistance, meanwhile AC has like, at least 6 different bonus types each with their own diminishing return track.

Meanwhile, saves is basically capped at +5 cloak of resistance, and +6 ability score item for a total of +8, so unless youre also spending class levels to stack the first level good save bonus by multiclassing a whole bunch, then your saves arent gonna really be all that amazing. Of course, that is countered by the fact that save DCs are equally as difficult to raise, but all that really does is further illustrate my point that the two are fairly equivalent.

Ehh, you can do more with saves than just that, but not sure it's worth the quibble...

Superior Resistance has 24hr duration and takes that +5 to +6. There are X stat to Y tricks to stack Charisma onto your saves. ToB stuff lets you get particular saves up as high as you can pump a skill check. There are sources of Luck and Morale bonuses to saves in various spells. There's also stuff like the Ring of Nine Lives and, since you roll saves but not AC, things that manipulate dice rolls (like reroll abilities) can get you another effective +5 to +10. I played a lot of a casting variant where to cast spells you had to hit Fort saves based on the spell level, so these tricks were part of the ramp up to pulling off stuff like Wish (DC 101, but you did also get special bonuses for material components, CL, etc).

But of course there are also lots of counters to attacks as well if you're going that deep into things.

Really, highly metamagic'd Hail of Stone (SC version) is the damage autokill... No SR, saves, hit rolls, or energy resistance to worry about.

[RandomPeasant]

I usually end up seeking those permanent magic items on casters anyway, because 1 minute/CL of very dispellable (unless you've got some serious CL boosting going on) immunity from an actual casting of Death Ward, Freedom of Movement etc. is not very reliable,

As far as that goes, buying items doesn't really help much with dispelling, because dispelling still takes down the item for long enough for them to kill you. It comes back soon enough that you can continue adventuring that day, but that doesn't really help if you've already failed your finger of death save. And item CLs tend to be lower than your own, so there's a real sense in which you're making yourself more vulnerable, not less. If you're concerned about dispelling as a primary risk, CL boosting or specific counter-tech like a Ring of Counterspelling is your best bet.


You're doing better than at least 75% of the official modules then.

Well, yeah, I don't have a ton of respect for the authors of published modules. But in their defense, a lot of those modules are low-level ones which don't need to be resilient to teleport, or explicit "clear out this dungeon" things, which are resilient to teleport because "kill them all" is a task that works out basically the same regardless of whether you have a way of picking the order you do the killing in or not. There are even some that are teleport-resistant for fairly clever reasons. The 3e version of Castle Strahd, for instance, postulates that Strahd has established a bunch of set-pieces with special stuff that makes him extra immortal you have to go deal with, so even if you do teleport in and gank him day 1, that doesn't solve the problem.


Except that there's usually enough save or die effects of varying levels and with varying sources of effects, some of which aren't even necessarily "save or die", but are practically so, enough so that simply having "death ward" is not gonna give you blanket protection across the board.

Sure. That's good. It means it matters what spells you choose to learn, what spells you choose to prepare for the day, and what order you use your spells in. As a Wizard, you can make mistakes in how you allocate your spells. If you have finger of death and final rebuke prepared, choosing to use the latter because you think the guy you're fighting now has a bad Will save leaves you holding the bag if you fight someone with death ward later. That doesn't happen with an Ubercharger.


As for an equivalent defense against an ubercharger, there's the delay death spell, which prevents you from dying of HP damage until the spell is over,

And is a non-Core spell. And, more importantly, is a spell, not a defense monsters just have. The nightwing is immune to finger of death and final rebuke. It doesn't need to do anything to be immune to those effects, it just is. That's the thing that matters when evaluating PC offenses, because PCs fight monsters, not duels. The fact that the counters to SoDs are things some percentage of monsters just have and the counters to Uberchargers are things you have to go dig out of splatbooks and build specialized opponents to get is precisely the reason that Uberchargers are less healthy for the game than spellcasters.


like abrupt jaunting out of range of the attack.

That doesn't really work well against charging. By default, you take an immediate action in response to someone else's action, not during it. Abrupt Jaunt lets you juke people who move into melee with you, but a charger does their positioning and their damage before you get a chance to respond. You can do it before they act, but for that to work there has to be somewhere within 10ft they can't charge to.


If you believe this is something that a Knowledge check should tell you, then the vehicle for that information is by asking the DM if you know it

Yes, and my point is that generally your DM's answer will be "I guess it just kinda works like the rules" not "here is a specific list of the types of threats you should expect to need to prepare for". Because the latter is, again, massively more metagamey than preparing for things like "one of the basic schools of magic that was established in the PHB" or "things that remove you from a fight if you fail a save".


It's not a threat if one isn't threatened by it. A bodak isn't much of a challenge if the party uses death ward on the whole party. It isn't mitigating the threat, it's neutralizing what makes the encounter at all threatening. Mitigating is more along the lines of blind fight feat, using mirrors to locate the creature, etc. The fact that it IS harder to defend themselves against high level threats is what makes them a threat.

I thought you were supposed to be explaining what "caster friendly" assumptions DMs were making that made the Wizard's teleport better than the Fighter's "nothing".

[King of Nowhere]

I guess you’re gonna completely ignore the part where any immediate action abilities completely foil an ubercharger? Abrupt jaunt, celerity, or hell, even reach and a trip attack.

As for non illusion miss chance, blink and greater blink both make you go full on ethereal, so their miss chance isnt negated by true seeing.

As for AC vs saves, AC is pretty trivial to optimize, probably moreso than saves, because saves only really scale with ability score and a cloak of resistance, meanwhile AC has like, at least 6 different bonus types each with their own diminishing return track.

Meanwhile, saves is basically capped at +5 cloak of resistance, and +6 ability score item for a total of +8, so unless youre also spending class levels to stack the first level good save bonus by multiclassing a whole bunch, then your saves arent gonna really be all that amazing. Of course, that is countered by the fact that save DCs are equally as difficult to raise, but all that really does is further illustrate my point that the two are fairly equivalent.

Jaunt, celerity are banned at my table. we banned them because we feel it's like opening a floodgate of additional complexity and things to keep track of. trip attacks are fine, but they are highly dependant on there being somebody around with the right build. also, trip + reach was more or less banned at my table after I tried giving it to an npc and it was way too effective.
blink only has 20% chance to work on opponents that can see invisibility, and it also has 20% chance of screwing up your own spells. greater blink... we never used it, I wasn't even aware of its exhistance. Still only 20% against somebody who sees invisibility, and it's personal range so only casters can have it.

yes, AC can be pumped up high, but we never got in a situation where the first attack was likely to miss. Wait, actually we did, and it was a problem because it made martials unable to contribute much. I fixed that by introducing "crystals of accuracy", giving a +3 to hit for an affordable cost, bringing the interaction between ac and hit bonus back in the range we wanted it.

look, we spent years fine-tuning the combat balance to something we liked. our decisions on what to ban, what to keep and what to nerf were all discussed, motivated, and sometimes voted.


As far as that goes, buying items doesn't really help much with dispelling, because dispelling still takes down the item for long enough for them to kill you. It comes back soon enough that you can continue adventuring that day, but that doesn't really help if you've already failed your finger of death save. And item CLs tend to be lower than your own, so there's a real sense in which you're making yourself more vulnerable, not less. If you're concerned about dispelling as a primary risk, CL boosting or specific counter-tech like a Ring of Counterspelling is your best bet.


you can use a global dispelling for buffs, on multiple people. for an item, you have to target the specific item, the placement of which may not be apparent.
So, you have to cast dispel on the item, followed by a quickened finger of death on the target. You may roll low on the dispel, or he may roll high on the saving throw, or he may have some additional defence. And in case anything goes wrong, you wasted your entire round. So, it's not such a safe combo.
Also, nothing stops you from having an item AND casting the spell too. so you'd need two separate dispels. At this point you are better off just trying something else.

Finally, at my specific table, seeing as how high level combat involved a lot of disjunctions (and chain dispelling, but this was chosen by the party wizard as his own personal secret that he researched and was not available to others) I introduced "crystals of arcane shields" that would give a saving throw boost to prevent items being disjunctioned, and set the CL of all items on you at 17 unless it was already higher. This brought the power of disjunctions and chain dispelling from "resolutive" to "as strong as appropriate for a 9th level spell"

[Thunder999]

As far as that goes, buying items doesn't really help much with dispelling, because dispelling still takes down the item for long enough for them to kill you. It comes back soon enough that you can continue adventuring that day, but that doesn't really help if you've already failed your finger of death save. And item CLs tend to be lower than your own, so there's a real sense in which you're making yourself more vulnerable, not less. If you're concerned about dispelling as a primary risk, CL boosting or specific counter-tech like a Ring of Counterspelling is your best bet.

You can only dispel magic items with a targeted Dispel Magic against the item, and then only with line of effect, so it won't work on a ring beneath a glove, spells are very vulnerable to all those creatures that can spam (greater) dispel magic in AoE form to just wipe out a buff per party member or target a creature to remove multiple spells.

[Crake]

And is a non-Core spell. And, more importantly, is a spell, not a defense monsters just have. The nightwing is immune to finger of death and final rebuke. It doesn't need to do anything to be immune to those effects, it just is. That's the thing that matters when evaluating PC offenses, because PCs fight monsters, not duels. The fact that the counters to SoDs are things some percentage of monsters just have and the counters to Uberchargers are things you have to go dig out of splatbooks and build specialized opponents to get is precisely the reason that Uberchargers are less healthy for the game than spellcasters.

Well, excepting the fact that im pretty sure king of nowhere stated that most of his campaign’s battles (where ubercharger is banned, and thus the main context of this discussion), death ward was also the primarily stated defense against death effects. Sure theres no monster thats straight up immune to being charged to death, but there are monsters that engage on the battlefield that makes charging rather difficult to engage in. Its much more work to set up a charge than it is to simply cast a spell at a target for example.


That doesn't really work well against charging. By default, you take an immediate action in response to someone else's action, not during it. Abrupt Jaunt lets you juke people who move into melee with you, but a charger does their positioning and their damage before you get a chance to respond. You can do it before they act, but for that to work there has to be somewhere within 10ft they can't charge to.

I don’t ascribe to this logic, immediate actions can interrupt the flow of other actions just like a readied action does. If you ready an action to attack if someone gets in melee with you, you can do that action when a charger gets base to base, but before they get to attack, because the readied action interrupts the other. Same works with immediate actions. I’m not gonna argue this point, because you can play it however you want, but actions arent representative of plank second actions from start to finish, they have a start and an end, and a whole process inbetween.

[Doctor Despair]

Sure theres no monster thats straight up immune to being charged to death,

I mean, in large part regeneration fits the bill. Most of the time the ubercharger's damage is mainly regular weapon damage, so while they could deal extra fire or acid or whatever damage with specific weapons, their domino rush power attack boosted damage wouldn't be of that energy type.

I should add that this is primarily relevant when paired with an item, spell, or class ability that grants immunity to nonlethal damage, of course, or else a means to stay conscious with large amount of nonlethal damage. I'm sure they didn't print a creature like that -- except, perhaps, any caster with a hide life spell technically fits that bill without the nonlethal damage caveat.

[NichG]

Yes, and my point is that generally your DM's answer will be "I guess it just kinda works like the rules" not "here is a specific list of the types of threats you should expect to need to prepare for". Because the latter is, again, massively more metagamey than preparing for things like "one of the basic schools of magic that was established in the PHB" or "things that remove you from a fight if you fail a save".


Out of the DMs I've played D&D with, I'd expect that sort of 'gee I dunno' out maybe 1 in 3 (including one DM who would probably say 'no, Knowledge doesn't let you know that'). The other 2/3 would engage with the question. I would engage with the question even without the Knowledge check, for the exact sort of reason that you and others have been arguing: experienced characters in the world would have some sense of things relevant to their profession.

I would tell someone playing a Lv14 Fighter, even who has zero Knowledge: Arcana, that generally speaking they're not going to see Dominate Person being flung around by random NPCs, that specific supernatural creatures will have mind influencing effects, and that generally those effects work via some form of 'accepting the premise' or 'going with the flow' or 'taking the trade', be it verbal agreement with a statement, following an offered incentive, flinching against a threat, etc, and that those sorts of abilities tend to be one-offs possessed by unique entities - and that half of those effects work on the mind, and the other half directly rewrite destiny/fate/time/causality/etc sorts of stuff. Similarly at that level you will have heard of the existence of effects which just 'hold something to be true' and offer no defense at the very high end if you go picking fights with gods and the like, but those are all held by unique cosmic beings or specific locations, barring something like going on a Far Realms safari, and I will say as much again without requiring the Knowledge check. With a Knowledge check you might be able to list some of those effects and the unique individuals who possess them, and with a very high Knowledge check you might get a 'here's a possible lead for coming up with a counter to one of these exceptional effects' research quest.

The thing is, the next campaign I ran after that might be a psionics fest where there's all sorts of rich mental combat stuff and having your will seized is ten times more common than being killed. And I would tell a high level PC in that campaign 'oh yeah, mental effects are the most common thing'.

Going with your personal prior is always strictly worse than asking, because if the DM doesn't tell you, well, you can still default to your personal prior. But if the DM does tell you basically anything, or even just if you pay attention to the game world and see how NPCs are behaving and what sorts of effects tend to come up or tend not to come up, then you find out something - even if only a little - about the game you're actually playing rather than just nesting in your own biases.

[Darg]

I thought you were supposed to be explaining what "caster friendly" assumptions DMs were making that made the Wizard's teleport better than the Fighter's "nothing".

What do you mean? You're the one that broke up my post and claimed they weren't parts of the greater whole. To clear up another misconception you are having, I never mentioned teleport in any capacity, you did.

I'll elaborate why I didn't respond anyways. You responded to my post to another about how mundane activities are just as capable in capacity with a what if about the DM not allowing player agency in roleplay. I turned it around by saying it applies in both directions; the implication being that if the DM doesn't allow player agency in that regard they could have just as well been just as domineering by tailoring encounters to ruin any caster's day. You then go on to respond with the irritation put forth above. I didn't care to respond further because the question put forth had nothing to do with the topic being discussed, nor did it have anything to do with what you explicitly said in the quote in this post. If you wanted an answer to a question it would behoove you to actually ask it instead of making inaccurate insinuations and claims.

To be a good sport I'll answer the quote above. I don't need to explain it because there isn't a person in this thread that thinks the power of teleport can be trumped by the non-existence of a competitor. That said, if the players are given freedom, it's hard to say that a 50 charge consumable teleport item for less than 9k is prohibitively expensive, especially when the minimum caster level allows for a minimum 4 person teleport. Of course mundanes are going to have a hard time if the DM hands the players some +1 elf bane, troll bane longswords when they are fighting the undead.

[Crake]

That said, if the players are given freedom, it's hard to say that a 50 charge consumable teleport item for less than 9k is prohibitively expensive, especially when the minimum caster level allows for a minimum 4 person teleport.

Out of curiosity, what 50 charge teleport item has a market value of 9k?

[noob]

Out of curiosity, what 50 charge teleport item has a market value of 9k?

Probably some item abusing a fast casting progression class getting third level spells at level 4 + a third level teleportation spell in the crafting process.
Since wands of any spell made by any class are directly legal without an approval process, you can just make them if you have the right class, spell and feats.

[RandomPeasant]

you can use a global dispelling for buffs, on multiple people.

Sure, but that way you have to roll from the top down and you stop the second you fail one. If your goal is to get off a finger of death, and you fail your dispel magic against their bull's strength or haste or fly or even mind blank before getting to their death ward, you haven't gotten past the target's defenses.


Sure theres no monster thats straight up immune to being charged to death, but there are monsters that engage on the battlefield that makes charging rather difficult to engage in. Its much more work to set up a charge than it is to simply cast a spell at a target for example.

Yes and that's the other problem. You can turn off the Uber Charge. But then you're left with a character who can't really do anything. Whereas turning off finger of death means the spellcaster has to do something else, and when that happens they have other things to do. They have actual decisions to make. That is just straight-up a healthier dynamic than the way mundanes work.


I don’t ascribe to this logic, immediate actions can interrupt the flow of other actions just like a readied action does.

A readied action "occurs just before the action that triggers it". It does say you "interrupt", but that means the turn, not the individual action. Even if you can interrupt during an action, the action continues, so they can (presuming you haven't Jaunt'd to somewhere they couldn't have charged to), continue their charge to reach you at your new destination. The best you can do is make the target burn some of their attacks by Jaunting after the first one.


I should add that this is primarily relevant when paired with an item, spell, or class ability that grants immunity to nonlethal damage

So your solution to the Ubercharger is to simply make it so that damage is irrelevant unless it has the appropriate type? I don't know that I feel that really improves the game.


Going with your personal prior is always strictly worse than asking, because if the DM doesn't tell you, well, you can still default to your personal prior.

What if your DM gives you incomplete information? Suppose you're going to go fight a death cult. You make a Knowledge (Religion) check to know what sorts of magics the death cult likes to use. Unsurprisingly, the answer is "mostly Necromancy". But if it happens that this particular chapter of the death cult has an Illusionist member, you'd've been better off going with a general prior than relying on the information.


about the game you're actually playing rather than just nesting in your own biases.

But again, that is metagaming. Observing "this DM doesn't like to use mind control" and concluding "I don't need to defend against mind control" is, like, the most central possible example of metagaming. Yes, your DM could justify that for you. They could also not, or you could think they did but you got faulty information, or they could but things could change in the future. dominate person is a thing that exists in the game. Getting tagged by it is very bad. It is simply not irrational to take measures, particularly low-cost measures, to avoid that, even if you have not encountered dominate person in the past.


What do you mean? You're the one that broke up my post and claimed they weren't parts of the greater whole.

I would love to know which of the other three sentences in your post you thought was supposed to be an explanation of what a "caster friendly" game was, and why that was necessary for "casters to be so dominating".


To clear up another misconception you are having, I never mentioned teleport in any capacity, you did.

Yes, in the post you quoted and replied to. Perhaps if you meant "oh and by the way I think teleport is a separate thing that this doesn't apply to" you could've tossed in a fifth sentence saying that.


You responded to my post to another about how mundane activities are just as capable in capacity with a what if about the DM not allowing player agency in roleplay.

No, I didn't. Not allowing player agency means that you can't try things, not that they don't work. Things not working is just verisimilitude, because sometimes the things you try don't work. If I'm accused of a crime, I can try to win my case by baking the prosecutor a nice batch of cookies, but there's no guarantee that doing so will be as effective as presenting evidence of my innocence, and indeed it would be somewhat bizarre if it were. The same principle applies to roleplaying. You certainly can try to improve someone's attitude by doing favors for them rather than making diplomacy checks. But if the favors you are able to do aren't ones that improve their attitude, well then it sucks to be you, but you still have plenty of agency.


they could have just as well been just as domineering by tailoring encounters to ruin any caster's day.

That's not really the same, is it? Yes, the DM could take active measures to ruin a caster's day. They could have all fights take place in AMFs, or give all the party's foes items of SR 30. But that's being actively caster-hostile. It's not mundane-hostile to say to the Barbarian, who has no way to effect the plot beyond feats of strength, that there is no way to translate a feat of strength into something equivalent to fabricate or teleport or plane shift. Indeed, the absence of such a translation mechanism is the default state of the rules. And that's precisely the issue: the mundane needs a friendly environment to accomplish what the caster can in a neutral one.


Out of curiosity, what 50 charge teleport item has a market value of 9k?

This, again, seems like a very good question to answer when you are advancing the argument. I would say it's not really good sportsmanship to make claims without providing enough for other people to go out and check you. The closest I'm aware of is a Helm of Teleportation, which gives you three teleports a day in exchange for a slight discount and massively less flexibility over just buying Pearls of Power.

[Doctor Despair]

So your solution to the Ubercharger is to simply make it so that damage is irrelevant unless it has the appropriate type? I don't know that I feel that really improves the game.

I never said that was my "solution" for anything. Crake said there was no way to be immune to being charged to death. I pointed out two means to get practical immunity to that. I was not making any larger point than that.

[King of Nowhere]

Sure, but that way you have to roll from the top down and you stop the second you fail one. If your goal is to get off a finger of death, and you fail your dispel magic against their bull's strength or haste or fly or even mind blank before getting to their death ward, you haven't gotten past the target's defenses.


dispel magic does not work that way. not for the targeted dispel, at least.

You make a dispel check against [...] each ongoing spell currently in effect on the object or creature.[...] If you succeed on a particular check, that spell is dispelled; if you fail, that spell remains in effect.

but I concede one thing, a targeted dispel magic is an uncertain thing. I was mostly thinking of disjunction, which authomatically works on buffs, while allowing a saving throw on items. we played the last year with the pcs over level 17, so it came natural to think of that.




Yes and that's the other problem. You can turn off the Uber Charge. But then you're left with a character who can't really do anything. Whereas turning off finger of death means the spellcaster has to do something else.
yes, besides individual reasons for what worked or didn't work at my table, that's the strongest argument against uberchargers.

[Waazraath]

everyone talks of how strong casters are, and how martials cannot have nice things, and how utterly powerless are the poor martials against magic.
I always saw it as a huge exaggeration, martials in my world have plenty of tricks.
but then, I always played high magic, high wealth campaigns.

for a short campaign, the dm told us to make 14th level characters with 300k gp as starting wealth. which is already significantly above wbl.
let's start with a +5 weapon. actually, i have a build requiring a double weapon, so I have 2 weapons. getting it +5/+5 would require 100k gp, one third of my total wealth. better keep it +4.
I need a magical shield, armor, various trinkets. a belt of strenght +6, something I always take as a given in any martial build, eats up a signficant chunk of what I have left.
Despite a cloak of resistance +5, I still have low will save; I need a continuous protection from evil effect, if I don't want to be easy prey for any enchanter. by raw it would cost 2k, but we all agree it's one of those cases where the guidelines don't work; eventually we decide 25k would be a reasonable price. And to afford it, I already have to sacrifice some of my +5 stuff and get it only to +4.
I need teleport, to get out of forcecages. see invisibility is a must. true sight would be cool. flight. death ward. freedom of movement. And I'm sure I'm forgetting a lot of things. And it's all so damn expensive!
I got used to illusion becoming virtually useless in my campaign because there are items that give true sight for limited duration, swift activation, and everyone had them past a certain level. nope, anything like that is too expensive. If I want to hit things, I can't afford any of that stuff. Even if I spent all my money on that kind of utility, I'd still leave myself open to some effects.
I bought some potions, it's the best I can do.
If an invisible opponent attacks me, he gets a surprise round, and then if I'm still alive I need to drink a potion of see invisibility and then the enemy gets a second round, and I don't really think I can survive that. if I'm attacked by someone invisible I'm dead, I'm drinking the potion only to remove some loot from my killer.
I have absolutely zero answers to mirror image. A first level spell screws me up entirely, and there's nothing I can do. I could buy dust of apparition? very expensive, and I'd have to waste a round to use it.
Flying opponent? I'd have to waste a round drinking a potion. Then dispelling the potion would be trivial.
I don't even remember the last time someone tried web in my campaign, freedom of movement being commonplace. I could not afford it.

I am level 14, well above wbl guidelines I don't have any defence for any of a bunch of low level spells, because while there are counters for that, they are all too expensive. Even for the stuff I do have defences for, it generally requires me to spend rounds taking potions. meaning that by the time I get to act, the combat will be probably already decided. I could at least afford to not become a pupper for the first enchanter passing by, but that's all.

So, I now finally understand what it is like to play in a normal campaign, limited by wbl, and not having access to any of the neat stuff that used to keep the martials in the same league of casters.
And I appreciate high magic even more

I don't know if martials/casters is the issue here.

First, you can get a great deal of the things you describe from race, feats, prestige classes. See this nice overview: https://minmaxforum.com/index.php?topic=11381 (shameless self plug).

Second, you don't need all those per se. Most characters don't have all those things available at the same time, not even at that level. The party should be able to deal with threats, but every character needing death ward, flying, true sight, teleport - just no.

Third: if you think your char does need as many options as possible, why on earth go for a +5 weapon, let a lone a double +5? Just spend your cash on items that give options, and you'lll have more options! (sounds almost too simple to be truth...)

[icefractal]

When people say "dmg is the least problem to worry about", they are technically indirectly referring to the Henderson Scale of Plot Derailment (https://knowyourmeme.com/photos/2032298-tg)

"Ending any possible (combat) encounter in a single round" doesn't earn you much points there.That's true, but that really depends on what kind of campaign you're running. There are at least two types where "plot derailment" is not a problem, ironically opposites:

Full Sandbox - there's no planned plot, so there's nothing to derail. Someone knot-cuts past a bunch of steps? At worst, that means the game ends early for the night while the GM figures out some more material, but usually that's not even necessary.

Voluntary Railroad - when the GM says up front "I'd like to run a game that follows a specific plot" and the players agree. Not everyone's cup of tea, but given it's how the majority of CRPGs work, it's hardly a niche taste. And I'll 100% take this one over a surprise railroad. In that case the hypothetical ability to completely derail the plot doesn't matter because nobody's going to do it.

Meanwhile, going first and one-shotting all the foes is problematic in most groups - any group where the other players want to have screen-time in combat, really. It won't be an issue in a purely "combat is an obstacle to be avoided if possible" group, but a lot of players do want to spend some time in combat and have a chance to show off there.

[RandomPeasant]

dispel magic does not work that way. not for the targeted dispel, at least.

Sure, but I was quoting you explicitly talking about multi-target dispels. It's true that someone can single-target dispel you, but then you're right back to them being able to do it to your gear too (and, no, you can't just put the ring under a glove -- that implies you can stop people from targeting you with spells by walking around in a burqa). Having your death ward on an item has some value. It stops your enemies from getting multiple effects with a single targeted dispel, and it lets you get your buffs back up after a fight for no marginal cost. But as far as "make sure that death ward does its job and stops someone from casting finger of death on me", you want high CL or other explicit anti-dispelling counters.


you can get a great deal of the things you describe from race, feats, prestige classes.

Sure. But those options constrain your build heavily. It's true that you can fly by virtue of being a Raptoran rather than overland flight, but frankly being a Human rather than a Raptoran is worth more than free flight. You can build your way into the various things casters just get, but just getting them is more efficient, which is why casters are better than non-casters.


Second, you don't need all those per se. Most characters don't have all those things available at the same time, not even at that level. The party should be able to deal with threats, but every character needing death ward, flying, true sight, teleport - just no.

There is a point at which bodaks are a horde monster. You do, in fact, need death ward to survive at that point, because iterative probability hates you. That point is not too far in the future at 14th level. Now, what I do think is true is that you don't necessarily need to provide those things personally (though, honestly, if you don't have some form of flight as a 14th level character, that is kinda embarrassing). You can have one person who casts death ward on the whole party. teleport works just fine if there's one character who has it. But the problem remains the same, because as difficult as it is to be independent in your access to death ward as a mundane character, it's even harder to pay your fair share into that sort of communal defense setup as a mundane.


Voluntary Railroad - when the GM says up front "I'd like to run a game that follows a specific plot" and the players agree. Not everyone's cup of tea, but given it's how the majority of CRPGs work, it's hardly a niche taste. And I'll 100% take this one over a surprise railroad. In that case the hypothetical ability to completely derail the plot doesn't matter because nobody's going to do it.

There are also even softer versions of this, where you just do adventures that aren't disrupted by the big plot spells in the first place. You don't need to railroad, voluntarily or otherwise, to keep people from skipping to the end of a Bug Hunt-type adventure, because the only way to get to the end is to kill all the monsters. You can teleport and scry all you want, the most they can do is give you positional advantage in a fight you'd have to have anyway, making them hardly any worse than greater invisibility.

[Quertus]

Second, you don't need all those per se. Most characters don't have all those things available at the same time, not even at that level. The party should be able to deal with threats, but every character needing death ward, flying, true sight, teleport - just no.

Eh, it's not quite that simple, IMO. How to explain?

So, on one level, sure, not everyone needs to be able to convince the guards to open the door because the king is on fire by burning some incense. Not everyone needs to be able to charm the Princess into handing over her abducted dragon in exchange for a few beans. Not everyone needs to be able to hurl a Fireball to clear the rats out of the sewers. Different characters can have different roles and different approaches. Sure.

However... generally, everyone wants to be able to participate. And it's kinda hard to participate when your opponent is invisible, or all the way up there, or one-shots you, or (in some people's opinion, not mine) when they mind control your character.

So it's not unreasonable to view that as a list of "things that are required in order to be able to participate". And, in that regard... IMO, there are 3? 4? 5? mindsets (seems the Spanish Inquisition hit while I was writing this). 1) Everyone should be able to participate; you're The Load if you can't. 2) Everyone should be able to participate; if you find you can't, it's a learning opportunity. 3) Enough members of the party should be able to participate in order to be able to clear the challenge even under adverse conditions (some members down, suboptimal "who can participate" pairings (only the Fire Mage can see the invisible Fire Elemental), etc. 4) Everyone should have a roughly equal opportunity to participate. 5) Who cares?

IME, 5 is a mindset most often held by corpses, but occasionally can work in a very carefully tailored CaS game. 4 is more of a Shadowrun type of mindset, although it can work as a way to self-handicap otherwise OP / spotlight-hogging characters. 3 is the better-realized version of what you seem to be advocating - optimizing the party instead of any individual performance. 2 is more of a "RP a noob" stance, so I probably favor it more than it deserves. 1 is more "every man is an island" territory, or at least "everyone participating all the time"; IME, \even some modern companies push for that over specialists. 1-3 are what I would expect in character from parties whose lives are on the line, depending on the degree to which obtaining those "able to participate" abilities are an option / the opportunity cost of what could have been obtained instead.

[NichG]

What if your DM gives you incomplete information? Suppose you're going to go fight a death cult. You make a Knowledge (Religion) check to know what sorts of magics the death cult likes to use. Unsurprisingly, the answer is "mostly Necromancy". But if it happens that this particular chapter of the death cult has an Illusionist member, you'd've been better off going with a general prior than relying on the information.


The thing about 'what ifs' is you can make up anything. What if the death cult instead had a red dragon with cold immunity and metabreath-shifted to breathe acid? What if the death cult instead happens to have a corrupted solar who uses Wish to move one party member to the paraelemental plane of ooze? Of course you can make up the scenario 'my prior happens to be exactly right'. You can also make up the scenario 'my prior happens to be catastrophically wrong'. The thing about it being a prior is that, along the direction of variables which actually vary, it contains no information about those variables. It is the definition of an ignorant perspective.

Incomplete information is strictly better than the absence of information, which is what your prior has.



But again, that is metagaming. Observing "this DM doesn't like to use mind control" and concluding "I don't need to defend against mind control" is, like, the most central possible example of metagaming. Yes, your DM could justify that for you. They could also not, or you could think they did but you got faulty information, or they could but things could change in the future. dominate person is a thing that exists in the game. Getting tagged by it is very bad. It is simply not irrational to take measures, particularly low-cost measures, to avoid that, even if you have not encountered dominate person in the past.


Looking at the actual in-game events that your character experiences and drawing conclusions from them is metagaming, yet using 'I read in this OOC book that this thing might exist, oh, and I won't even ask the DM if it exists because I don't trust that information to be reliable' is not? Yeah no, that's completely backwards.

[Crake]

Sure, but I was quoting you explicitly talking about multi-target dispels.

Even with area dispels, thats not how dispel works. Area dispel cycles through effects from highest to lowest and stops when you SUCCEED on a check, not when you fail one. It will dispel either one, or none. Targetted dispel checks against every effect.


A readied action "occurs just before the action that triggers it". It does say you "interrupt", but that means the turn, not the individual action. Even if you can interrupt during an action, the action continues, so they can (presuming you haven't Jaunt'd to somewhere they couldn't have charged to), continue their charge to reach you at your new destination. The best you can do is make the target burn some of their attacks by Jaunting after the first one.

The trick is to use your readied/immediate action after they move, but before they attack, and to move yourself 90 degrees to the side, and out of their reach, meaning they cant just continue their charge to attack you, unless they have some ability that lets them zigzag their charge.

Personally I also ascribe to the notion that you can use immediate actions after an attack has started, but before an attack has actually been rolled, and I believe this is supported by the shadow mystery that is basically abrupt jaunt at will for 1 round/level that states that if you use it yo avoid an attack, the attack still has a 50% chance to land, so immediate actions must be usable after an action has been declared, but before they have been resolved, so you could wait for the charger to begin their first swing, locking in the end of their movement, and THEN jaunt out of the way.

Funnily enough, this can be solved by the charger by getting something like anklets of translocation to be able to swift action jaunt and follow, though against longer ranged teleport it might be a bit more difficult.


I never said that was my "solution" for anything. Crake said there was no way to be immune to being charged to death. I pointed out two means to get practical immunity to that. I was not making any larger point than that.

I more meant theres no way to be immune in like, short notice. Basing a whole build around being immune to damage is it’s own thing, not specifically a counter to ubercharging, in the way being undead is it’s own thing, rather than being a counter to death effects.

Death ward is a counter, undeath is just a state of being that also happens to counter it, if that makes sense?

[Quertus]

The fact that the counters to SoDs are things some percentage of monsters just have and the counters to Uberchargers are things you have to go dig out of splatbooks and build specialized opponents to get is precisely the reason that Uberchargers are less healthy for the game than spellcasters.

Eh, that’s not exactly right.

At the most basic level, we’re looking at the equivalent of “X damage that works against 80% of opponents, vs 80% of X damage that works on all opponents”. I think you’d be hard pressed to argue that consistency is bad for the health of the game.

So, instead, it’s a question of whether the builds are balanced. And, sure, an unbalanced build is bad for the health of a game that cares overmuch about balance. Shrug. That’s user error. And making that obvious is good for the health of the hobby.

However, the übercharger makes it more obvious when the GM is being a ****, and building something specifically to counter a character. Making it hard for the GM to hide that behavior is good for the health of the hobby.

So, end result, I’ve gotta come down on the side of übercharger being better for the health of the game than SoD spells.

[Waazraath]

Sure. But those options constrain your build heavily. It's true that you can fly by virtue of being a Raptoran rather than overland flight, but frankly being a Human rather than a Raptoran is worth more than free flight. You can build your way into the various things casters just get, but just getting them is more efficient, which is why casters are better than non-casters.

No argument with here, especially with the bolded part. Counterpoint though: it really depends on what abilities we are talking about on how difficult they are to get. Short range (ex) teleport is a (fighter bonus) feat, martial study for Shadow Jaunt. That's not much constraint imo, especially since it's also an ability that theoretically works in amf and the like (though this might not fly at every table). Same with flight: you can grab it from your race, but you can also spend a feat (or a few feats, depending on what type of flight you want, and for how long), and some martials get it for free (paladin has a flying warhorse as acf, and dragon shaman has permanent flight at the level 14 we are talking about).



There is a point at which bodaks are a horde monster. You do, in fact, need death ward to survive at that point, because iterative probability hates you. That point is not too far in the future at 14th level. Now, what I do think is true is that you don't necessarily need to provide those things personally (though, honestly, if you don't have some form of flight as a 14th level character, that is kinda embarrassing). You can have one person who casts death ward on the whole party. teleport works just fine if there's one character who has it. But the problem remains the same, because as difficult as it is to be independent in your access to death ward as a mundane character, it's even harder to pay your fair share into that sort of communal defense setup as a mundane.


Fair enough. I've never encountered Bodaks as horde monsters, but if you do you want Death Ward. As for paying your fair share in communal defense setup: I think you can go a long way as a martial - buff the entire party's initiative, give extra turns with WRT, choose to provide some of the things the party as a whole needs (e.g. be the party taxi with the jaunter prestige class and have party members keep spells known and spell slots free for other stuff), etc. It takes more effort as a martial, but that's common knowledge for this edtion.



Eh, it's not quite that simple, IMO. How to explain?

So, on one level, sure, not everyone needs to be able to convince the guards to open the door because the king is on fire by burning some incense. Not everyone needs to be able to charm the Princess into handing over her abducted dragon in exchange for a few beans. Not everyone needs to be able to hurl a Fireball to clear the rats out of the sewers. Different characters can have different roles and different approaches. Sure.

However... generally, everyone wants to be able to participate. And it's kinda hard to participate when your opponent is invisible, or all the way up there, or one-shots you, or (in some people's opinion, not mine) when they mind control your character.

So it's not unreasonable to view that as a list of "things that are required in order to be able to participate". And, in that regard... IMO, there are 3? 4? 5? mindsets (seems the Spanish Inquisition hit while I was writing this). 1) Everyone should be able to participate; you're The Load if you can't. 2) Everyone should be able to participate; if you find you can't, it's a learning opportunity. 3) Enough members of the party should be able to participate in order to be able to clear the challenge even under adverse conditions (some members down, suboptimal "who can participate" pairings (only the Fire Mage can see the invisible Fire Elemental), etc. 4) Everyone should have a roughly equal opportunity to participate. 5) Who cares?

IME, 5 is a mindset most often held by corpses, but occasionally can work in a very carefully tailored CaS game. 4 is more of a Shadowrun type of mindset, although it can work as a way to self-handicap otherwise OP / spotlight-hogging characters. 3 is the better-realized version of what you seem to be advocating - optimizing the party instead of any individual performance. 2 is more of a "RP a noob" stance, so I probably favor it more than it deserves. 1 is more "every man is an island" territory, or at least "everyone participating all the time"; IME, \even some modern companies push for that over specialists. 1-3 are what I would expect in character from parties whose lives are on the line, depending on the degree to which obtaining those "able to participate" abilities are an option / the opportunity cost of what could have been obtained instead.

What I expext from my games, especially in 3.5 where the difference between optimized and non-optimized is as big as it is, is to have a discussion about this in session 0. How hard do we want to optimize, and which character covers what bases. Going by your 1-5 mindsets, I don't think it matters too much which you pick, as long as all players (incl. DM) pick the same.

[Quertus]

What I expext from my games, especially in 3.5 where the difference between optimized and non-optimized is as big as it is, is to have a discussion about this in session 0. How hard do we want to optimize, and which character covers what bases. Going by your 1-5 mindsets, I don't think it matters too much which you pick, as long as all players (incl. DM) pick the same.

Bolded for emphasis. I think that part I bolded pretty clearly marks you in one specific mindset, at least the way I was using them. And, done right, it can be a very healthy mindset to have. But it’s not inherently perfect; there are lots of potential fail states to this method. For example, if I choose that my character’s weakness will be Will saves, and then we run through a module that constantly targets such, with Mind Control and Fear effects, while others’ lack of answers to Flight or Invisibility or Fortitude saves hardly matter, then I’m not going to get to play the game as much as everyone else does. At which point, the question is, is that fine with me? Can I (and everyone else) accept that not every role is the same size? Alternately, can I (and everyone else) give me an equal role to play despite my smaller time on stage (and is that unbalanced Balance fun?)?

I’m… oddly in both camps on this one. That is, I’m fine with running a character who was established as having no tactical acumen (and, no, I’m not discussing my signature tactically inept academia mage (drink!)), and sitting out for a 4-hour strategy session. OTOH, long ago I watched an episode of Spider-Man and his Amazing Friends, in which Submariner got taken out due to his dependency weakness, and was all like “**** that! - I’m not making characters like that”. So I’m much less keen on being taken out by such a weakness as “the only one vulnerable to Mind Control” or “the only one who can’t attack at range”.

So the mindset of the player, what types of imbalance and what causes produce that imbalance they find fun, can affect the effectiveness of this strategy at producing an enjoyable experience.

[Anthrowhale]

See this nice overview: https://minmaxforum.com/index.php?topic=11381 (shameless self plug).
You may want to mention Outsider Wings, Hengeyokai, and the graft base approaches to flight.

For buffing, Allied Defense+Improved Combat Expertise can help quite a bit. I also like the Double Team feat. White Raven Tactics is also amazing.

For extra actions, you may want to mention Snowtiger Berserker.

For Debuffing, Boomerang Daze can be quite potent.

For healing, Iron Heart Surge seems essential.

For invisiblity, a good hide check is reasonably achievable. Darkstalker is helpful there.

For seeing stuff, the Anthropomorphic Whale (Blindsight 120') and Antenna Graft (Tremorsense 60') are handy.

You may appreciate the team mundane (https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?635794-Team-Mundane) builds.

I agree that Interplanar transport is the least solvable problem for mundanes.



I've never encountered Bodaks as horde monsters, but if you do you want Death Ward.


An alternative in many situations is simply hiding and sneaking as they are stupid and only have Spot+11. If you absolutely have to fight, then a running (or flying) battle with ranged weapons works as well since the death gaze is 30' and they only move 20'.

[Gnaeus]

On top of that, we discussed varying campaign types, but those tend to be linked, IME, to varying party assumptions. Yes, if your team is a military unit with a leader, the wizard's teleport is a group resource. But that is hardly a default assumption. Just like there is a range of campaign types from Railroad to Sandbox with a lot of ground in the middle, there is a range of party cooperation levels from seamless team to open PVP with even more range. If you are arguing whether to take the Ring to Gondor or Mordor or Erebor, being the only guy with the magic bus definitionally goes a long way towards pushing your character's choices. I know "rogue who steals from the party" is a trope. But I have absolutely seen the conversation "If I ever even SUSPECT that you are stealing from me, you will never receive a heal spell again". Or the one that goes "Players A and B get wondrous items at 50% (what they cost me). C is at 75% until she apologizes for what happened in the tavern, and D is a jerk who can pay market price". Most games I know frown on outright PVP without really solid IC reason, but most will allow IC actions based on IC motivations. ESPECIALLY for player driven, sandbox games. And the barbarian has virtually no party options other than Comply, Leave, or attempt Murder (which is basicly Comply, since leave is usually "remove my character from game" and murder is likely either banned or going to end the game or at best a coin flip as to who gets to remake their character). .

In a more railroady setting of Enter Dungeon, Clear floor by Floor, Repeat, there is less room for player shenanigans. Players are more likely to share a single, relevant goal. But those games also tend to be the most combat optimization heavy, because the win/loss condition tends to be winning the next day of combats, which is only interesting if those combats are both challenging and varied, which means that the characters with multiple ways of resolving combats have an advantage.

[Darg]

Out of curiosity, what 50 charge teleport item has a market value of 9k?

A 50 charge item is half the cost of an unlimited use item. Ring of the Ram is priced for a 9 × 5 × 1800 ÷ (5 ÷ 1) ÷ 2 priced item. You can do the same thing with teleport because it's the same spell level.

[Waazraath]

Bolded for emphasis. I think that part I bolded pretty clearly marks you in one specific mindset, at least the way I was using them. And, done right, it can be a very healthy mindset to have. But it’s not inherently perfect; there are lots of potential fail states to this method. For example, if I choose that my character’s weakness will be Will saves, and then we run through a module that constantly targets such, with Mind Control and Fear effects, while others’ lack of answers to Flight or Invisibility or Fortitude saves hardly matter, then I’m not going to get to play the game as much as everyone else does. At which point, the question is, is that fine with me? Can I (and everyone else) accept that not every role is the same size? Alternately, can I (and everyone else) give me an equal role to play despite my smaller time on stage (and is that unbalanced Balance fun?)?

I’m… oddly in both camps on this one. That is, I’m fine with running a character who was established as having no tactical acumen (and, no, I’m not discussing my signature tactically inept academia mage (drink!)), and sitting out for a 4-hour strategy session. OTOH, long ago I watched an episode of Spider-Man and his Amazing Friends, in which Submariner got taken out due to his dependency weakness, and was all like “**** that! - I’m not making characters like that”. So I’m much less keen on being taken out by such a weakness as “the only one vulnerable to Mind Control” or “the only one who can’t attack at range”.

So the mindset of the player, what types of imbalance and what causes produce that imbalance they find fun, can affect the effectiveness of this strategy at producing an enjoyable experience.

Yeah, 'covering all bases' indeed can be considered as 1 mindset, and it is my default approach - but the outcome of a session 0 can also be (and was in the past) 'whatever do what you like' (the corpse mindset I guess =P) or 'everybody optimize the heck out of everybody so everybody can do anything'.


You may want to mention Outsider Wings, Hengeyokai, and the graft base approaches to flight.

For buffing, Allied Defense+Improved Combat Expertise can help quite a bit. I also like the Double Team feat. White Raven Tactics is also amazing.

For extra actions, you may want to mention Snowtiger Berserker.

For Debuffing, Boomerang Daze can be quite potent.

For healing, Iron Heart Surge seems essential.

For invisiblity, a good hide check is reasonably achievable. Darkstalker is helpful there.

For seeing stuff, the Anthropomorphic Whale (Blindsight 120') and Antenna Graft (Tremorsense 60') are handy.

You may appreciate the team mundane (https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?635794-Team-Mundane) builds.

I agree that Interplanar transport is the least solvable problem for mundanes.



An alternative in many situations is simply hiding and sneaking as they are stupid and only have Spot+11. If you absolutely have to fight, then a running (or flying) battle with ranged weapons works as well since the death gaze is 30' and they only move 20'.

Thnx, I'll update the guide when I port it over to GitP. As for the Bodaks, having a fort save of 1d20 +14 (or better) and a way to reroll saves also goes a long way. That 1/400 chance sucks if it happens, but there's resurrection and the like for that.

[RandomPeasant]

The thing about 'what ifs' is you can make up anything. What if the death cult instead had a red dragon with cold immunity and metabreath-shifted to breathe acid? What if the death cult instead happens to have a corrupted solar who uses Wish to move one party member to the paraelemental plane of ooze?

Indeed. What if? Perhaps you should prepare for a wide variety of possible threats, not just the one that seems most obvious. Yes, you should prepare more for the obvious threat. But the idea that just because you got information that says "this threat is obvious" that somehow means "these threats are ignorable" is just not true.


Looking at the actual in-game events that your character experiences and drawing conclusions from them is metagaming, yet using 'I read in this OOC book that this thing might exist, oh, and I won't even ask the DM if it exists because I don't trust that information to be reliable' is not? Yeah no, that's completely backwards.

The metagaming is the assumption that, just because you experienced a thing that worked one way, all future things must work that way. Yes, you fought an enemy that didn't have some mind magic. The idea that's strong evidence no enemies will have mind magic is, again, just not true. Plenty of enemies don't have mind magic. You could trivially have all your encounters as a 7th level character involve no Will saves and then fight a Mind Flayer the second you turned 8th level, and that would not be weird at all. But you would have use believe that, as a character on the cusp of 8th level, it would be "metagaming" to give any consideration to your Will save.


The trick is to use your readied/immediate action after they move, but before they attack, and to move yourself 90 degrees to the side, and out of their reach, meaning they cant just continue their charge to attack you, unless they have some ability that lets them zigzag their charge.

So if we assume that A) you can act during someone's action and B) moving during a charge stops the charge even if there was a valid charge to your new position and C) the target's reach is less than 10ft, then yes Abrupt Jaunt stops a charge.


I believe this is supported by the shadow mystery that is basically abrupt jaunt at will for 1 round/level that states that if you use it yo avoid an attack, the attack still has a 50% chance to land, so immediate actions must be usable after an action has been declared, but before they have been resolved,

Isn't that worse for you? If you have to use Abrupt Jaunt after an action has been declared, but before it has been resolved, then the Ubercharger can just charge to your new position instead of your old one. You have to be able to act very specifically during another action, not just after it's been declared.


However, the übercharger makes it more obvious when the GM is being a ****, and building something specifically to counter a character. Making it hard for the GM to hide that behavior is good for the health of the hobby.

Yeah, it makes that obvious because the alternative is a character that just ends every fight instantly. That's bad and we don't want that. I agree that you could have characters narrower than the Wizard, but I think something that's, like, Beguiler-level narrow is just fine. It's pretty obvious when every enemy shows up with mind blank and true seeing, but even if that happens you still have some (though much more limited) options, and the ability to get more without just playing a different class.


give extra turns with WRT

WRT is very nice. But it's still in-combat utility, and pretty skewed towards offense. It is, in some sense, polite to have it instead of maneuvers that just make you better, but it's not really the same thing as bringing teleport or death ward to the table. As an Ubercharger, you should have WRT because the way that ToB dipping works makes it close to free, but you'd still pull your weight in basically the same situations without it.


It takes more effort as a martial, but that's common knowledge for this edtion.

It compromises your build. You do not have room to be a Jaunter without significantly damaging your Ubercharging. A Cleric gets raise dead and plane shift for literal nothing.


If you are arguing whether to take the Ring to Gondor or Mordor or Erebor, being the only guy with the magic bus definitionally goes a long way towards pushing your character's choices.

This dynamic is big in another direction too. If you're the only character with an ability that advances the plot, you never get to have any creativity in how that ability is applied. If the party has wind walk and shadow jaunt and teleport, there are conceivably situations where "we need to travel a long distance" might be resolved by something other than "Wizard casts teleport". But if the only option is "Wizard casts teleport", then that's what you do, even if there are other tools that would've been better if you had them (there is, incidentally, a criticism of teleport here that I think is fairly compelling but that no one makes because they're all screaming "game breaker" -- it is such a generally-useful piece of travel magic and available so early that it crowds out other ones and makes choices more contrived.


A 50 charge item is half the cost of an unlimited use item. Ring of the Ram is priced for a 9 × 5 × 1800 ÷ (5 ÷ 1) ÷ 2 priced item. You can do the same thing with teleport because it's the same spell level.

A ring of the ram doesn't actually cast telekinesis. I mean, think the implication of what you're saying here through: are you really supposed to be able to buy a 50-charge item of a 5th level spell for less than a 50-charge wand of a 4th level spell? You think that's how the rules work?

[King of Nowhere]

I don't know if martials/casters is the issue here.

First, you can get a great deal of the things you describe from race, feats, prestige classes. See this nice overview: https://minmaxforum.com/index.php?topic=11381 (shameless self plug).

Second, you don't need all those per se. Most characters don't have all those things available at the same time, not even at that level. The party should be able to deal with threats, but every character needing death ward, flying, true sight, teleport - just no.

Third: if you think your char does need as many options as possible, why on earth go for a +5 weapon, let a lone a double +5? Just spend your cash on items that give options, and you'lll have more options! (sounds almost too simple to be truth...)

ok, we spent the last 4 pages dancing around this but:
1) I am not asking for advice about my character
2) I, as character, do not need to be prepared for everything - though wanting to be as prepared as reasonably possible is a healty mindset for any veteran adventurer
3) I, as player, do not need to be immune to everything, or to play at high power, or to always win to have fun.

I was just remarking how playing a few high power, high wealth campaigns got me in a mindset that is very different from how many table plays. And that it's incredible how easy it would be for a prepared caster to screw me up, which is what so many threads on optimization argue - and I never understood before, as my experience was that a martial could always use a pile of gold to cover most of its weaknesses and limitations.


Eh, that’s not exactly right.

At the most basic level, we’re looking at the equivalent of “X damage that works against 80% of opponents, vs 80% of X damage that works on all opponents”. I think you’d be hard pressed to argue that consistency is bad for the health of the game.


no, they are two entirely different things, for a variety of reasons.
1) everyone has a fortitude save. Most people don't have immediate actions or interrupts. SO everyone has a chance to defend against a SoD, most people don't have a chance to defend against an ubercharger.
2) a SoD is a high risk, high reward strategy. if it succeeds, it kills. if it fails, it does nothing - or negligible damage. picking one in place of a different spell is a conscious tactical decision with pros and cons. And ubercharger only has one option; it's not a strategic choice, really.
3) consistency IS bad for the game. That's why you roll a dice instead of always taking 10.
I'm sure I could come up with more arguments if I think some more about it.
basically, you are trying to highlight the one thing ubercharging and SoD have in common ignoring all the differences.
But there are even better arguments to be made after


So, instead, it’s a question of whether the builds are balanced. And, sure, an unbalanced build is bad for the health of a game that cares overmuch about balance. Shrug. That’s user error. And making that obvious is good for the health of the hobby.
However, the übercharger makes it more obvious when the GM is being a ****, and building something specifically to counter a character.

So, you clearly do not care about competitive fights. You frequently describe your table as not caring for balance and competitive fights. here you say that not letting the character win a fight in one round is bad dming.
You express clear disdain for the concept of balance and the competitive fighting that comes from it, you basically dismiss the whole concept of balance as badwrongfun - don't try to deny it, you explicitly say that anyone who cares about an unbalanced build cares "overmuch" about balance.

is that even an argument? this is like some people are arguing which flavor of ice cream they prefer, and you come and say "it doesn't matter the flavor. ice cream sucks anyway, and you should all be ashamed for liking it"

I, for once, would appreciate if you would refrain from belittling other people's preferences.

P.S. I can tell you that if my character can kill any enemy in one round, I expect a good dm to nerf me or to build enemies to fight against me. once my pc is high level with some renown, I expect my enemies to know me and try to adapt their tactics to me in any case, because it makes sense that they would. if I am this walking god that can cruise through every fight without being challenged, it's boring. Worse, if I am this walking god and everything else cannot compete, I can't get involved in the story or the world; why would I? everything else is inconsequential. Even if I could ignore that and get involved, unless I was explicitly introduced as a demigod or something having that much power would strain my suspension of disbelief to the breaking point.

[noob]

A 50 charge item is half the cost of an unlimited use item. Ring of the Ram is priced for a 9 × 5 × 1800 ÷ (5 ÷ 1) ÷ 2 priced item. You can do the same thing with teleport because it's the same spell level.

Arguably per day uses is not the same thing as unlimited uses: there is a limitation which is that you can only use it a bunch of timed per day.
Wait you are using a formulae 100% unrelated to the ring of the ram: the ring does not casts telekinesis and the calculation you made have a result different from the cost of the ring: with your calculation based on per day uses you get 8100 and the ring costs 8600 so not even the number matches out.

[NichG]

Indeed. What if? Perhaps you should prepare for a wide variety of possible threats, not just the one that seems most obvious. Yes, you should prepare more for the obvious threat. But the idea that just because you got information that says "this threat is obvious" that somehow means "these threats are ignorable" is just not true.

The metagaming is the assumption that, just because you experienced a thing that worked one way, all future things must work that way. Yes, you fought an enemy that didn't have some mind magic. The idea that's strong evidence no enemies will have mind magic is, again, just not true. Plenty of enemies don't have mind magic. You could trivially have all your encounters as a 7th level character involve no Will saves and then fight a Mind Flayer the second you turned 8th level, and that would not be weird at all. But you would have use believe that, as a character on the cusp of 8th level, it would be "metagaming" to give any consideration to your Will save.


No, I'd consider it metagaming to prioritize your out of game prior knowledge about D&D over in-character sources of knowledge. The problem isn't so much in thinking about mental attacks before you've encountered one, its the point at which you said 'because my character has this Knowledge skill, I would know that mental attacks are a thing' but then said that oh, you wouldn't actually roll that skill and if the DM told you that with that skill check mental attacks aren't a thing, you wouldn't believe them.

You want to use game mechanics to justify knowing something but then ignore those game mechanics when following them leads to information that disagrees with your out of character beliefs? That's metagaming.

And to be clear, my point about metagaming here isn't 'oh, metagaming is cheat, you're a bad person'. It's that metagaming in this way is self-defeating because DMs can and do change things around. It's a bog standard move to refluff existing monster stat blocks, use custom monsters, change the frequency of game elements in a world to taste, change up the backstories of how and why things are the way they are and how they work, etc. If you bring your external assumptions e.g. into my game and try to protect yourself as you might have been trained to do in someone else's game, you are going to end up throwing away something like 2/3rds of your wealth - as the OP of this thread demonstrated! - that you could have kept if you just asked 'Hey, what does my character know about mental threats in this setting? I've got a +20 Knowledge(Arcana) check.'

If you're not going to ask, or listen to what people tell you, why even invest in Knowledge skills at all? If engaging with the rules that let you check to see what your character knows isn't the point of bringing up a character with a specific Knowledge skill and score, then why bring it up at all? Is it just 'I can say a big number and that makes my argument sound more like it's grounded in something?'. I've played a character with skills breaking the hundreds, and he would say that demons as a category of being have the ability to take two actions per round and can join someone else's Time Stop. And in that campaign, that was true and correct. Do I assume that demons will work that way when I join someone else's game? No. Do I assume demons will work according to the Monster Manual when I join someone else's game? Not without asking how demons work in that game.

And that's not because I don't want to be accused of cheating, its because I know that sort of thing varies. And so I know that I know nothing without actually getting evidence from that DM and from that game, and for my character to posture confidently about their knowledge and expertise without actually verifying that its correct I would in fact be playing the idiot and not the seasoned adventurer.

[Quertus]

no, they are two entirely different things, for a variety of reasons.
1) everyone has a fortitude save. Most people don't have immediate actions or interrupts. SO everyone has a chance to defend against a SoD, most people don't have a chance to defend against an ubercharger.
2) a SoD is a high risk, high reward strategy. if it succeeds, it kills. if it fails, it does nothing - or negligible damage. picking one in place of a different spell is a conscious tactical decision with pros and cons. And ubercharger only has one option; it's not a strategic choice, really.
3) consistency IS bad for the game. That's why you roll a dice instead of always taking 10.
I'm sure I could come up with more arguments if I think some more about it.
basically, you are trying to highlight the one thing ubercharging and SoD have in common ignoring all the differences.
But there are even better arguments to be made after

So, you clearly do not care about competitive fights. You frequently describe your table as not caring for balance and competitive fights. here you say that not letting the character win a fight in one round is bad dming.
You express clear disdain for the concept of balance and the competitive fighting that comes from it, you basically dismiss the whole concept of balance as badwrongfun - don't try to deny it, you explicitly say that anyone who cares about an unbalanced build cares "overmuch" about balance.

is that even an argument? this is like some people are arguing which flavor of ice cream they prefer, and you come and say "it doesn't matter the flavor. ice cream sucks anyway, and you should all be ashamed for liking it"

I, for once, would appreciate if you would refrain from belittling other people's preferences.

P.S. I can tell you that if my character can kill any enemy in one round, I expect a good dm to nerf me or to build enemies to fight against me. once my pc is high level with some renown, I expect my enemies to know me and try to adapt their tactics to me in any case, because it makes sense that they would. if I am this walking god that can cruise through every fight without being challenged, it's boring. Worse, if I am this walking god and everything else cannot compete, I can't get involved in the story or the world; why would I? everything else is inconsequential. Even if I could ignore that and get involved, unless I was explicitly introduced as a demigod or something having that much power would strain my suspension of disbelief to the breaking point.

That has so little to do with the points I was making, it's almost like you made a cut and paste error, and were actually replying to a different post. Let's try again.

Either the character is balanced, or they aren't. If they aren't balanced, that's the problem that needs to be solved. If they are balanced, then how are they bad for the health of the game?

Your answer to that question seem to be (I think) "people can and commonly do optimize their defenses against one but not the other", which is... kinda a funny argument for someone whose opening post indicated a strong desire to cover lots of bases with defenses (albeit in the abstract "defense against being unable to participate" vein). However, it is IMO a really valid argument to make wrt what defenses monsters have. Or would be if it didn't just circle back around to the point of the post you were replying to, that either the math says it's balanced, at Y% chance of Z damage, or it's not.

For, you know, those who care about balance, chocolate, strawberry, or whatever other preference is relevant in this case, that makes people mistake ubercharger as inherently bad for the health of the game, because they only see their preference as valid.

As an aside, maybe your tables don't make use of "take 10", but mine tend to strongly favor speed, so they make great use of "take 10" and "take 20" to avoid bogging the game down with unnecessary rolls.

[icefractal]

If you bring your external assumptions e.g. into my game and try to protect yourself as you might have been trained to do in someone else's game, you are going to end up throwing away something like 2/3rds of your wealth - as the OP of this thread demonstrated! - that you could have kept if you just asked 'Hey, what does my character know about mental threats in this setting? I've got a +20 Knowledge(Arcana) check.' While that makes sense, IME that's not the kind of question players usually ask, or that the GM is usually ready to answer.

Like when I've asked similar things, I've gotten a variety of answers (paraphrased to be about mind control):
* "Yes, mind control exists, but it's not common. Will you run into it? You'll just have to find out."
* "[main antagonist group] prefers more direct methods, but they do hire mercenaries with their own styles ..."
* "Stop trying to find out challenges in advance, just play your character"
* "You've never heard of that being used" (but then later, it was used; turns out he just meant that it hadn't happened directly to our characters yet and how would we know anything else?)
* "Only really major foes would have it" (useful info, but really major fights are when I'd least like to be taken over, so still something to protect against)

And heck, if someone asked me that same question I'd have a not entirely helpful response. I tend not to use hard mind-control effects, but it's not like I definitively would never do so. If they asked about a specific group in the setting (and had the check to back it up) then I'd give them an answer for that group and stick to it, but "would anyone ever use mind control on us?" is almost always going to be "not often but potentially yes" because I run things at least semi-sandbox and I can't predict who the PCs will end up tangling with.

[NichG]

While that makes sense, IME that's not the kind of question players usually ask, or that the GM is usually ready to answer.

"We don't usually ask this question that could save us lots of money, so I guess we shouldn't ask it going forward..." seems like a really weird position to take though.

Like if the response I'd been getting from RandomPeasant was 'I haven't tried that, I don't think it will work but next time I'll give it a shot and say what happens' or 'I did try that but my particular DM stonewalled me' then that would at least make sense to me as a response. But "People don't usually do that, so I won't" or "I just assume the DM won't tell me or will lie to me so I don't ask and just go forward with my own assumptions" is self-defeating. You pretty much can't lose anything by asking, so insisting so strongly on not asking is like a 'I don't think I'd like the answer' vibe.

Edit: Also it bears mentioning that if this forum prior is really so accurate, then a lot of the time the honest response from the DM should be 'yeah you might have to deal with that' or 'if its in the book, it could happen' or 'if you can use it, NPCs can use it' or 'mindflayers are a thing'. Or even stuff like 'I run a challenging game' that does answer the question without answering it. And again you don't lose anything for having asked, and you can confirm that the resources you're sinking are indeed potentially justified.


And heck, if someone asked me that same question I'd have a not entirely helpful response. I tend not to use hard mind-control effects, but it's not like I definitively would never do so. If they asked about a specific group in the setting (and had the check to back it up) then I'd give them an answer for that group and stick to it, but "would anyone ever use mind control on us?" is almost always going to be "not often but potentially yes" because I run things at least semi-sandbox and I can't predict who the PCs will end up tangling with.

I mean, I gave my response if I were asked that. And at least in the case of my game, someone who didn't ask would be screwed over twice: one because they'd spend resources they didn't need to, the other because the methods of 'control' that things are likely to use in my games would not be blocked by the usual things you would spend resources on in order to protect against loss of agency. Like, Protection from Evil and Mind Blank and the like will not guard you against entering into a binding contract with a fae because thats a karmic effect in my campaigns not a mind control effect. So if you don't ask, its your own fault when you get tripped up with it. But at the same time I want to telegraph these things so that the players think about how to approach them, so its not in my benefit to hide this stuff or try to spring a 'gotcha' - but if a player staunchly ignores what I'm trying to communicate about 'this world' and instead goes based on some forum theorycraft or 'how my previous DM did things', well, its absolutely going to backfire on them.

Even if you aren't doing exotic homebrew stuff, you can say for example "There's a mercenary's guide of major known threats within the 100 mile area, and none of them have 'Mind Control' in their repertoire; but if you go more than 100 miles from here, check again."

[Crake]

So if we assume that A) you can act during someone's action and B) moving during a charge stops the charge even if there was a valid charge to your new position and C) the target's reach is less than 10ft, then yes Abrupt Jaunt stops a charge.



Isn't that worse for you? If you have to use Abrupt Jaunt after an action has been declared, but before it has been resolved, then the Ubercharger can just charge to your new position instead of your old one. You have to be able to act very specifically during another action, not just after it's been declared.


A charge is made up of two components, movement, and an attack. You jaunt after the movement, but before the attack. They dont reset back to their original position after you jaunt just because they no longer have a valid target to attack.

The second part was more specifically for regular attacks, so if someones in melee with you, i believe you can jaunt after their swing starts, but before it lands, effectively avoiding the attack and wasting the action. Or for a ranged attack, after the arrow is fired, but before it hits.


no, they are two entirely different things, for a variety of reasons.
1) everyone has a fortitude save. Most people don't have immediate actions or interrupts. SO everyone has a chance to defend against a SoD, most people don't have a chance to defend against an ubercharger.

The ubercharger equivalent to a fort save is AC. Everyone has AC. Immediate actions were the functional equivalent to death ward in this circumstance. Not everyone has death ward either.

Funnily enough, the only way to have a no-roll, just die effect is through the use of magic. A destruction cleric dweomerkeeper casting a DMM irresistible Implosion as a supernatural spell would have no save, no SR, and not be a death effect, so no creature could resist it, nor would have immunity to it, nor could it be dispelled or countered in any way, short of being in an antimagic field (Or being incorporeal, since implosion can only target corporeal creatures)

[Mechalich]

is almost always going to be "not often but potentially yes" because I run things at least semi-sandbox and I can't predict who the PCs will end up tangling with.

This is important. Traditional D&D includes running dungeons with a wide range of enemies and even random encounters drawn from large tables. Even when focusing on a specific enemy type like 'undead' or 'demons' there's sufficient ingroup variety to launch basically every attack type at the characters. Played straight, high-level D&D demands defenses against everything because the pool of potential antagonists has access to everything even if the frequency is highly variable.

Casters can deal with many of the less-likely scenarios simply by running away and then tweaking their spell loadout. Martials cannot doing anything similar and must either invest in wealth by level or adopt increasingly extreme race/class/feat setups that often severely compromise character concept. That's a big one actually. A player who wants to be a wizard can pick basically any race that doesn't have a negative Int modifier and can even afford to fool around a bit with funky prestige classes or anomalous feat choices and still be fine even in a highly optimized game so long as they pick good spells and items. A player who wants to be a fighter is shackled to a spreadsheet dictating every possible choice just to keep pace. I mean, even if uberchargers or uberarchers or some of the other highly specialized builds are allowed, they are incredibly narrow lanes to be trapped in compared to the freedom allowed the casters.

[Crake]

This is important. Traditional D&D includes …

I think this highly depends on your definition of “traditional” dnd. If you mean ACTUAL traditional dnd, where its basically randomly generated dungeons and monsters, then yeah. But if by traditional, you mean, in a traditional world, then not necessarily. If you’re playing a campaign, not a dungeon, then you might not actually ever go into a “traditional” dungeon in the first place. You may also never fight traditional monsters, instead mostly fighting evil NPCs, and said NPCs may fit into a narrow demographic, depending on the organizations involved.

So honestly, traditional is so poorly defined for dnd, that I’m not sure anyones played a traditional dnd game since 1e.

All that aside though, you dont need to convince anyone that martials have it more difficult than casters, but the whole point is that, having a limited budget for defenses isnt what sets the two apart, because casters also have to pay for defenses.

[Anthrowhale]

Funnily enough, the only way to have a no-roll, just die effect is through the use of magic. A destruction cleric dweomerkeeper casting a DMM irresistible Implosion as a supernatural spell would have no save, no SR, and not be a death effect, so no creature could resist it, nor would have immunity to it, nor could it be dispelled or countered in any way, short of being in an antimagic field (Or being incorporeal, since implosion can only target corporeal creatures)

Not disagreeing with the thesis, but alternate means exist? Surge of Fortune+Sense Weakness+Vorpal Weapon or Supernatural Holy Word with level jacking.

[Crake]

Not disagreeing with the thesis, but alternate means exist? Surge of Fortune+Sense Weakness+Vorpal Weapon or Supernatural Holy Word with level jacking.

Sorry, I didnt mean to imply that THAT was the only way, but rather that through MAGIC was the only way. Your examples further demonstrate that by being through magic.

If martials had a method of guaranteeing a hit, then a 1d2 crusader could also maybe qualify, though there are ways around infinite damage, and the vorpal effect can be ignored by not being vulnerable to decapitation, while supernatural holy word can be avoided by tricking it into thinking you’re good (usually with the good subtype via polymorph). So those all still have some kind of defense.

That said, implosion also has a defense by just casting gaseous form, so i guess i proved myself wrong

[Anthrowhale]

while supernatural holy word can be avoided by tricking it into thinking you’re good (usually with the good subtype via polymorph).

The standard response to alignment shenanigans is to switch between {Holy Word, Word of Chaos, Blasphemy, Dictum, Word of Balance}. You can't be immune to all 5 holy word spells.

However, there are ways to achieve immunity to sonic effects and of course AMF disrupts lots of magical approaches.

Separately, I believe Irresistible spell was errataed as "only" being +10 to the save although people fight over whether it's legit due to not being in WoTC approved book but by the same org. Regardless of which side of that argument you fall on, the published errata is a pretty strong expression of RAI.

[Quertus]

Casters can deal with many of the less-likely scenarios simply by running away and then tweaking their spell loadout. Martials cannot doing anything similar and must either invest in wealth by level or adopt increasingly extreme race/class/feat setups that often severely compromise character concept. That's a big one actually. A player who wants to be a wizard can pick basically any race that doesn't have a negative Int modifier and can even afford to fool around a bit with funky prestige classes or anomalous feat choices and still be fine even in a highly optimized game so long as they pick good spells and items. A player who wants to be a fighter is shackled to a spreadsheet dictating every possible choice just to keep pace. I mean, even if uberchargers or uberarchers or some of the other highly specialized builds are allowed, they are incredibly narrow lanes to be trapped in compared to the freedom allowed the casters.

Hmmm... on "compromising character concept"... 1) what about the concept of "minotaur who hits things with an axe" prohibits them from buying a Winged Cloak, Ring of Protection from Law, or Potion of Water Breathing; 2) what if your concept is something like "mind control Sorceress", and choosing to bravely run away doesn't give you any additional options for dealing with the mindless foes you face?

It feels to me that, if your concept is "guy who can't handle these problems", then handling these problems is outside your character concept. So why would you choose such a concept, then complain if your concept is correctly realized as being unable to do anything?

[noob]

The standard response to alignment shenanigans is to switch between {Holy Word, Word of Chaos, Blasphemy, Dictum, Word of Balance}. You can't be immune to all 5 holy word spells.

However, there are ways to achieve immunity to sonic effects and of course AMF disrupts lots of magical approaches.

Separately, I believe Irresistible spell was errataed as "only" being +10 to the save although people fight over whether it's legit due to not being in WoTC approved book but by the same org. Regardless of which side of that argument you fall on, the published errata is a pretty strong expression of RAI.

You can be immune to all the word spells with horizon walker(it is an oddly specific immunity granted by that prc which is overall very good as a core prc if you are going through a non full caster entry)

[Anthrowhale]

You can be immune to all the word spells with horizon walker(it is an oddly specific immunity granted by that prc which is overall very good as a core prc if you are going through a non full caster entry)

Oh, that's nice.

[Seward]

Just a meta-comment to this whole thread.

A lot of effects never come up in many campaigns not because the bad guys don't have them but because they don't get the chance to use them because they're too dead/crowd controlled/out of range/target the wrong guy/get spell interrupted/have targeting blocked/etc.

Action economy saves more characters than trying to anticipate every problem.

That said, organized play taught adventurers in Living Greyhawk or Pathfinder Society to expect these kinds of problems, no matter what region or adventure path.

Always have some way to stop your character from bleeding out (usually a humble potion of clw outside extradimensional spaces that a teammate can use to save you) available so others can help.

Always buy your own wand of CLW to contribute to out of combat healing.

If you fight primarily in melee and don't fly, get a potion of fly by about level 6. It isn't a terrible idea to have a single decent healing potion or item to get yourself out of trouble on your own actions, or failing that something like an invisibility potion to get out of a tight spot. In lower levels just carry some javelins and splash weapon to make up the gap and to help with swarms. Oil+torches is a good investment at level 1 for a variety of problems, a tradition going back at least as far to the games I played as a preteen back in the late 70s, and still works in baby levels in 3.5. By level 6 though iterative attacks make ranged attacks fairly pointless for people who aren't actually archers, you do so little damage even with a mw/str adjusted bow it's hardly worth doing compared to your primary melee attacks, so get yourself into action even if it costs some gp and one phase buffing.

Have a plan for an invisible opponent. What that plan is depends on your party role, but somebody you can't sense comes up often enough that you don't want to be in a party where nobody has a plan. I've seen this range from "have a well trained pet/familiar/etc with scent to find the square" to see invis items to just really high hearing to various spells either in head or on items, and having a lot of attacks also helps if somebody else pinpoints it and you're chasing 50% miss chances. Very commonly somebody with a level or 3 in a spellcasting class will just carry a scroll of it simply to pinpoint for those who have area effects or lots of attacks to just know the square they're in.

If you are a martial, have a plan for each type of DR, starting at level 1, where any starting character can manage slashing, piercing, blunt, silver (on ammo or a light weapon) and cold iron. Potion of bless weapon can bridge the gap on Dr/good and magic for a melee, magic weapon and oil of align weapon is a bit more for an archer, till you can buy appropriate weapons by L6-10 depending on what you seem to be fighting. Also a nonlethal weapon option like a sap or blunt arrows tends to be helpful. For people who rely on few, large hits, this "plan" can be "reliably hit with power attack+2h weapon in my best weapon" in mid levels or higher, but in low levels you really need the basic gear. (skeletons, zombies, lycantrhopes, fey, even vampire spawn are fairly common low level enemies, as are a number of things including some spells that can be cast that require magic to penetrate, and golems plus stoneskin on casters start getting traction after level 5)

Casters, especially spont casters need a spell or three to cope with magic immune/highly resistant enemies on tap on any given day. Pick ones that are also useful on less exotic enemies. Use scrolls in baby levels till you can learn them for real (or have slots for them). Buffing is an especially easy way to contribute when enemies are immune to your favored spells.

Once blasphemy is a thing, silence scrolls or oil are also a common purchase. Martials who trip or grapple often also pick that up in lower levels if not carried by local spellcasters, because it can shut down a number of threats from primary casters if the person restricting their movement also ends verbal components.

====
Second meta comment on a more later post....

the most common cause of "no roll deaths" in highish level play (tier 14-16ish) that I've encountered is just having a martial in full attack range. Yes, they roll dice, but they'll hit reliably enough and often enough to kill damn near anything in one round. A lot of rocket tag tactics are "get the martial in position to end the biggest threat before it can act (or act again)." Most of the gripes about playing a martial in this range isn't their average combat contribution, dead is a very good thing to be able to inflict on enemies, it's how difficult many find to contribute in out of combat utility, or switch to a support role when their offense isn't effective vs a particular opponent or situation.

[Crake]

If you are a martial, have a plan for each type of DR, starting at level 1, where any starting character can manage slashing, piercing, blunt, silver (on ammo or a light weapon) and cold iron. Potion of bless weapon can bridge the gap on Dr/good and magic for a melee, magic weapon and oil of align weapon is a bit more for an archer, till you can buy appropriate weapons by L6-10 depending on what you seem to be fighting. Also a nonlethal weapon option like a sap or blunt arrows tends to be helpful.

I like the way pathfinder handles this issue, by just having different levels of +X bypass more and more kinds of DR.

[Seward]

I like the way pathfinder handles this issue, by just having different levels of +X bypass more and more kinds of DR.

Agreed. It brought back an old 3.0 idea while explicitly removing the exploit of using a spell to get to the +whatever (those spells exist, but don't penetrate any DR but magic). Pathfinder has a number of small hacks that fix some annoying issues with 3.5, and that's one of them. If you don't like the golfbag of weapons, you can fix the problem by the teens with sufficient WBL investment, although characters find many other solutions than the "Sword of smite anything" my halfling tank built in her day.

[Gnaeus]

All that aside though, you dont need to convince anyone that martials have it more difficult than casters, but the whole point is that, having a limited budget for defenses isnt what sets the two apart, because casters also have to pay for defenses.

And again, that is true but misleading. Yes, everyone is paying for defenses. But if you have more money because you don't need to spend 50% of WBL on weapons, armor, and other critical for your numbers gear, and if you have more money because some of your gear is crafted at 50% cost, and you dont feel a need to have an anti-invisibility defense because you carry see invisibility and that's a good enough, and you have scrolls of situational defense spells you don't expect to need often, you will be able to cover what defenses remain with a much lower total character wealth. These things are all interchangeable except the casters have less fixed expenses, cheaper options and less ground to cover

You could honestly develop a formula for how much WBL each level in each class is worth. As in, Monk 4, +1 to 3 saves, like a slotless +1 save item, slow fall, worse than 2k ring, ki strike useless once we have a +1 enhancement bonus which we need anyway. It would be hard to build in a number for the WBL equivalent of the 11th level of Wizard. But it would very, very obviously be much higher than the WBL equivalent of the 11th level of fighter.

[Anthrowhale]

Agreed. It brought back an old 3.0 idea while explicitly removing the exploit of using a spell to get to the +whatever (those spells exist, but don't penetrate any DR but magic). Pathfinder has a number of small hacks that fix some annoying issues with 3.5, and that's one of them. If you don't like the golfbag of weapons, you can fix the problem by the teens with sufficient WBL investment, although characters find many other solutions than the "Sword of smite anything" my halfling tank built in her day.

Minor side note: Archers are notably good at avoiding the golfbag by using a panoply of arrows paired with enchantments on bows to bypass most DRs.

[Crake]

And again, that is true but misleading. Yes, everyone is paying for defenses. But if you have more money because you don't need to spend 50% of WBL on weapons, armor, and other critical for your numbers gear, and if you have more money because some of your gear is crafted at 50% cost, and you dont feel a need to have an anti-invisibility defense because you carry see invisibility and that's a good enough, and you have scrolls of situational defense spells you don't expect to need often, you will be able to cover what defenses remain with a much lower total character wealth. These things are all interchangeable except the casters have less fixed expenses, cheaper options and less ground to cover

You could honestly develop a formula for how much WBL each level in each class is worth. As in, Monk 4, +1 to 3 saves, like a slotless +1 save item, slow fall, worse than 2k ring, ki strike useless once we have a +1 enhancement bonus which we need anyway. It would be hard to build in a number for the WBL equivalent of the 11th level of Wizard. But it would very, very obviously be much higher than the WBL equivalent of the 11th level of fighter.

A lot of that goes to the martials as well though. Instead of an item of permanent see invis, they too could carry a potion, or wear a scout’s headband. The issue the OP was having was that, if they had to spend an action to activate the defense, in their mind, it was already too late, in which case, the same issue applies to the caster.

And if the caster is able to craft items for themselves at 50%, it stands to reason they could do the same for their party.

The only part of your argument that was reasonably relative was that martials need to spend money on offensive items too, but then do you mean to say that casters dont spend money on things like metamagic rods to empower their spells? And for AC, pretty much every high level caster I know rocks halfweight sectioned plate with 0 acp and 0 asf, allowing them to function completely normally while still benefitting from fullplate AC. Casters need AC too, regular attacks are the most common form of attack and if you just completely forgo it, you’re just making yourself into deadweight.

[Gnaeus]

A lot of that goes to the martials as well though. Instead of an item of permanent see invis, they too could carry a potion, or wear a scout’s headband. The issue the OP was having was that, if they had to spend an action to activate the defense, in their mind, it was already too late, in which case, the same issue applies to the caster.

And if the caster is able to craft items for themselves at 50%, it stands to reason they could do the same for their party.

The only part of your argument that was reasonably relative was that martials need to spend money on offensive items too, but then do you mean to say that casters dont spend money on things like metamagic rods to empower their spells? And for AC, pretty much every high level caster I know rocks halfweight sectioned plate with 0 acp and 0 asf, allowing them to function completely normally while still benefitting from fullplate AC. Casters need AC too, regular attacks are the most common form of attack and if you just completely forgo it, you’re just making yourself into deadweight.

OK, but the potion is definitionally more expensive than the scroll. You will presumably have permanent defenses for common threats, less permanent defenses for less common ones. Most defenses can be acquired in either form and you will focus more on the ones that are most important to you.

1. Could doesn't mean does. The caster could prioritize himself based on limited time. He could refuse to spend exp for other players. He could demand anywhere between 50% and 100%. If my friend the professional artist paints a painting for me, I don't demand that I pay him at his cost for paint. It is not an automatic thing that every PC places the desires of other PCs over their own interests. I played in a game one time where I charged 100% for magic items, and spent the other 50% on gear which I later gifted them which prevented me from having to carry buffs for them I didn't want to bother memorizing. Thats entirely up to the players involved, and it isn't like the fighter has anything useful to bargain with (as in, the cleric tells the wizard he will team craft his wondrous items if the wizard helps with wands and scrolls.)
2. Don't worry, Mr. Fighter. I will give you the same 50% discount on all your scroll and rod needs I give myself. Oh, you need arms/armor? I don't have that one. Try the shop.

There is a massive difference between a caster without a bunch of metamagic rods and a fighter without a level appropriate weapon. Metamagic rods are nice, I rarely have more than one or two. I have never seen a caster in a single game who has that armor. It is absolutely not a requirement for a caster. Certainly not in the way AC is for a fighter. Most casters I see rely on some form of miss chances, ablative defenses (temp hp), contingencies, bodyguards, etc, and if they choose to make AC a relevant defense, they do it with polymorph school for free. Theres a bunch of stuff with like +18 NA that you can stack mage armor on top of, with a quickened shield, and spend 0 for a better AC than a fighter who spent 50kgp.

[Crake]

OK, but the potion is definitionally more expensive than the scroll. You will presumably have permanent defenses for common threats, less permanent defenses for less common ones. Most defenses can be acquired in either form and you will focus more on the ones that are most important to you.

1. Could doesn't mean does. The caster could prioritize himself based on limited time. He could refuse to spend exp for other players. He could demand anywhere between 50% and 100%. If my friend the professional artist paints a painting for me, I don't demand that I pay him at his cost for paint. It is not an automatic thing that every PC places the desires of other PCs over their own interests. I played in a game one time where I charged 100% for magic items, and spent the other 50% on gear which I later gifted them which prevented me from having to carry buffs for them I didn't want to bother memorizing. Thats entirely up to the players involved, and it isn't like the fighter has anything useful to bargain with (as in, the cleric tells the wizard he will team craft his wondrous items if the wizard helps with wands and scrolls.)
2. Don't worry, Mr. Fighter. I will give you the same 50% discount on all your scroll and rod needs I give myself. Oh, you need arms/armor? I don't have that one. Try the shop.

There is a massive difference between a caster without a bunch of metamagic rods and a fighter without a level appropriate weapon. Metamagic rods are nice, I rarely have more than one or two. I have never seen a caster in a single game who has that armor. It is absolutely not a requirement for a caster. Certainly not in the way AC is for a fighter. Most casters I see rely on some form of miss chances, ablative defenses (temp hp), contingencies, bodyguards, etc, and if they choose to make AC a relevant defense, they do it with polymorph school for free. Theres a bunch of stuff with like +18 NA that you can stack mage armor on top of, with a quickened shield, and spend 0 for a better AC than a fighter who spent 50kgp.

Relying exclusively on dispellable buffs as your source of AC and protection seems like a recipie for disaster. Miss chance is negated by seeking arrows, and ablative defenses leave you still vulnerable to having your spellcasting interrupted.

You’re right in the end of course, it is marginally more expensive for martials, but I already agreed with you on that. What I disagree with, is the notion that THIS is the reason for caster supremacy. A caster’s true power comes from never having to engage in the combat in the first place. Who needs defenses when you’re fighting a proxy war, or building up a time-sped demiplane, or manipulating an entire kingdom from the shadows to achieve your own goals.

[Gnaeus]

Relying exclusively on dispellable buffs as your source of AC and protection seems like a recipie for disaster. Miss chance is negated by seeking arrows, and ablative defenses leave you still vulnerable to having your spellcasting interrupted.

You’re right in the end of course, it is marginally more expensive for martials, but I already agreed with you on that. What I disagree with, is the notion that THIS is the reason for caster supremacy. A caster’s true power comes from never having to engage in the combat in the first place. Who needs defenses when you’re fighting a proxy war, or building up a time-sped demiplane, or manipulating an entire kingdom from the shadows to achieve your own goals.

So, you need an expensive item I have never seen in play or heard about in case you get dispelled and then shot by a weapon I have almost never seen in play and have never felt threatened by. I know the discussion has talked a lot about defenses being campaign specific but that's really the clincher right there. I'm not saying I will never be shot by a seeking arrow, but if it hasn't happened in the last 20 years of play I'll probably eat the arrow should it ever come up. Then cast a quickened spell to block line of sight. Obviously your games are much different, but I find that the typical strategy of putting a buffed wizard behind a wall of meat shields tends to be more than adequate to make them the safest member of the party, with or without bothering with AC.

Again, YMMV. But cannot disagree more strongly. High level full sandbox play is the only place that matters, and again, that's not relevant to most games I have been in. It's kind of fun at campaign wrap up to say "and now I walk into the capital of X and kill or dominate the rulers who are defenseless against my T1 might". But I would call what you describe the least important bit of a wizards power. Not relevant at most optimization levels. Not relevant in at least half of campaigns. Not relevant for most of the level range. Not that casters aren't still way better out of combat in other scenarios. They have a lot of lower level tools. But generally things that can be copied with a decent UMD and $$$.

[icefractal]

Again, YMMV. But cannot disagree more strongly. High level full sandbox play is the only place that matters, and again, that's not relevant to most games I have been in. It's kind of fun at campaign wrap up to say "and now I walk into the capital of X and kill or dominate the rulers who are defenseless against my T1 might". But I would call what you describe the least important bit of a wizards power. Not relevant at most optimization levels. Not relevant in at least half of campaigns. Not relevant for most of the level range. Not that casters aren't still way better out of combat in other scenarios. They have a lot of lower level tools. But generally things that can be copied with a decent UMD and $$$.Fits with my experience as well. Like, I really do enjoy the strategic-scale abilities that many casters have. Fun for thought experiments, but also makes gaining levels feel more satisfying, knowing that now I could do nation-scale things (even if that never comes up on-screen). "I'm really good at killing people," just isn't the same.

But IME, it's few and far between that those kind of things come up in a campaign. Even most high-level campaigns I've played have had some kind of plot, and sidestepping that plot entirely would have been highly unwelcome. And usually the resolution does come down to "find the right people, defeat them in a fight and/or talk to them, do some McGuffin-driven actions, done". Heck, in a lot of cases even the practical utility casters provide toward that quest (divinations, teleportation, etc) is somewhat illusory, because the GM would have provided alternatives if needed.

[NichG]

For what it's worth, I tend to run stuff where that high level strategic stuff is actually necessary to engage with the plot, and I expect the party to be proactive about acquiring those abilities. That said there's usually lots of ways to get there other than having it be part of your list of class features. Last D&D-based campaign I ran, the party had a living ship with an upgrade system and various ship facilities they could develop as the ship grew - for e.g. mass production of alchemical products, item creation, long-range communication and spying, soul surgery, city-scale bombardment, etc. The party used combinations of the ship's facilities to cure a plague at one point, for example - not just curing individual people but making a counter-infection that would basically catch up with and wipe the plague out.

I would generally agree that the lack of having a contact surface with the setting other than by 'fighting stuff' is a fundamental design issue with the idea of a 'fighter' as a class, moreso than the difficulty of achieving a particular AC or DPR or whatever. Even saying that though, Fighter in particular, as a specific piece of class design, its just overall underwhelming, so it might not be the best reference/balance point to consider these finer distinctions. Even if I'm playing a pure martial, I probably wouldn't take more than one Fighter level - there are better ways to build those concepts, e.g. via Tome of Battle classes.

For example, would a Crusader struggle to contribute to strategic-level campaign direction impacting actions and decisions? Compared to someone who can cast Gate, sure. But that gap is smaller than the gap between a Crusader and a Fighter for example. And the homebrew to get a Crusader to T1 is a lot easier to write than the homebrew to get a Fighter to T1.

[Crake]

So, you need an expensive item I have never seen in play or heard about in case you get dispelled and then shot by a weapon I have almost never seen in play and have never felt threatened by. I know the discussion has talked a lot about defenses being campaign specific but that's really the clincher right there. I'm not saying I will never be shot by a seeking arrow, but if it hasn't happened in the last 20 years of play I'll probably eat the arrow should it ever come up. Then cast a quickened spell to block line of sight. Obviously your games are much different, but I find that the typical strategy of putting a buffed wizard behind a wall of meat shields tends to be more than adequate to make them the safest member of the party, with or without bothering with AC.

Again, YMMV. But cannot disagree more strongly. High level full sandbox play is the only place that matters, and again, that's not relevant to most games I have been in. It's kind of fun at campaign wrap up to say "and now I walk into the capital of X and kill or dominate the rulers who are defenseless against my T1 might". But I would call what you describe the least important bit of a wizards power. Not relevant at most optimization levels. Not relevant in at least half of campaigns. Not relevant for most of the level range. Not that casters aren't still way better out of combat in other scenarios. They have a lot of lower level tools. But generally things that can be copied with a decent UMD and $$$.

Considering precision damage requires no miss chance, im surprised you’ve never run into a seeking weapon before. Doubly so, if miss chance is such a common defense mechanic for casters in your games, seems like an obvious choice.

[Mechalich]

Considering precision damage requires no miss chance, im surprised you’ve never run into a seeking weapon before. Doubly so, if miss chance is such a common defense mechanic for casters in your games, seems like an obvious choice.

Campaigns wherein the GM deliberately counterplans against PC strategies by dumpster-diving through the sourcebooks to produce custom NPCs builds are rare. The general GM strategy to overpowered PCs is simply to up the CR on everything they encounter. As such, strategies that play well against all stock monsters/NPCs tend to have remarkably good staying power or are simply banned outright because the GM is not interested in playing the builds game against the players. As a general rule, most GM-types are far more interested in things like story, interesting NPCs, and amusing encounter designs than trying to puppeteer the system in highly efficient ways. This can be seen in the history of TTRPG publication, the actual designers, who are GM-types, are always the last to realize how broken some combination really is. At extreme levels this can result in a one-true build scenario that renders over 90% of a game's options completely pointless (this famously occurred in Exalted 2e, with the Turtle Perfect Defense combo).

D&D is nowhere near that bad, but it absolutely has abilities that render huge categories of encounters trivial. A famous example would be the Cloak of Mirroring in Baldur's Gate II, a single item which basically declares 'Beholders are now free XP' for the rest of the game once acquired. A live GM can react more effectively than a computer with pre-programmed encounters, but there's a considerable chance that they won't especially in cases where they have committed to running a specific scripted adventure.

[icefractal]

Campaigns wherein the GM deliberately counterplans against PC strategies by dumpster-diving through the sourcebooks to produce custom NPCs builds are rare. The general GM strategy to overpowered PCs is simply to up the CR on everything they encounter.Heck, I'm someone who likes optimizing and dumpster diving, and I still don't custom-build most foes. There are three reasons:

1) It's not time-efficient. While I like building characters, it takes me a while - longer than I want to spend on stats that will get used one time (or maybe zero if the PCs take an unexpected path).

2) What's the point of an arms-race? If foes scale with the PCs, then everyone's just spending extra effort for no benefit. I figure that people who make OP characters want to be OP, so as long as I can still think of interesting content for the campaign, I just let them be OP and encourage them to take on bigger challenges. And if I can't, that's the time to have an OOC discussion and change the characters or the campaign.

3) Spending a lot of effort on NPCs can be the start of the path toward railroading. Now that you've build this awesome foe, wouldn't it be a shame if the PCs didn't fight him? Or if the fight was too trivial? Just a little subconscious push toward not letting plans work if they'd interfere with the awesome fight you're imagining. Not saying every GM feels this way, but I've seen it more than once, and I'd rather avoid doing it myself.

So yeah, for my GMing style, knot-cutting abilities like teleportation aren't generally a problem, but being able to one-shot every stock foe usually is.

[Mordante]

Just a meta-comment to this whole thread.

A lot of effects never come up in many campaigns not because the bad guys don't have them but because they don't get the chance to use them because they're too dead/crowd controlled/out of range/target the wrong guy/get spell interrupted/have targeting blocked/etc.

Action economy saves more characters than trying to anticipate every problem.

That said, organized play taught adventurers in Living Greyhawk or Pathfinder Society to expect these kinds of problems, no matter what region or adventure path.

Always have some way to stop your character from bleeding out (usually a humble potion of clw outside extradimensional spaces that a teammate can use to save you) available so others can help.

Always buy your own wand of CLW to contribute to out of combat healing.

If you fight primarily in melee and don't fly, get a potion of fly by about level 6. It isn't a terrible idea to have a single decent healing potion or item to get yourself out of trouble on your own actions, or failing that something like an invisibility potion to get out of a tight spot. In lower levels just carry some javelins and splash weapon to make up the gap and to help with swarms. Oil+torches is a good investment at level 1 for a variety of problems, a tradition going back at least as far to the games I played as a preteen back in the late 70s, and still works in baby levels in 3.5. By level 6 though iterative attacks make ranged attacks fairly pointless for people who aren't actually archers, you do so little damage even with a mw/str adjusted bow it's hardly worth doing compared to your primary melee attacks, so get yourself into action even if it costs some gp and one phase buffing.

Have a plan for an invisible opponent. What that plan is depends on your party role, but somebody you can't sense comes up often enough that you don't want to be in a party where nobody has a plan. I've seen this range from "have a well trained pet/familiar/etc with scent to find the square" to see invis items to just really high hearing to various spells either in head or on items, and having a lot of attacks also helps if somebody else pinpoints it and you're chasing 50% miss chances. Very commonly somebody with a level or 3 in a spellcasting class will just carry a scroll of it simply to pinpoint for those who have area effects or lots of attacks to just know the square they're in.

If you are a martial, have a plan for each type of DR, starting at level 1, where any starting character can manage slashing, piercing, blunt, silver (on ammo or a light weapon) and cold iron. Potion of bless weapon can bridge the gap on Dr/good and magic for a melee, magic weapon and oil of align weapon is a bit more for an archer, till you can buy appropriate weapons by L6-10 depending on what you seem to be fighting. Also a nonlethal weapon option like a sap or blunt arrows tends to be helpful. For people who rely on few, large hits, this "plan" can be "reliably hit with power attack+2h weapon in my best weapon" in mid levels or higher, but in low levels you really need the basic gear. (skeletons, zombies, lycantrhopes, fey, even vampire spawn are fairly common low level enemies, as are a number of things including some spells that can be cast that require magic to penetrate, and golems plus stoneskin on casters start getting traction after level 5)

Casters, especially spont casters need a spell or three to cope with magic immune/highly resistant enemies on tap on any given day. Pick ones that are also useful on less exotic enemies. Use scrolls in baby levels till you can learn them for real (or have slots for them). Buffing is an especially easy way to contribute when enemies are immune to your favored spells.

Once blasphemy is a thing, silence scrolls or oil are also a common purchase. Martials who trip or grapple often also pick that up in lower levels if not carried by local spellcasters, because it can shut down a number of threats from primary casters if the person restricting their movement also ends verbal components.

====
Second meta comment on a more later post....

the most common cause of "no roll deaths" in highish level play (tier 14-16ish) that I've encountered is just having a martial in full attack range. Yes, they roll dice, but they'll hit reliably enough and often enough to kill damn near anything in one round. A lot of rocket tag tactics are "get the martial in position to end the biggest threat before it can act (or act again)." Most of the gripes about playing a martial in this range isn't their average combat contribution, dead is a very good thing to be able to inflict on enemies, it's how difficult many find to contribute in out of combat utility, or switch to a support role when their offense isn't effective vs a particular opponent or situation.

I completely disagree with most of this.

My level 16 or 17?? Fighter has no ability to fly, never caries any potions, wands or scrolls. I don't think anyone in the party ever uses scrolls.

To me it sounds like you turn a Role Playing Game into a combat game. How often does combat happen? Maybe every 3 to 4 sessions there is a combat? Even then combat can be resolved pretty quickly and doesn't always need to to be played out in detail. If the PCs have a half decent plan and work as a team then they should win. No need for endless die roles. Normally combat is over pretty quickly anyway. Right now one of my my groups is in a combat (the group I play a Fighters level 16?) our main job is to protect the big guns so that they can kill the enemy wizard. We're just the hired helps.

[noob]

I completely disagree with most of this.

My level 16 or 17?? Fighter has no ability to fly, never caries any potions, wands or scrolls. I don't think anyone in the party ever uses scrolls.

To me it sounds like you turn a Role Playing Game into a combat game. How often does combat happen? Maybe every 3 to 4 sessions there is a combat? Even then combat can be resolved pretty quickly and doesn't always need to to be played out in detail. If the PCs have a half decent plan and work as a team then they should win. No need for endless die roles. Normally combat is over pretty quickly anyway. Right now one of my my groups is in a combat (the group I play a Fighters level 16?) our main job is to protect the big guns so that they can kill the enemy wizard. We're just the hired helps.

If your fighter is archery focused or have enough reach then you do not need flight (because with enough reach you can reliably put a danger zone between the flier and your friends and with archery, you can always gun down the fliers), which weapons do your fighter use?

[Gnaeus]

Considering precision damage requires no miss chance, im surprised you’ve never run into a seeking weapon before. Doubly so, if miss chance is such a common defense mechanic for casters in your games, seems like an obvious choice.

1. I didn't say I had never seen a seeking arrow. I said I had rarely seen and never felt threatened by a seeking arrow. I said I had never seen the armor

2. I agree with what mechalich and icefractal said. Meeting tailored enemies is rare. Probably 75+% of our fights involve monsters, who are rarely archers. Probably half our games are published or modified published, and if the DM feels the published encounter is too weak, I have found that progression typically runs: add more of the monster, advance the monster, rewrite the monsters feats or spells to match pc optimization levels. Rather than rewriting the encounter completely. And I have never seen a seeking arrow, let alone what you would need to hurt a wizard, in an AP. Also, archers are a pile of treasure that are very easily turned around and used by PCs.

3. Precision damage? What's that? Heart of water makes me immune. You want to talk about mundane/caster divide? When I encounter that archer in the dungeon I am likely buffed with the heart of X line, some variation of mage armor, stoneskin, false life, probably some combination of (maybe extended) polymorph, shield, blur and mirror image, invisibility. Maybe more if I traded buffs with a divine caster. So he shoots me with an adamantine seeking arrow, didn't hit an image, hit my AC in the 30/40s, cant sneak attack me, and nicks my temp hp? And then I step behind or create or have my familiar create an obstacle and summon something? And if somehow he does threaten me I am likely to have a Contingency. It is possible that I could be a subject of a targeted dispel, but if a higher level caster, which to me means boss, is targeting me with single target spells, there are spells that I'm much more worried about than dispel. Spells that could one shot me, rather than making me a potential target for an archer minion.



To me it sounds like you turn a Role Playing Game into a combat game. How often does combat happen?. To me it sounds like you turn a combat game into a RPG. Or you are using a race car as a tow truck. 3.pf is a giant collection of combat rules and classes built around combat. If I want to play a social RPG I would use a system that doesn't describe itself as murderhobo the game in the title. There are a lot of less combat driven systems out there

[Crake]

Campaigns wherein the GM deliberately counterplans against PC strategies by dumpster-diving through the sourcebooks to produce custom NPCs builds are rare.

I would hardly call "precision damage + seeking arrow" dumpster diving. I would also argue, that if miss-chance-as-a-defense is as prolific at high levels as people make it out to be, then a seeking bow is hardly counterplanning the PCs specifically, but rather just playing into the expectations of the setting. Furthermore, someone earlier in the thread actually said the direct opposite thing, I think it was King of Nowhere, who's circumstance is particularly context appropriate, since this is his thread, but his expectation is actually the entire OPPOSITE, that once the PCs reach a certain level of renown, that he EXPECTS npcs to be aware of, and work around their capabilities.


Meeting tailored enemies is rare. Probably 75+% of our fights involve monsters, who are rarely archers.

This to me sounds like sounds like a very fundamental difference in how games are played. Even when I pit monsters against my players, I consider them as NPCs, and will tailor them, not to the players, but to the world and where they fit into things. Everything is custom built, everything has a backstory, why it's there, what it's goals and purposes are, what it's good at, what it's bad at.


1) It's not time-efficient. While I like building characters, it takes me a while - longer than I want to spend on stats that will get used one time (or maybe zero if the PCs take an unexpected path).

Firstly, building a customized NPC doesn't have to have the same effort put into it as building a PC character. Filling out an ability score array, picking a class, a theme, a handful of feats to match, one or two appropriate magic items to fit, maybe slap on a template that also matches, and you can be done in 5-10 minutes. I've built NPCs mid-session while the players took a random side tangent in a conversation before, and had it ready for them by the time they turned their attention back to the game and entered the next room. And if the players take an unexpected path? Then you find a different place to put them in later, slightly adjusted or redesigned. Alternatively, just leave them where they are for if/when the PCs double back.


2) What's the point of an arms-race? If foes scale with the PCs, then everyone's just spending extra effort for no benefit. I figure that people who make OP characters want to be OP, so as long as I can still think of interesting content for the campaign, I just let them be OP and encourage them to take on bigger challenges. And if I can't, that's the time to have an OOC discussion and change the characters or the campaign.

Building setting appropriate NPCs doesn't have to equate to an arms race? That's just a fundamental misunderstanding of why I would build custom NPCs. If that's your goal when building them, well... That's something for you to think about, but that's not the purpose for when I build them. Putting seeking on a precision damage character's weapon isn't "because the players have miss chance", it's because "any miss chance would mean this character's precision damage doesn't apply, so they want to maximise their ability to apply precision damage".


3) Spending a lot of effort on NPCs can be the start of the path toward railroading. Now that you've build this awesome foe, wouldn't it be a shame if the PCs didn't fight him? Or if the fight was too trivial? Just a little subconscious push toward not letting plans work if they'd interfere with the awesome fight you're imagining. Not saying every GM feels this way, but I've seen it more than once, and I'd rather avoid doing it myself.

The trick is to not think of the CHARACTER as awesome, but as the world they live in as awesome. They are part of that world. If the PCs don't fight them today, they may fight them tomorrow, especially if the dungeon the NPC was in got raided by the players. If they don't fight them tomorrow, maybe they befriend them and instead gain a powerful ally who may help them in another fight the day after.

I don't tend to imagine how a fight will go, I build a character, and drop them into the world, and see where things go from there.

[Gnaeus]

Building setting appropriate NPCs doesn't have to equate to an arms race? That's just a fundamental misunderstanding of why I would build custom NPCs. If that's your goal when building them, well... That's something for you to think about, but that's not the purpose for when I build them. Putting seeking on a precision damage character's weapon isn't "because the players have miss chance", it's because "any miss chance would mean this character's precision damage doesn't apply, so they want to maximise their ability to apply precision damage".
.

Right. But putting seeking on a precision damage arrow is still a 0 threat to a buffed wizard. I mean, we appreciate the extra loot, because your planning has turned a useless NPC into a useless NPC with valuable gear. Wizards are immune to precision damage. It doesn't make me want to run out and buy expensive armor. And it certainly doesn't make me NEED expensive armor, which was the original point. Theres like a dozen different strategies to counter that, most of which are free with a spell slot, and many of which I was likely to have in my bag of tricks anyway. Its giving him treasure with an extra step. If it was a problem I expected to encounter with any frequency or felt threatened by, the wizard can answer more easily than the fighter, like by becoming invisible and moving 5 feet, or dropping a mantlet I cast Shrink Item on 5 days before, or having familiar block LoS with a wand or smoke item. Or, in high op play, by not being there at all but being an astral projection, which is frowned upon in my games but is more likely to be a thing than fast time demiplanes.

[Crake]

Wizards are immune to precision damage.

How do you figure?

[noob]

How do you figure?

I assume they only ever plays necropolitan wizards and lich wizards.(that still can be sneak attacked just by using the gravestrike spell)
Not that it matters because the rule is not only "concealment prevents sneak attacks":

the rogue must be able to see the target well enough to pick out a vital spot and must be able to reach such a spot
Meaning that seeker arrows does literally nothing to help since they do not improve the ability to see of the rogue, only helps at shooting.
If you want a rogue to sneak attack hidden targets what is needed is true sight, dark vision, fog vision and some way to disrupt illusions (all of which are very generally applicable and useful even outside of facing wizards, you can often face situation where those are useful such as the night or bad weather or some monsters with illusory powers), not seeker arrows.
Also seeker arrows does not even remove concealment:

Seeking: Only ranged weapons can have the seeking ability. The weapon veers toward its target, negating any miss chances that would otherwise apply, such as from concealment. (The wielder still has to aim the weapon at the right square. Arrows mistakenly shot into an empty space, for example, do not veer and hit invisible enemies, even if they are nearby.)
It negates the miss chance caused by concealment but not the thing itself hence why they even specify you still have to aim at the right square.
I think it is those who are the real reason we do not meet more seeker arrows on rogues, they do help at making attacks connect but do not enable more sneak attack opportunities.

[Gnaeus]

How do you figure?



If heart of fire is active on you at the same time as heart of air, heart of earth, or heart of water, you gain light fortification. If all four of these spells are active on you at the same time, you become immune to extra damage from critical hits and sneak attacks.

So every 9th level wizard (Druid, or Wu Jen, and any sorc 10 who can spare the spells known) who is scared of rogues doesn't buy expensive armor, they make themselves immune to rogues for free. While also giving themselves temp hp, fast movement, fire resist, swim speed, bonus to jump and escape artist and fly speed. I'm usually more worried about the crits than precision damage. But buy one get one free.

[icefractal]

I completely disagree with most of this.

My level 16 or 17?? Fighter has no ability to fly, never caries any potions, wands or scrolls. I don't think anyone in the party ever uses scrolls.

To me it sounds like you turn a Role Playing Game into a combat game. How often does combat happen? Maybe every 3 to 4 sessions there is a combat? Even then combat can be resolved pretty quickly and doesn't always need to to be played out in detail. If the PCs have a half decent plan and work as a team then they should win. No need for endless die roles. Normally combat is over pretty quickly anyway. Right now one of my my groups is in a combat (the group I play a Fighters level 16?) our main job is to protect the big guns so that they can kill the enemy wizard. We're just the hired helps.
Ok, it sounds like you're playing a very atypical campaign. Combat every 3-4 sessions? Our group is much less combat-oriented than we used to be, but 1+ combats per session is still the norm. And I do wonder if D&D is even a good system for an extremely low-combat game.

Also, you're 16th level and you're still the hired help? Personally, I would hate that, but YMMV.

[NichG]

Ok, it sounds like you're playing a very atypical campaign. Combat every 3-4 sessions? Our group is much less combat-oriented than we used to be, but 1+ combats per session is still the norm. And I do wonder if D&D is even a good system for an extremely low-combat game.

Also, you're 16th level and you're still the hired help? Personally, I would hate that, but YMMV.

Combat every 3-4 sessions is pretty normal for my games, for what it's worth. It works fine.

[Gnaeus]

Combat every 3-4 sessions is pretty normal for my games, for what it's worth. It works fine.

I don't mind playing non combat games. But I can't understand why I would use 3.PF to do it when there are so many games out there that have better mechanics for out of combat interaction.

[NichG]

I don't mind playing non combat games. But I can't understand why I would use 3.PF to do it when there are so many games out there that have better mechanics for out of combat interaction.

Magical MacGyver is fun, and D&D is better than a lot of systems at providing lots of mechanical hooks to connect things to in order to figure out what you can do even when you didn't think in advance to be able to do it. It's also generally easier to mod than other games for that reason.

The problem of 'this town of 5000 has a drought and food and water shortage, what can we do that doesn't pin us here?' is something I feel comfortable dropping on a party of Lv9s, say. So when I want a game about reaching for power that feels like there's structured space with lots of interactions to reason over, D&D is my go to base system. If it's more about having power already I'll use something more like Nobilis. If I want something where personal power doesn't scale so much and is more narrowly confined I'll use a White Wolf base. But like, thinking how to solve the water shortage in Vampire wouldn't really be interesting - power is too interpersonal there and doesn't imply as many new possibilities for the world (in general an issue with masquerade themes...)

Combat in D&D is okay, but it's pretty boring to me if that's most of what you're doing.

[Crake]

So every 9th level wizard (Druid, or Wu Jen, and any sorc 10 who can spare the spells known) who is scared of rogues doesn't buy expensive armor, they make themselves immune to rogues for free. While also giving themselves temp hp, fast movement, fire resist, swim speed, bonus to jump and escape artist and fly speed. I'm usually more worried about the crits than precision damage. But buy one get one free.

Again, vulnerable to dispel like I said earlier. Plus, if you’re a wizard, you’re only getting 4 spells of each level for free, 2 if you’re a non transmutation specialist, are you going to spend all that on a bunch of spells which dont have much value until they finally synergise 6 levels later?

Druid can at least prepare them whenever, but sorc/wizard, hard to justify, unless you’re playing in a magic mart setting where you can spam spells into your spellbook like crazy. Ironically, druid probably is the least in need, because they’d probably be spending the combat in wildshape and mauling people

[Gnaeus]

Again, vulnerable to dispel like I said earlier. Plus, if you’re a wizard, you’re only getting 4 spells of each level for free, 2 if you’re a non transmutation specialist, are you going to spend all that on a bunch of spells which dont have much value until they finally synergise 6 levels later?

Druid can at least prepare them whenever, but sorc/wizard, hard to justify, unless you’re playing in a magic mart setting where you can spam spells into your spellbook like crazy. Ironically, druid probably is the least in need, because they’d probably be spending the combat in wildshape and mauling people

If the enemy wizard is casting dispel, they aren't casting a spell which can kill or incap me. Which exist by that level. The wizard boss casting a spell that could have killed me in order to instead make me potentially vulnerable to his archer ally is not a threat I'm worried about.

You are saying that I shouldn't spend the money to scribe a spell into my spellbook because that cost is prohibitive, but I should instead pretend to be a fighter and get magic platemail to have AC to defend against that same threat? I don't have a problem at all spending 2 spells at level 6 for light fortification, bonus to jump, escape artist, water breathing and a swim speed pretty much the entire adventuring day. And the emergency use as Freedom of Movement or Feather Fall. HoW is worth it just for the swift emergency FoM, which I regard as a much more important defense for a wizard than AC or fortification, and isn't easy for arcane casters to get, and the fighter pays, what, 40kgp for? I have never been seriously threatened by a seeking arrow, but I do not like monsters with grapple, although there are other ways to avoid that.

I can't even find lightweight sectioned platemail. I think lightweight is in Dragon, which is probably why I haven't (and won't) seen it in play. And sectioned is in Planar handbook and reduces platemail to a +3 armor bonus I think? And I guess you make it mithral to finish off the ACP? Mage armor and polymorph sound better.

[Crake]

You are saying that I shouldn't spend the money to scribe a spell into my spellbook because that cost is prohibitive

You're applying assumptions to my statement. I said nothing about cost. Not all campaigns run magic marts where any and every spell is available for you to buy and scribe willy nilly.

[Elenian]

You're applying assumptions to my statement. I said nothing about cost. Not all campaigns run magic marts where any and every spell is available for you to buy and scribe willy nilly.

I'd hazard a guess that in most campaigns a scroll of 'heart of foo' is just as, if not more, readily obtainable than sectioned plate (or feycraft thistledown chain, or twilight darkwood shields, for that matter).

[Gnaeus]

I'd hazard a guess that in most campaigns a scroll of 'heart of foo' is just as, if not more, readily obtainable than sectioned plate (or feycraft thistledown chain, or twilight darkwood shields, for that matter).

This. CM seems to be a lot more available than dragon content. But more to the original point, in a campaign without magic mart, the scale of things a fighter can defend against/use for utility vs things a wizard can defend against/use for utility is VERY, VERY heavily weighted towards the caster. Honestly, it makes me want Heart of foo quite a bit more, because that ring of Freedom of Movement, Anklets of Translocation, etc just got a lot more difficult to obtain.

[Crake]

I'd hazard a guess that in most campaigns a scroll of 'heart of foo' is just as, if not more, readily obtainable than sectioned plate (or feycraft thistledown chain, or twilight darkwood shields, for that matter).

Well, the sectioned plate is craftable via fabricate, and the rest can be enchanted on. Sure, you can also do spell research to learn heart of foo, but the cost vs the outcome in that circumstance is far lower.


This. CM seems to be a lot more available than dragon content.

None of what I listed is from dragon content. Sectioned plate is planar handbook, feycraft is DMG2, thistledown is from races of the wild, twilight is from MIC. Halfweight, if you aren't interested in finding workarounds for the movement speed reduction, is from underdark, but with fabricate, the whole thing can be crafted with the click of your fingers, and the enchantments are literally +1 for the base, and +1 for twilight. I personally like to put on +1 for nimble too, to get the ACP to 0 as well. Whole thing adds up to about 13,000gp for 9 AC which is cheaper per AC than getting random +1 AC items of varying bonus types, which clock in at 2000gp each. The shield also comes in at around 5000gp for +3 AC ontop, and slap on at least +4 from dex, and you're looking at an AC starting point of 26 before anything else. That's all easily affordable by 9th level, at which level the pre-statted DMG rogue has a bonus of +10/+5, so a 16 and then a 20 to hit, and the ranger has +13/+8, so a 13 and an 18 to hit. Even the barbarian's only rocking a +15/+8 after raging.

Now, sure, if you're mostly fighting low intelligence monsters in your campaign, and apparently you've never encountered an archer foe that has caused concern, then we're probably just playing very different games, because monsters make up, maybe only 25% of my game's foes. MOST of the time, the players are gonna be fighting NPC monsters, goblins, orcs, drow, or dealing with political foes, bandits, thieves, rival nations. Hell, even the majority of fey are valuable to upscale via class levels. The typical "monsters" usually only turn up as an attack dog for those NPCs.

[Gnaeus]

None of what I listed is from dragon content. Sectioned plate is planar handbook, feycraft is DMG2, thistledown is from races of the wild, twilight is from MIC. Halfweight, if you aren't interested in finding workarounds for the movement speed reduction, is from underdark, but with fabricate, the whole thing can be crafted with the click of your fingers, and the enchantments are literally +1 for the base, and +1 for twilight. I personally like to put on +1 for nimble too, to get the ACP to 0 as well. Whole thing adds up to about 13,000gp for 9 AC which is cheaper per AC than getting random +1 AC items of varying bonus types, which clock in at 2000gp each. The shield also comes in at around 5000gp for +3 AC ontop, and slap on at least +4 from dex, and you're looking at an AC starting point of 26 before anything else. That's all easily affordable by 9th level, at which level the pre-statted DMG rogue has a bonus of +10/+5, so a 16 and then a 20 to hit, and the ranger has +13/+8, so a 13 and an 18 to hit. Even the barbarian's only rocking a +15/+8 after raging.

Now, sure, if you're mostly fighting low intelligence monsters in your campaign, and apparently you've never encountered an archer foe that has caused concern, then we're probably just playing very different games, because monsters make up, maybe only 25% of my game's foes. MOST of the time, the players are gonna be fighting NPC monsters, goblins, orcs, drow, or dealing with political foes, bandits, thieves, rival nations. Hell, even the majority of fey are valuable to upscale via class levels. The typical "monsters" usually only turn up as an attack dog for those NPCs.

You said lightweight sectioned. The only lightweight I see is in Dragon.

I have encountered archers that caused concern. Mostly at low levels as chaff or as background support for bigger mobs, which pretty much rules out magic ammo. We faced a credible optimized archer threat in exactly 1 campaign, a couple of times. But they weren't using seeking arrows, they had other cheese. I do see lots of monsters with class levels, but those are usually casters or brutes, rarely archers. And again, those numbers are only relevant if they come right after a dispel, because a 30+ AC from polymorph, Mage armor and Shield is trivial. It isn't the attack bonuses, it is the attack bonuses right on the heels of a credible dispel magic.

[Crake]

You said lightweight sectioned. The only lightweight I see is in Dragon.

I said halfweight, which is from underdark.

[Quertus]

I would generally agree that the lack of having a contact surface with the setting other than by 'fighting stuff' is a fundamental design issue with the idea of a 'fighter' as a class,

Even more so with a more specialized class, like a Pyromancer, whose only contact surface is to kill stuff with fire spells, IMO. A Fighter can kill stuff with weapons or bare hands; a War Mage can kill stuff with spells - those sound like they have surfaces of roughly equal sizes. Neither is a concept inherently adept at having optimized interaction surface area.


To me it sounds like you turn a combat game into a RPG. Or you are using a race car as a tow truck. 3.pf is a giant collection of combat rules and classes built around combat. If I want to play a social RPG I would use a system that doesn't describe itself as murderhobo the game in the title. There are a lot of less combat driven systems out there

From a Simulation perspective, all (Gamist) rules are terrible. The reverse is even more obviously true, for most any item or event one would simulate. IME, having a lot of combat rules is good, as is not having a lot of noncombat rules. But that might be a conversation for the Iconic RPG thread.


Combat every 3-4 sessions is pretty normal for my games, for what it's worth. It works fine.

I play with too many war gamers (and am one myself, so I certainly don’t mind the combat) to pull that off on a regular basis, but I’m glad to hear it’s doable with the right group.


I don't mind playing non combat games. But I can't understand why I would use 3.PF to do it when there are so many games out there that have better mechanics for out of combat interaction.

Are you sure?

Even if so, IME it’s easier to import house rules for how making a soufflé or building a house actually work than it is to import a good combat system into Candy Land 🍭


Magical MacGyver is fun, and D&D is better than a lot of systems at providing lots of mechanical hooks to connect things to in order to figure out what you can do even when you didn't think in advance to be able to do it. It's also generally easier to mod than other games for that reason.

The problem of 'this town of 5000 has a drought and food and water shortage, what can we do that doesn't pin us here?' is something I feel comfortable dropping on a party of Lv9s, say. So when I want a game about reaching for power that feels like there's structured space with lots of interactions to reason over, D&D is my go to base system. If it's more about having power already I'll use something more like Nobilis. If I want something where personal power doesn't scale so much and is more narrowly confined I'll use a White Wolf base. But like, thinking how to solve the water shortage in Vampire wouldn't really be interesting - power is too interpersonal there and doesn't imply as many new possibilities for the world (in general an issue with masquerade themes...)

That’s an interesting point. I’ve participated in numerous threads about finding creative solutions to problems (the one I remember best being about surviving a 1,000 year maybe godless (?) totally not nuclear winter. And, yeah, I don’t think many systems would produce quite the same level of inventive responses as 3e does.


This. CM seems to be a lot more available than dragon content. But more to the original point, in a campaign without magic mart, the scale of things a fighter can defend against/use for utility vs things a wizard can defend against/use for utility is VERY, VERY heavily weighted towards the caster. Honestly, it makes me want Heart of foo quite a bit more, because that ring of Freedom of Movement, Anklets of Translocation, etc just got a lot more difficult to obtain.

Hmmm… one could argue that 2e “solved” this problem by giving Wizards 0 spells known, meaning they had 0 answers by default, as well. It means “Magical MacGyver” has to ask “can we” solve this problem with the random tools we’ve acquired, rather than the more confident “how do we…” that 3e shopping provides.

[RandomPeasant]

I don't mind playing non combat games. But I can't understand why I would use 3.PF to do it when there are so many games out there that have better mechanics for out of combat interaction.

Also it's sort of not clear to me how "combat is much more rare" is supposed to make caster-martial disparity better. You can build a Warblade that carries his weight in a fight pretty well alongside casters up to pretty high level. It's basically impossible to do that for non-combat situations. If you told me to plan a party for a campaign that involved combat encounters every three or four sessions, I would go quadruple Artificer, or maybe triple Artificer + Beguiler if I really wanted a dedicated Face.


Even more so with a more specialized class, like a Pyromancer, whose only contact surface is to kill stuff with fire spells, IMO. A Fighter can kill stuff with weapons or bare hands; a War Mage can kill stuff with spells - those sound like they have surfaces of roughly equal sizes. Neither is a concept inherently adept at having optimized interaction surface area.

Neither "Pyromancer" nor "War Mage" is anywhere near as inherently limited as "Fighter" is. If you look at the broader sweep of fantasy fiction, Pyromancers do everything from "summon fire monsters" to "arose the emotions of others" to "teleport through fires" to "forge magical items". Similarly, while the 3.5 implementation of War Mage is laughably limited, a properly war-optimized mage could reasonably expect to show up with travel magic like teleport or plane shift, logistics magic like create food and water or fabricate, and in some cases even healing magic. On the other hand, a Fighter really does just have "Fight" as his whole concept. And more than that, unlike a Pyromancer who fights with fire magic or a War Mage who might be expected to have spells well-suited to mass combat, the Fighter doesn't even have a clear mandate to fight in any particular way. It is a singularly bad place to start a class off at.


Hmmm… one could argue that 2e “solved” this problem by giving Wizards 0 spells known, meaning they had 0 answers by default, as well. It means “Magical MacGyver” has to ask “can we” solve this problem with the random tools we’ve acquired, rather than the more confident “how do we…” that 3e shopping provides.

Of course, in solving it that way you create the much larger problem of Wizards not having any agency over what their character does. Even characters that don't have any real option-shopping like the Beguiler or the Sorcerer still completely outclass non-caster at noncombat utility.

[NichG]

Also it's sort of not clear to me how "combat is much more rare" is supposed to make caster-martial disparity better.


It's not, but my world doesn't revolve around trying to make Fighters match up to Wizards. I wouldn't recommend anyone to play a straight classed Fighter in any of my games, and I generally homebrew in T1 martial-themed classes that can make contract with the world at the strategic and plot direction level rather than just be good at combats. At high levels (Lv7,8,9 spell equivalents) one particular kind of martial in my previous game could, for example, inject a thread of qi into someone with a subtle touch that can't be noticed that would cause them to suffer pain or paralysis on hearing a certain trigger word or being in a certain circumstance; a different class gives an ability to swear an oath of protection of a location, guaranteeing that some rule or law of that place cannot be violated without destroying that character's body first (but transmits any damage to the structure to that person); a different class has a move that lets you literally call out a deity to a duel over a matter that lies within their domain - they have to accept, and if you win then they have to make the change you ask for. On top of that, every character also got up to 5 mythic abilities (as they level) which basically gave some form of dramatic editing, independent of their class choice.

[Gnaeus]

Magical MacGyver is fun, and D&D is better than a lot of systems at providing lots of mechanical hooks to connect things to in order to figure out what you can do even when you didn't think in advance to be able to do it. It's also generally easier to mod than other games for that reason.

The problem of 'this town of 5000 has a drought and food and water shortage, what can we do that doesn't pin us here?' is something I feel comfortable dropping on a party of Lv9s, say. So when I want a game about reaching for power that feels like there's structured space with lots of interactions to reason over, D&D is my go to base system. If it's more about having power already I'll use something more like Nobilis. If I want something where personal power doesn't scale so much and is more narrowly confined I'll use a White Wolf base. But like, thinking how to solve the water shortage in Vampire wouldn't really be interesting - power is too interpersonal there and doesn't imply as many new possibilities for the world (in general an issue with masquerade themes...)

Combat in D&D is okay, but it's pretty boring to me if that's most of what you're doing.

Sorry, didn't see the original of this post until scrolling through replies. But anyway, while vampire is absolutely a better system for a social game but lacks the personal power scaling, that cannot be said for White Wolf. Mage scales just as much, and has a lot more room for non combat interaction than 3.PF. and if you want a system for world interaction, GURPS can scale up as high as you want to go, has more mechanical hooks than 3.5, with more non combat character diversity. Personally, i prefer FATE system for non combat games. But if you need granular mechanics for your colony sim, there's better than 3.5 in either direction.

And ultimately, I want to use what's on my character sheet. If I have 4 pages of combat stats and a single line that says diplomacy, and a single line that says survival, there's going to be combat close to every session if I have to make it myself. If am a Mage with 5 in life sphere, I'm going to be hunting for solutions involving adapting living things around me. If I have a GURPS character im going to be trying to figure how to leverage nuclear engineering or systems administration or my contacts in the circus or whatever my guy is built around. A 3.5 character is a bunch of mechanics to put hurt on target, a bunch of mechanics to not get hurt, and a couple of lines of social stuff that is so broken that everyone ignores the RAW for it completely.

[NichG]

Sorry, didn't see the original of this post until scrolling through replies. But anyway, while vampire is absolutely a better system for a social game but lacks the personal power scaling, that cannot be said for White Wolf. Mage scales just as much, and has a lot more room for non combat interaction than 3.PF. and if you want a system for world interaction, GURPS can scale up as high as you want to go, has more mechanical hooks than 3.5, with more non combat character diversity. Personally, i prefer FATE system for non combat games. But if you need granular mechanics for your colony sim, there's better than 3.5 in either direction.


Nothing against Mage, but it's in the Nobilis bin of freeform 'your power is already there you just have to imagine it', not the D&D bin of 'your power is what you can figure out'.

Definitely something against FATE though. Generic, universal systems are the opposite of what I want in general. This probably would extend to GURPS for me but I have less experience with GURPS so the criticism would be unfair. But the sort of 'everything is an aspect and gives you +2' is useless for the sort of magical MacGyver problem solving I'm talking about here since 'I'm a surveyor' and 'I can conjure salt' and 'I'm literally god' do the same thing mechanically and it's just up to the GM to go beyond that.

And as far as social games go, the fundamental thing that makes social situations interesting means I don't actually want resolution mechanics for them. Instead I want mechanics that mean that different characters can come in with different leverage and considerations to socialize about. 'Being able to cure the duke's kid of vampirism', for example. Social systems like say Exalted has aren't what I'm looking for.



And ultimately, I want to use what's on my character sheet. If I have 4 pages of combat stats and a single line that says diplomacy, and a single line that says survival, there's going to be combat close to every session if I have to make it myself. If am a Mage with 5 in life sphere, I'm going to be hunting for solutions involving adapting living things around me. If I have a GURPS character im going to be trying to figure how to leverage nuclear engineering or systems administration or my contacts in the circus or whatever my guy is built around. A 3.5 character is a bunch of mechanics to put hurt on target, a bunch of mechanics to not get hurt, and a couple of lines of social stuff that is so broken that everyone ignores the RAW for it completely.

Well as I said, I encourage players in my games to play T1 characters with large lists of things they can do that aren't just putting the hurt on things, and I have no illusions that 'Fighter' is a good fit for my games. But it's not because defenses are too expensive, it's because 'I use murder to solve the problem' is going to have you sitting out a lot. But 'I use my martial arts parkour and situational awareness and knowledge of the body and familiarity with conflict and a few tricks for maintaining equilibrium '? A martial with all of that could work.

[Quertus]

Neither "Pyromancer" nor "War Mage" is anywhere near as inherently limited as "Fighter" is. If you look at the broader sweep of fantasy fiction, Pyromancers do everything from "summon fire monsters" to "arose the emotions of others" to "teleport through fires" to "forge magical items". Similarly, while the 3.5 implementation of War Mage is laughably limited, a properly war-optimized mage could reasonably expect to show up with travel magic like teleport or plane shift, logistics magic like create food and water or fabricate, and in some cases even healing magic. On the other hand, a Fighter really does just have "Fight" as his whole concept. And more than that, unlike a Pyromancer who fights with fire magic or a War Mage who might be expected to have spells well-suited to mass combat, the Fighter doesn't even have a clear mandate to fight in any particular way. It is a singularly bad place to start a class off at.

Well, if you look at "Fighters" throughout the broader sweep of fantasy fiction, they can run nations, lead armies, create strategies, inspire people, perceive microscopic changes/imperfections/traces of poisons/whatever, remain unshaken, survive off dew, run for days, command respect, and



'I use murder to solve the problem' is going to have you sitting out a lot. But 'I use my martial arts parkour and situational awareness and knowledge of the body and familiarity with conflict and a few tricks for maintaining equilibrium '? A martial with all of that could work.

and so very much more. But the D&D Fighter equivalent Pyromancer is much more limited than the D&D Fighter.

Also, on a personal note, I kinda hate almost any Pyromancer whose powers include any of the things you listed. If I were running a Pyromancer, I might take utility powers like "boil water" or "cause heat stroke", but, otherwise, I'll be Trogdor, burninating the countryside, with less "surface area" than a D&D Fighter, because that's what "Pyromancer" means to me.

Needless to say, I wouldn't run a Pyromancer in a game that required a character with a large surface area of impact points upon the world. Not unless I was intentionally aiming for "hard mode".

And... that's kinda the thing. To me, the concept of a Pyromancer is someone with almost no depth of interaction with the world, whereas the concept of a Fighter is someone with potentially vast depth of interaction points. My concept of a Pyromancer is very limited, whereas my concept of a "Fighter" looks very little like the D&D class of that name.

[RandomPeasant]

Well, if you look at "Fighters" throughout the broader sweep of fantasy fiction, they can run nations, lead armies, create strategies, inspire people, perceive microscopic changes/imperfections/traces of poisons/whatever, remain unshaken, survive off dew, run for days, command respect, and

No. Those characters are not "Fighters". They are Barbarians or Rangers or Paladins or any number of other martial characters, but none of them are "Fighters". Indeed, of the very very few things you could plausibly say about a "Fighter" on a conceptual level, "they fight for themselves rather than commanding others to fight for them" seems like a good pick. And yet, "what if we gave the Fighter a bunch of mooks to order around" is one of the first things out of people's mouths to fix the class! It's like saying that what our Pyromancer really needs is to pick up some water powers.


And... that's kinda the thing. To me, the concept of a Pyromancer is someone with almost no depth of interaction with the world, whereas the concept of a Fighter is someone with potentially vast depth of interaction points. My concept of a Pyromancer is very limited, whereas my concept of a "Fighter" looks very little like the D&D class of that name.

The problem is that you're conflating "what you want to play" with "what you think the character should do". Maybe you don't want to have the ability to command beasts of living flame. But surely you can acknowledge that such a thing is "fire magic" in a way that commanding an army of men or being really good at making barrels is not "fighting".

[Mordante]

If your fighter is archery focused or have enough reach then you do not need flight (because with enough reach you can reliably put a danger zone between the flier and your friends and with archery, you can always gun down the fliers), which weapons do your fighter use?

My Fighter has uses a 2 handed Scimitar. (It's a +4 or +5 Scimitar of battle dancing it gives me 1 extra attack at full BAB and I can ignore 1 attack of opportunity when I step out of combat), My armor is a +4 or +5 mindarmor. I also have a ring of mind shielding. Cloak of resistance +4, animated steel shield +4 that I think also has a blur effect vs ranged attacks if I remember correctly. Belt of giant strength +4. These are my magic items as fare as I can remember without having my sheet with me. Stats range from 22 (strength) to 10 (wisdom).

[Quertus]

No. Those characters are not "Fighters". They are Barbarians or Rangers or Paladins or any number of other martial characters, but none of them are "Fighters". Indeed, of the very very few things you could plausibly say about a "Fighter" on a conceptual level, "they fight for themselves rather than commanding others to fight for them" seems like a good pick. And yet, "what if we gave the Fighter a bunch of mooks to order around" is one of the first things out of people's mouths to fix the class! It's like saying that what our Pyromancer really needs is to pick up some water powers.

Barbarians, Rangers, Paladins, and Monks are all Fighters in my book. :smallwink:

But, sure, which version of the word we are using matters, and I'll not even try to figure out which is the "correct" version of "Fighter" in this instance, and simply use your version, which I think is "a conceptual Fighter class in a world where that is distinct from a conceptual Barbarian, Ranger, or Paladin class". NOTE that as we are talking about fiction, not just the RPG, it's kinda Suss to try to claim that "Fighter" is defined such that "anyone who can do anything isn't a Fighter". People who, in fiction, would map to the "Fighter" class People in fiction who, in the context of such an RPG, would best map to the "Fighter" class, can often do much more than the Fighter class can do. Saying, "Nuh-uh, that makes them not Fighters - they must have a King class to be the ruler of a nation" runs contrary to both the existing structure of D&D, and the "there exist Wizards in fiction that can Teleport, therefore Wizards need the ability to Teleport" logic that built D&D.


The problem is that you're conflating "what you want to play" with "what you think the character should do". Maybe you don't want to have the ability to command beasts of living flame. But surely you can acknowledge that such a thing is "fire magic" in a way that commanding an army of men or being really good at making barrels is not "fighting".

Um... for clarity, I want to play a character who can do lots of stuff, but **** if a Pyromancer should be able to do lots of stuff. All that rubbish about teleporting through flames and stuff is a Wizard with a fire theme, not a Pyromancer. A Pyromancer makes (and, sure, manipulates) Fire.

But wait, you say, you're being highly, uh, contradictory here (yeah, there's a better word, I can't think of it). And, sure, it seems that way, doesn't it? So let me compare apples to apples.

A Fighter can be a King. A Pyromancer can... I guess be a King (a "Sorcerer King"?). The trick is, in the context of D&D Balance, historically, a Fighter was destined to be a ruler, while a Wizard was not. SO, in this specific context, that particular ability, "kingship", belongs more to the Fighter than the Pyromancer. But that's just one of the abilities I listed. Let's move on to the rest.

Either one could learn to do CPR and thereby "resurrect the dead". Either one could have the Charisma and Presence to give an inspirational speech. Either one could be a famous, well-respected member of the community, and maybe one could make a setting where just by mastery of the class alone, a Master Pyromancer would be viewed in a positive light rather than as a walking calamity. But, IME, in literature/etc, the Fighters and Pyromancers I'm familiar with, it's the Fighters who are unshakable, steadfast, inspiring, dauntless, and perceptive by virtue of their martial training, whereas Pyromancers... just aren't. You don't become perceptive by learning to burn things better. You don't become inspiring (in word, not feat) by learning to burn things better. Heck, especially in the context of D&D, you don't become tireless by learning to burn things better (although I could at least imagine someone writing about a Pyromancer who, by training to produce continuous gouts of fire for greater lengths of time, from instant, to seconds, to minutes, then hours, then eventually producing a blast that they maintain all day, eventually trains their body to the point where they can stay awake for days, rather than their magic eating them alive like it does to many fictional Wizards).

Point is, conceptually, Wizards / Psions of any stripe, let alone the more volatile Pyromancers, generally get less and less adept at most if not all of those skills in fiction as they focus on and master their Craft, whereas Fighters in fiction often gain those and/or other skills as a side benefit of their martial training.

And either could pick up or be born with things outside their "class" / their focus of study - either one could be a pickpocket, have picture-perfect memory, or learn to program, for example. But the Fighter has both more depth of fighting / more options in a fight than a Pyromancer, and more talents that come about in fiction as a natural progression from their studies, than someone limited to producing flame.

Thus, a Pyromancer - a real Pyromancer, not a fire-themed Wizard - has much less "surface area" to work with than a Fighter.

[NichG]

Barbarians, Rangers, Paladins, and Monks are all Fighters in my book. :smallwink:

But, sure, which version of the word we are using matters, and I'll not even try to figure out which is the "correct" version of "Fighter" in this instance, and simply use your version, which I think is "a conceptual Fighter class in a world where that is distinct from a conceptual Barbarian, Ranger, or Paladin class". NOTE that as we are talking about fiction, not just the RPG, it's kinda Suss to try to claim that "Fighter" is defined such that "anyone who can do anything isn't a Fighter". People who, in fiction, would map to the "Fighter" class People in fiction who, in the context of such an RPG, would best map to the "Fighter" class, can often do much more than the Fighter class can do. Saying, "Nuh-uh, that makes them not Fighters - they must have a King class to be the ruler of a nation" runs contrary to both the existing structure of D&D, and the "there exist Wizards in fiction that can Teleport, therefore Wizards need the ability to Teleport" logic that built D&D.



Um... for clarity, I want to play a character who can do lots of stuff, but **** if a Pyromancer should be able to do lots of stuff. All that rubbish about teleporting through flames and stuff is a Wizard with a fire theme, not a Pyromancer. A Pyromancer makes (and, sure, manipulates) Fire.

But wait, you say, you're being highly, uh, contradictory here (yeah, there's a better word, I can't think of it). And, sure, it seems that way, doesn't it? So let me compare apples to apples.

A Fighter can be a King. A Pyromancer can... I guess be a King (a "Sorcerer King"?). The trick is, in the context of D&D Balance, historically, a Fighter was destined to be a ruler, while a Wizard was not. SO, in this specific context, that particular ability, "kingship", belongs more to the Fighter than the Pyromancer. But that's just one of the abilities I listed. Let's move on to the rest.

Either one could learn to do CPR and thereby "resurrect the dead". Either one could have the Charisma and Presence to give an inspirational speech. Either one could be a famous, well-respected member of the community, and maybe one could make a setting where just by mastery of the class alone, a Master Pyromancer would be viewed in a positive light rather than as a walking calamity. But, IME, in literature/etc, the Fighters and Pyromancers I'm familiar with, it's the Fighters who are unshakable, steadfast, inspiring, dauntless, and perceptive by virtue of their martial training, whereas Pyromancers... just aren't. You don't become perceptive by learning to burn things better. You don't become inspiring (in word, not feat) by learning to burn things better. Heck, especially in the context of D&D, you don't become tireless by learning to burn things better (although I could at least imagine someone writing about a Pyromancer who, by training to produce continuous gouts of fire for greater lengths of time, from instant, to seconds, to minutes, then hours, then eventually producing a blast that they maintain all day, eventually trains their body to the point where they can stay awake for days, rather than their magic eating them alive like it does to many fictional Wizards).

Point is, conceptually, Wizards / Psions of any stripe, let alone the more volatile Pyromancers, generally get less and less adept at most if not all of those skills in fiction as they focus on and master their Craft, whereas Fighters in fiction often gain those and/or other skills as a side benefit of their martial training.

And either could pick up or be born with things outside their "class" / their focus of study - either one could be a pickpocket, have picture-perfect memory, or learn to program, for example. But the Fighter has both more depth of fighting / more options in a fight than a Pyromancer, and more talents that come about in fiction as a natural progression from their studies, than someone limited to producing flame.

Thus, a Pyromancer - a real Pyromancer, not a fire-themed Wizard - has much less "surface area" to work with than a Fighter.

Eh, this mindset seems like it's contributing to the thing that doomed the Fighter in the first place.

A fictional character does not have a constrained 'surface area' to interact with their setting a priori, because by default they can do 'things a human can do', which is actually quite a lot. What a given character chooses to do ends up being a defining attribute of that character perhaps, but stuff like 'Fighter' or 'Pyromancer' don't really exist at that level, those are post-hoc attempts to cluster characters by theme.

Once you start to think of a character in terms of a bottleneck of a tiny subset of human ability that they're permitted to make use of because of theme, you've kind of made a caricature who can't really be an equal participant in the world as, say, a random Lv0 character who doesn't even have a class.

But when the game does define a class and its abilities, that naturally invites people to think about the game through the bottleneck of that class. So you get e.g. 'I don't want my Fighter to do things other than combat, ever' and something that's already poorly constructed and with an absence of options to it gets squeezed down even further by preconceptions of what the character should be able to do. Like, Fighters can use bows, but people often will not carry a bow as a Fighter because its not in their mental image.

So one thing to get over is to stop thinking of characters in terms of what they're not allowed to be or do (which often even a non-heroic ordinary real-world person can and does do!), but instead think about what extra special things they can do even better than others. Then, y'know, actually go and use that expanded state of mind to make the actual game mechanics take on a broader form that in general allows every class to have some sort of contact with those new things unique to the setting/game that the real world lacks.

In that sense, rather than 'a true Pyromancer can't do anything but burn', it should be 'by studying to become a Pyromancer, this person gains on top of their normal competencies an extra ability to interact magically with fire'. They shouldn't stop being the 'person' part of that and end up forced to only interact via fire, just like someone who studies how to fight duels shouldn't now have to solve all of their problems via duelling. And on top of that, both should be structured in such a way that the extranormal knowledge and skill they gain can be related back towards other aspects in their life and activities without overriding those things. The Fighter should learn to recognizing combatative attitudes and when someone is prepared to act, not just in combat but in business or negotiation. The Pyromancer should be able to gain intuition for how things spread and grow and consume, even if its a cloud of locusts rather than a flame; or to understand more deeply how things live off of fuel and breath and turn that to understanding the way that an army unit survives off of its logistics.

[RandomPeasant]

Barbarians, Rangers, Paladins, and Monks are all Fighters in my book. :smallwink:

I know you're kidding, but honestly that's a perfectly valid way of doing things. At that point "Fighter" just means "martial", and while I would still argue that it's not an ideal term for that, you're no longer asking that anyone just be a "Fighter" and the terminology all comes out in a way that's basically fine.


People in fiction who, in the context of such an RPG, would best map to the "Fighter" class, can often do much more than the Fighter class can do.

I don't think there are people in fiction who map to a "Fighter" class, though I invite you to give examples if you disagree. What I think there are characters who map to, and what I think most people who say "Fighter" actually want, is a "Soldier" class. And there are plenty of fantasy characters who I think are Soldiers. Kaladin from the Stormlight Archive books is a Soldier, though he eventually either PrCs into Windrunner or multi-classes into Paladin, depending on how exactly you're modeling things. Many characters from the Black Company series, various works in the Malazan universe, or A Practical Guide to Evil are Soldiers (though in the latter two cases, the sappers are probably Rogues or Scouts). Foundryside's Gregor Dandolo is a Soldier.

As a class, "Soldier" addresses a lot of the issues "Fighter" has. You get some basic idea of things a Soldier might do in a fight like "fight in formation" or "fight up close and personal with the enemy" or "be familiar with various combined arms-type tactics that exist in D&D's medieval fantasy pastiche". And you get clear ideas of things they might do outside of combat like "be able to maintain their gear" or "be able to live off the land" or "be familiar with the tactics of various armies" or "assess the strength of a fortification". You get a coherent story of why the character ends up commanding an army of dudes, because "become an officer" is one of the most obvious possible advancement paths for a Soldier. Yes, it's not super clear what they do at higher levels, but that's true of a lot of martial characters, and the solution is 4e-style Paragon Paths/Epic Destinies, not to declare that there is some single thing that is obviously continuous with "hold the line against charging cavalry" that a character does when their party is fighting Demon Princes.


All that rubbish about teleporting through flames and stuff is a Wizard with a fire theme, not a Pyromancer.

What do you think "Pyromancer" means if not "Fire Wizard". If you ask someone who's read Worm which member of the Slaughterhouse Nine (https://worm.fandom.com/wiki/Slaughterhouse_Nine) is a Pyromancer, they are going to say "Burnscar", not "none of them, they do have a fire Wizard though".


You don't become perceptive by learning to burn things better. You don't become inspiring (in word, not feat) by learning to burn things better.

You don't become those things by learning how to fight better either. The character who has finely tuned senses is a Rogue or a Scout or a Ranger, not a Fighter. The character who stands at the head of an army giving an inspiring speech is a Marshal or a Paladin, not a Fighter (or more likely they're a Bard, but let's assume we're restricting ourselves to martial characters here).

[Gruftzwerg]

Barbarians, Rangers, Paladins, and Monks are all Fighters in my book. :smallwink:


Reminds me of the Rock, Paper, Scissor (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NXX8URSUWm0)theory from WoW's "World of Roguecraft" videos.

"Until Warrior gets Pounce+Shock Trooper and becomes an unstopable killing mashine.."
It's just that that ain't the biggest problem here

The real problem in 3.5 is paper..

"Warlocks are Mushrooms"
imho 100% true for 3.5 xD

[Seward]

I completely disagree with most of this.

My level 16 or 17?? Fighter has no ability to fly, never caries any potions, wands or scrolls. I don't think anyone in the party ever uses scrolls.

To me it sounds like you turn a Role Playing Game into a combat game. How often does combat happen? Maybe every 3 to 4 sessions there is a combat?.

In organized play (Living Greyhawk and Pathfinder Society) the expectation is about 3 combats per game session (4-5 hours). It is not uncommon for all of the combats to happen in the same day, and sometimes you do that whole day with only whatever spells you wandered in with and no chance to rest-reshuffle. Because of this, prepared casters usually have default spell lists for "I'm in a city" or "I am traveling overland" or "I'm at a social engagement" type common adventure starting locations and most casters have some consumables for long days, everybody has between-combat-healing for the party to use and most noncasters have some way to either contribute indirectly or get themselves back in the game if a particular combat isn't suited to their usual techniques. Thus potions, or wands if they have a class with any caster capability or scrolls if they actually have caster levels. Any resource your character can bring to the table might be the one that saves the party, so investing a tiny amount of WBL in consumables is worthwhile.

Organized play tends to have restrictions on powerful magic item availability but low level consumables are affordable and available between adventures from the start, or at worst a couple adventures in.

The average encounter is EL 2-3 higher than the expected party level, but the parties have 4-6 people so with a typical 5 person party it's in line with game expectations of difficulty. 4 person parties are often a little overleveled or otherwise stronger than the story expects, 6 person parties tend to be a but underleveled or with more support characters. On average. In reality it depends who shows up, how many GMs are prepared to run at a given event etc. Unlike some home campaigns, WBL tends to play out pretty similar to what the games recommend, with Living Greyhawk a bit lower because consumables spent are never replaced in WBL, Pathfinder Society having mechanisms to buy consumables under 750gp with favors that tended to even out use rates and keep WBL in permanent items more or less as expected.

So yeah, the adventurers who do those kinds of jobs expect a lot of fighting vs a lot of varied foes. Also the players at the gaming tables are kind of random, you can't count on adventuring with the same people all the time, so you have to be a bit more self sufficient than in a home game where you know your party wizard has your back with a fly spell, or the party archer can just cope with flying foes himself.

[Gnaeus]

Well as I said, I encourage players in my games to play T1 characters with large lists of things they can do that aren't just putting the hurt on things, and I have no illusions that 'Fighter' is a good fit for my games. But it's not because defenses are too expensive, it's because 'I use murder to solve the problem' is going to have you sitting out a lot. But 'I use my martial arts parkour and situational awareness and knowledge of the body and familiarity with conflict and a few tricks for maintaining equilibrium '? A martial with all of that could work.

That all sounds fine. Now tell me where you find it in the 3.5 rules. I could make it in GURPS no issues. A dozen relevant skills, some advantages from the martial arts book. Easy. No freeform required. 3.5, that's a bunch of classes and abilities that don't exist. You might be able to call what you come up with a D20 system game. But it doesn't sound like D&D.

Re social systems, 3.5 has one. It just stinks. If you want to claim those games with detatled social systems aren't what you want, how about I walk into the room, talk to the bartender about swizzle straws for 60 seconds. I roll diplomacy. I got a 1 so 45, he is now friendly to me. If I had rolled better, he is fanatical. No mcguivering. At most 60 seconds of interaction which is completely irrelevant. Totally 3.5


In organized play (Living Greyhawk and Pathfinder Society) the expectation is about 3 combats per game session (4-5 hours). It is not uncommon for all of the combats to happen in the same day, and sometimes you do that whole day with only whatever spells you wandered in with and no chance to rest-reshuffle.

Matches my experience. At home, we are less likely to have 3 combats a day than a giant multiple part combat that lasts 3 gaming sessions as the battle moves and more enemies join. But either way, leaning into 3.5

[noob]

Re social systems, 3.5 has one. It just stinks. If you want to claim those games with detatled social systems aren't what you want, how about I walk into the room, talk to the bartender about swizzle straws for 60 seconds. I roll diplomacy. I got a 1 so 45, he is now friendly to me. If I had rolled better, he is fanatical. No mcguivering. At most 60 seconds of interaction which is completely irrelevant. Totally 3.5


Some people pulls this kind of stuff in real life.

[Crake]

That all sounds fine. Now tell me where you find it in the 3.5 rules. I could make it in GURPS no issues. A dozen relevant skills, some advantages from the martial arts book. Easy. No freeform required. 3.5, that's a bunch of classes and abilities that don't exist. You might be able to call what you come up with a D20 system game. But it doesn't sound like D&D.

So... It's okay to homebrew in GURPS, but it's not okay to homebrew in D&D? I don't get that double standard.

NicheG has stated that the stuff they've given to their players is not at all freeform, it's stuff they've homebrewed. Plenty of people do the same, they homebrew material for their games to fill niches that the system doesn't cover particularly well. A lot of people rave on about how "you can make anything in 3.5", but really, why would you need to when your DM can just homebrew you something?

And yet, for some reason this is frowned upon, meanwhile you praise gurps for being able to do the same thing? I don't really get it.

[noob]

So... It's okay to homebrew in GURPS, but it's not okay to homebrew in D&D? I don't get that double standard.

NicheG has stated that the stuff they've given to their players is not at all freeform, it's stuff they've homebrewed. Plenty of people do the same, they homebrew material for their games to fill niches that the system doesn't cover particularly well. A lot of people rave on about how "you can make anything in 3.5", but really, why would you need to when your DM can just homebrew you something?

And yet, for some reason this is frowned upon, meanwhile you praise gurps for being able to do the same thing? I don't really get it.

Gurps is such a complicated game with such advanced modular character building rules that by using only rules from official gurps books you have the feeling of creating a new thing but he was not talking about homebrew, merely the application of complicated rules.

[Gnaeus]

Gurps is such a complicated game with such advanced modular character building rules that by using only rules from official gurps books you have the feeling of creating a new thing but he was not talking about homebrew, merely the application of complicated rules.

This. GURPS is crunchy. GURPS 4th has more than 400 skills, and that was a while back, so maybe more (Splatbooks, y'know). Similar numbers of advantages and disadvantages. If you want a character focused on occult lore, cooking, and brain surgery, you can make it in GURPS. It is the opposite of the rules light systems like FATE. Oh, and it has a very, very intricate spell system, based on meeting prereqs in spell schools, so if you want your pyromancer to have spells to cook dinner, its there, and it probably counts towards the number of fire spell prereqs you need for some advanced combat spell you want.

It isn't my go to for combat, not because it doesn't work, it does, but because it defaults to pretty high lethality. Like, if you shoot me in the head with a rifle, its really bad for me. So, you don't really want 3 combats a day, because combat is deadly and needs to be treated as such. (or on the other end of the lethality scale, if I'm wearing plate mail, a mook probably can't hurt me at all without wrestling me to the ground, kind of like medieval combat.) But if you play with one combat every 3-4 games, and those combats are therefore more narratively important, its fine.

[NichG]

That all sounds fine. Now tell me where you find it in the 3.5 rules. I could make it in GURPS no issues. A dozen relevant skills, some advantages from the martial arts book. Easy. No freeform required. 3.5, that's a bunch of classes and abilities that don't exist. You might be able to call what you come up with a D20 system game. But it doesn't sound like D&D.

In D&D? Start with a Factotum at 1st level (or even a few levels for some of the other nice things) to get all skills as class skills, go Swordsage and get all of the Diamond Mind stuff that lets you use skill checks in place of other things as immediate actions, Hearing the Air stance to expand your perception. Get the Shadow Hand teleport stuff for ever-growing parkour possibilities. IIRC one of the Complete books has some alternate uses of Sense Motive to gauge people's strength, so use that freely and frequently.

Now you've got the bones of a more well-rounded character who can engage with a lot of different situations without being too pigeonholed into 'I use murder' while still maintaining a theme of martial study and expertise.

And as far as homebrew extending this further? Well, it will be there no matter what I'm running, so talking about pure systems isn't at all relevant to me in practice. I'm only ever shopping for bases on which to build, not completed things.

As far as GURPS goes: I can't talk to GURPS because as I said, I don't have experience with the system. But I started a thread in the general forum to do an experiment on this matter, so if you'd like to make a GURPS character and run them past a couple scenarios it might be informative.



Re social systems, 3.5 has one. It just stinks. If you want to claim those games with detatled social systems aren't what you want, how about I walk into the room, talk to the bartender about swizzle straws for 60 seconds. I roll diplomacy. I got a 1 so 45, he is now friendly to me. If I had rolled better, he is fanatical. No mcguivering. At most 60 seconds of interaction which is completely irrelevant. Totally 3.5


3.5's social skills are among the first on the chopping block for rewrites when I homebrew, so I'm not going to disagree about this. It's pretty easy to remove, and a bit more complex to convert to a form useful to me. But I haven't seen a single game out there with social rules where I'd want to use the social rules as written anyhow.

[Crake]

3.5's social skills are among the first on the chopping block for rewrites when I homebrew, so I'm not going to disagree about this. It's pretty easy to remove, and a bit more complex to convert to a form useful to me. But I haven't seen a single game out there with social rules where I'd want to use the social rules as written anyhow.

I think a lot of people also take the social skills ad absurdium. For example, including epic skill usage in non epic games, or implying that the interaction can be about anything.

The whole point, as others have pointed out previously, of social skills, is to represent character skill, not player skill. You cant have it both ways, your character spends a minute talking about something to the bartender that really speaks deeply to him, something that your character can intuit due to their extreme expertise in speaking with people. If you tried to play it off like that, I would say “okay, you spend the next minute talking about random junk… no dont roll, that’s not a diplomacy check, thats just you rambling”.

Its not a valid representation of using the diplomacy skill, its, in essence, a strawman of the diplomacy skill.

[NichG]

I think a lot of people also take the social skills ad absurdium. For example, including epic skill usage in non epic games, or implying that the interaction can be about anything.

The whole point, as others have pointed out previously, of social skills, is to represent character skill, not player skill. You cant have it both ways, your character spends a minute talking about something to the bartender that really speaks deeply to him, something that your character can intuit due to their extreme expertise in speaking with people. If you tried to play it off like that, I would say “okay, you spend the next minute talking about random junk… no dont roll, that’s not a diplomacy check, thats just you rambling”.

Its not a valid representation of using the diplomacy skill, its, in essence, a strawman of the diplomacy skill.

It's a whole other thread perhaps, but my preferred game model of social interaction centers on information rather than resolution. So instead of the skill answering the question 'do you persuade him?', the skill answers the question for example 'do you get to know what would be persuasive to him?'.

That thing may not be something you can trivially back up. Roll a 100 to find what would persuade an elder god to give up their power, find that the answer is 'true love', you still have work to do.

[Crake]

It's a whole other thread perhaps, but my preferred game model of social interaction centers on information rather than resolution. So instead of the skill answering the question 'do you persuade him?', the skill answers the question for example 'do you get to know what would be persuasive to him?'.

That thing may not be something you can trivially back up. Roll a 100 to find what would persuade an elder god to give up their power, find that the answer is 'true love', you still have work to do.

Except, diplomacy isnt about persuading, its about changing attitude. You can make the elder god as friendly as you like, doesnt mean theyll ever give up their power to you.

[Darg]

Except, diplomacy isnt about persuading, its about changing attitude. You can make the elder god as friendly as you like, doesnt mean theyll ever give up their power to you.

Diplomancy doesn't work so well when one understands how it's supposed to work. You might be able to convince the assassin to not want to kill you, but if their boss still has a dagger to their lover's throat it doesn't matter how friendly you make them they'll still try to kill you.

[NichG]

Except, diplomacy isnt about persuading, its about changing attitude. You can make the elder god as friendly as you like, doesnt mean theyll ever give up their power to you.

'My preferred game model' was doing important work in that sentence since I'm again talking about how I homebrew, not what RAW 3.5 is. I don't keep mechanics that establish what one party's attitude towards another is or should be, persuasion mechanics, etc - nothing that 'resolves' a social interaction. I change them to mechanics which provide privileged information about the lay of the social land or which restrict or conceal similar privileged information.

[Crake]

'My preferred game model' was doing important work in that sentence since I'm again talking about how I homebrew, not what RAW 3.5 is. I don't keep mechanics that establish what one party's attitude towards another is or should be, persuasion mechanics, etc - nothing that 'resolves' a social interaction. I change them to mechanics which provide privileged information about the lay of the social land or which restrict or conceal similar privileged information.

Right, I understand that, I was more following up to your post, and replying to the person that you were replying to, rather than directly replying to you, sorry for the confusion

[NichG]

Right, I understand that, I was more following up to your post, and replying to the person that you were replying to, rather than directly replying to you, sorry for the confusion

No problem, fair enough!

[Peat]

I have to say I'd never considered D&D as a game for "how can we change the world through a finite list of spells" but now it's out there, I've got to agree it makes a bunch of sense. I mean, yes, you do need to chop off or amend about 80% of the classes, and add a bunch of mechanics on the other side, but if you want that core experience in the quotes there's probably a very limited number of games with the requisite crunch to build off.

I personally would build off of various White Wolf games for that, but I can see doing it through D&D.

And it is of course an utterly atypical game that doesn't particularly impact the thread, but my am I intrigued.




Point is, conceptually, Wizards / Psions of any stripe, let alone the more volatile Pyromancers, generally get less and less adept at most if not all of those skills in fiction as they focus on and master their Craft, whereas Fighters in fiction often gain those and/or other skills as a side benefit of their martial training.


This is very much YMMV. The iconic wizards that I automatically think of are Gandalf, Sparrowhawk, and those from Eddings, of whom this isn't true. Being a better fighter didn't make them better at non-fightery things either.


Eh, this mindset seems like it's contributing to the thing that doomed the Fighter in the first place.


I would also suggest that the real thing that doomed the fighter is some people want to have a fairly simple and "mundane meeting the supernatural" game, and some people wanted to go buck wild, and the designers provided for both in the same game and left people to get on with it. The fighter is constrained because it exists to serve the people who want to keep things very simple more than any other class.

[Gnaeus]

So, in this conversation, Crake is using houserules about how things work and trying to pass them off as rules, and NichG is openly admitting that his rules are completely homebrewed and trying to suggest that they say anything about how 3.5 works.


I think a lot of people also take the social skills ad absurdium. For example, including epic skill usage in non epic games, or implying that the interaction can be about anything.

The whole point, as others have pointed out previously, of social skills, is to represent character skill, not player skill. You cant have it both ways, your character spends a minute talking about something to the bartender that really speaks deeply to him, something that your character can intuit due to their extreme expertise in speaking with people. If you tried to play it off like that, I would say “okay, you spend the next minute talking about random junk… no dont roll, that’s not a diplomacy check, thats just you rambling”.

Its not a valid representation of using the diplomacy skill, its, in essence, a strawman of the diplomacy skill.

Cite please. I don't see anything about what you say in the diplomacy skill. It has a bunch of modifiers, like 4 ranks in knowledge nobility, but nothing like that. It isn't a strawman of the diplomacy skill, it is an understatement of the absurdity of the diplomacy skill. A decent diplomancer can do that in 6 seconds. Thats not a deep conversation about what you can intuit. Thats a single sentence. Pretty much a pickup line. "Hey man, the bloodstains on your axe really complement your eyes!" I don't even see a rule that it needs to be in a language they understand. 3.5 has a lot of tags, and the epic rules state that (at least some uses) are mind affecting. But I don't see language dependent anywhere.

It can also be used, AS A STRAIGHT UNMODIFIED ROLL, RAW, to reflect opposed hearings. Prosecutor (a level 3 expert with max diplomacy): This group has committed war crimes for years across 3 countries. They have admitted the following list of crimes.....
Diplomancer, (a PC with +35 diplomacy, not too hard to reach): Yes your honor, but in our defense, we are all orphans.
Tesm: Best Lawyer ever.

Is that stupid? Yes! Its totally broken. It does not take into any account the power of the NPC. Its only opposed if you are arguing against someone, and then as a straight roll. A system with a better social system would have something like mind or willpower as a defense, as well as not usually being as swingy as the d20 skill system is, with its relative ease to be outside the range of a d20 roll from your target for any skill you care about optimizing. But in 3.5, even the houserules are generally tied to the skill system, which works ok for DC 15 to jump over that barrier, and not so well for "static DC to make someone your friend". Honestly, what I most often see is some kind of just ignoring any rules completely. Kind of an "oh, you rolled a 53, I'll arbitrarily, after the fact decide how that helps you." Which is not really a rule at all.


Except, diplomacy isnt about persuading, its about changing attitude. You can make the elder god as friendly as you like, doesnt mean theyll ever give up their power to you.

No, it is quite clear what it does. He will aid you, even taking risks to do so. And if you appeared in his throne room unannounced and unwashed, in 1 minute, he will be providing you aid and risking his own interests on your behalf.


Diplomancy doesn't work so well when one understands how it's supposed to work. You might be able to convince the assassin to not want to kill you, but if their boss still has a dagger to their lover's throat it doesn't matter how friendly you make them they'll still try to kill you.

In that precise scenario, perhaps. It depends on their relationship with the lover. But if they were just an assassin, paid or personally threatened to kill you, it would do exactly that. They will take risks to help you. Advise you, Back you up, Aid you. Advocate for you. Its not 100% do what I want entirely regardless of the circumstances. It is MERELY provide me with aid even at risk to yourself after a 1 minute (or 6 second) conversation.

These are rules I have literally never seen used RAW. I wouldn't consider using them RAW. They are absurd and broken. They should be houseruled. Honestly, junked entirely and replaced. But just because people ignore the rules in pretty much every single game doesn't mean they aren't the rules. It means that 3.5 doesn't have rules for social interactions, with an extra step and bonus confusion.

[Darg]

No, it is quite clear what it does. He will aid you, even taking risks to do so. And if you appeared in his throne room unannounced and unwashed, in 1 minute, he will be providing you aid and risking his own interests on your behalf.



In that precise scenario, perhaps. It depends on their relationship with the lover. But if they were just an assassin, paid or personally threatened to kill you, it would do exactly that. They will take risks to help you. Advise you, Back you up, Aid you. Advocate for you. Its not 100% do what I want entirely regardless of the circumstances. It is MERELY provide me with aid even at risk to yourself after a 1 minute (or 6 second) conversation.

These are rules I have literally never seen used RAW. I wouldn't consider using them RAW. They are absurd and broken. They should be houseruled. Honestly, junked entirely and replaced. But just because people ignore the rules in pretty much every single game doesn't mean they aren't the rules. It means that 3.5 doesn't have rules for social interactions, with an extra step and bonus confusion.

The DC's in the table are the basic DC's. Circumstances will alter the difficulty of the DC's. Meaning if you want that assassin to change to being friendly you might need to beat a 100 DC. It's up to the DM but the DCs aren't supposed to remain static.

[Gnaeus]

The DC's in the table are the basic DC's. Circumstances will alter the difficulty of the DC's. Meaning if you want that assassin to change to being friendly you might need to beat a 100 DC. It's up to the DM but the DCs aren't supposed to remain static.

1. you are completely making that up. The DCs are based on a table. Houserule if you want, and you should. But don't be dishonest about what you are doing. Turning someone who wants to kill you to friendly is DC 50. Not 100. Not 51. Whether it is a street urchin or the Level 20 archduke. 3.5 has tons of situational modifiers. Like
Lightly obstructed (scree, light rubble, shallow bog1, undergrowth) +2
Severely obstructed (natural cavern floor, dense rubble, dense undergrowth) +5
Lightly slippery (wet floor) +2
Severely slippery (ice sheet) +5
Sloped or angled +2

I don't see anything remotely like that in the diplomacy description. And if it were there, you would presumably use other skill modifiers as a guideline, and say something like "Doing it under extremely horrible conditions, the diplomatic equivalent of doing acrobatics in a dense forest, is a +5". Could they have had a scaling modifier by HD, or something involving a will save? Absolutely. Probably should have. But they didn't.

You want another indication it is broken? Because we all assume, by default, that Tumble works as written. That tumble is DC 15 to avoid an AOO, 25 to move through an enemy space. No one says, ever, that tumble doesn't mean what it clearly says. Or that the DC of Tumble is 100 in this room, and rogues just kind of need to expect that.

2. Even if what you say were true, that is still an unworkable system. Because skills have a static bonus and are modified by a single d20 roll. Saying "You need a 100 DC to do this DC 50 task" is just a passive aggressive way of saying "You can't do that". A system with a more robust skill system is likely to allow something like exploding dice, based on a much higher statistical range than flat 1-20. The DM might need to adjudicate what a marginal success or a legendary success means within the context of the encounter, but he has a rules framework in which to do that. Its not a matter of You can't succeed. You can't fail. or I have arbitrarily set this DC conveniently within the range of your d20+diplomacy check to give you the illusion that your skills have an impact on play.

And there are a lot of skills where the d20 framework works fine. It does not hurt immersion at all for the master burgler to walk up to a simple lock and auto succeed. Or for the orc barbarian to have no chance to pick a safe. You don't need to be arbitrary to make those skills work as designed. Diplomacy does not work on its face. And we recognize that daily, implicitly, like when we say that Marshall is bottom of T4, despite the fact that he can break diplomacy DCs very easily. We all just assume that is going to be banned.

[NichG]

So, in this conversation, Crake is using houserules about how things work and trying to pass them off as rules, and NichG is openly admitting that his rules are completely homebrewed and trying to suggest that they say anything about how 3.5 works.


To be clear, in this branch of the conversation I'm responding to why I often use 3.5 as a base rather than other games, rather than trying to make a claim about how 3.5 works. Since you know, you were all badwrongfun about how dare someone not just use D&D as a combat simulator.

[Gnaeus]

To be clear, in this branch of the conversation I'm responding to why I often use 3.5 as a base rather than other games, rather than trying to make a claim about how 3.5 works. Since you know, you were all badwrongfun about how dare someone not just use D&D as a combat simulator.

And to be clear, given that you reject 3.5's rules, they are not relevant to that discussion. And the more you explain about how much you house rule a completely different system, the less relevant they become. There are absolutely games that do not have a caster/martial divide. I don't doubt that you could make a D20 game where you do that. (although I do dispute your post about the factotum/swordsage as an example of daring use of Parkour. Shadow hand is all about supernatural abilities. Just didn't have a chance to respond well). But I agree you could make a martial function equally with T1s. You could homebrew classes and abilities for most anything. It just wouldn't be 3.5 and I STRONGLY disagree that 3.5 is a reasonable place to start from, given the inherent limitations of its skill system, and the way that its rules are overwhelmingly focused on combat. Which doesn't mean it can't be done. It only means that it is walking uphill, through the snow, both ways to reach a destination that would be much easier to access with a different method. Both better rules light systems and better rules heavy systems, if that is your goal. 3.5 is pretty good at what it was born to be. which is a wargame with RP elements.

[Crake]

Cite please. I don't see anything about what you say in the diplomacy skill.

So your argument is “it doesnt say what i have to talk about, so it can be anything”? Is that really the stance you wanna take? The equivalent of “well the rules dont say I cant”

[NichG]

And to be clear, given that you reject 3.5's rules, they are not relevant to that discussion. And the more you explain about how much you house rule a completely different system, the less relevant they become. There are absolutely games that do not have a caster/martial divide. I don't doubt that you could make a D20 game where you do that.

I haven't claimed D&D doesn't have a caster/martial divide. My claim was that paranoid defense-mongering isn't the reason for the divide, but rather the broad range of strategic capabilities casters have that non-casters lack. This observation is independent of how I personally run my own games. I've played D&D with around 8-9 different DMs and been targetted by a Dominate... maybe once in over ten years? Similarly, the strategic possibilities afforded by Wizard spells does not require any reference to my own particular homebrew. You can go read a Tippyverse thread if you want a pure RAW breakdown of those possibilities.


Shadow hand is all about supernatural abilities.

This kind of mindset again feeds the martial/caster divide problem. You've equated 'martial' to 'mundane', and defined the theme by its limits rather than by its possibilities. Any approach that tries to make a high level martial look like Bruce Willis in Die Hard isn't actually going to give you a character who can exert as much agency over the broad direction of events as a high level caster is permitted to do because people are willing to give so much leeway to the concept of 'magic'

[Quertus]

Eh, this mindset seems like it's contributing to the thing that doomed the Fighter in the first place.

A fictional character does not have a constrained 'surface area' to interact with their setting a priori, because by default they can do 'things a human can do',

In that sense, rather than 'a true Pyromancer can't do anything but burn', it should be 'by studying to become a Pyromancer, this person gains on top of their normal competencies an extra ability to interact magically with fire'.

I suspect I haven't come across correctly here. The only thing a "Pyromancer" template adds to the level 0 commoner is the ability to create (and maybe manipulate) fire. And their Pyromancer growth only adds Pyromancer things, not the ability to plane shift "because flames", or the ability to control fate "because flames".

Now, maybe, if they practice producing flame 24/7, they might develop extreme stamina even outside producing flame, just like iconic Fighters do while honing their bodies.

But neither one is going to become a programmer with my "**** bugs" special trait automatically by taking levels in their Pyromancer or Fighter classes. Sure, arguably either a Pyromancer or a Fighter could become a brain surgeon, or an artist, or a programmer, but it doesn't come as a natural course of training as a Pyromancer or a Fighter.

OTOH, gaining great stamina, fame, a commanding presence, unflappable determination, an understanding of the human body, and so many other things could (and in fiction often do) came as a natural consequence of martial training. Pyromantic training usually just gets one burned - in fiction, magic at best adds nothing, and occasionally eats away at a person, making them less than that level 0 commoner in many ways.

Thus my contention that a Pyromancer should have a smaller surface area than a Fighter, and that that's even more true in fiction than in a D&D context.


I think most people who say "Fighter" actually want, is a "Soldier" class. And there are plenty of fantasy characters who I think are Soldiers.

Yes, "Soldier" is a subset of "Fighter" (a kit for "Fighter" in 2e parlance). As is "Knight" (the mundane, not holy version). And "Pirate/Buccaneer". And "Swashbuckler". And "Pugilist". And "Monk", IMO, although 2e made it a Cleric sub-class, and 3e made it its own class. And oh so very many more words we'd put to things, all map to what a Fighter class should be able to represent.

But, yeah, even "Soldier" makes it more obvious some of the extra surface area they should have over what a D&D Fighter gets from their class.


What do you think "Pyromancer" means if not "Fire Wizard". If you ask someone who's read Worm which member of the Slaughterhouse Nine (https://worm.fandom.com/wiki/Slaughterhouse_Nine) is a Pyromancer, they are going to say "Burnscar", not "none of them, they do have a fire Wizard though".

I'm a programmer, that's why I'm so good at programming your mind. Mind control is obviously part of being a programmer.

Yeah, no.

I'm not a "programming-themed omni-wizard", I'm a programmer. Feel free to make it reality that I actually am a programming-themed omni-wizard, of course, and I'll happily start debugging idiots, but that's not what I mean when I say that I am a programmer.

Similarly, when I say "pyromancer", I don't mean "fire-themed wizard", I mean someone who creates (and manipulate) fire. Period. No other magical abilities implied.

To repeat myself, when I say "pyromancer", I mean something more like someone with "the Lure of Flames", than someone with Forces 3, Prime 2, Correspondence 3, who uses fire as a focus.


This is very much YMMV. The iconic wizards that I automatically think of are Gandalf, Sparrowhawk, and those from Eddings, of whom this isn't true. Being a better fighter didn't make them better at non-fightery things either.

Eh, even (movie?) Gandalf has that whole "I've been alive forever, I've forgotten more than you'll ever know" senility thing going at times. I don't know the others, but the Wizards I do know, their power often comes at a cost, rather than being tied to additional benefits.

Yes, yes, I'm sure there's some Wizard in fiction somewhere whose memory improved as a direct result of studying their craft, but I can't remember them, so they couldn't have been important. :smallwink:

[icefractal]

To repeat myself, when I say "pyromancer", I mean something more like someone with "the Lure of Flames", than someone with Forces 3, Prime 2, Correspondence 3, who uses fire as a focus.
Funny you should use that example. 😄
I was about to say that how broad a "Pyromancer" is really depends on how magic works I'm the setting you're talking about.

Like in Mage, I'd expect "Adept (at least) of Forces who prefers fire" which would imply they can also control light, electricity, etc - but not summon fire elementals because Spirit is a whole other thing.

But in some systems, being able to control fire at all means you control (or have agreements with) fire spirits, so summoning one wouldn't be out of place.

And in others, having Pyrokinesis implies that you're also a rather powerful telekinetic.

Not something that's possible to determine independent from the setting, IMO.

[Darg]

1. you are completely making that up. The DCs are based on a table. Houserule if you want, and you should. But don't be dishonest about what you are doing. Turning someone who wants to kill you to friendly is DC 50. Not 100. Not 51. Whether it is a street urchin or the Level 20 archduke. 3.5 has tons of situational modifiers. Like
Lightly obstructed (scree, light rubble, shallow bog1, undergrowth) +2
Severely obstructed (natural cavern floor, dense rubble, dense undergrowth) +5
Lightly slippery (wet floor) +2
Severely slippery (ice sheet) +5
Sloped or angled +2

I don't see anything remotely like that in the diplomacy description. And if it were there, you would presumably use other skill modifiers as a guideline, and say something like "Doing it under extremely horrible conditions, the diplomatic equivalent of doing acrobatics in a dense forest, is a +5". Could they have had a scaling modifier by HD, or something involving a will save? Absolutely. Probably should have. But they didn't.

You want another indication it is broken? Because we all assume, by default, that Tumble works as written. That tumble is DC 15 to avoid an AOO, 25 to move through an enemy space. No one says, ever, that tumble doesn't mean what it clearly says. Or that the DC of Tumble is 100 in this room, and rogues just kind of need to expect that.

2. Even if what you say were true, that is still an unworkable system. Because skills have a static bonus and are modified by a single d20 roll. Saying "You need a 100 DC to do this DC 50 task" is just a passive aggressive way of saying "You can't do that". A system with a more robust skill system is likely to allow something like exploding dice, based on a much higher statistical range than flat 1-20. The DM might need to adjudicate what a marginal success or a legendary success means within the context of the encounter, but he has a rules framework in which to do that. Its not a matter of You can't succeed. You can't fail. or I have arbitrarily set this DC conveniently within the range of your d20+diplomacy check to give you the illusion that your skills have an impact on play.

And there are a lot of skills where the d20 framework works fine. It does not hurt immersion at all for the master burgler to walk up to a simple lock and auto succeed. Or for the orc barbarian to have no chance to pick a safe. You don't need to be arbitrary to make those skills work as designed. Diplomacy does not work on its face. And we recognize that daily, implicitly, like when we say that Marshall is bottom of T4, despite the fact that he can break diplomacy DCs very easily. We all just assume that is going to be banned.

"see the Influencing NPC Attitudes sidebar, below, for basic DCs." (https://www.d20srd.org/srd/skills/diplomacy.htm)

Basic DCs. Not meant to vary from that in the table? Diplomacy isn't an opposed check because it's about working with someone. They aren't opposed to you. That said, not everyone is as equally able to be convinced of something. A knight on the other side of a conflict can be friendly and helpful, but loyalties are more powerful than their affectation for the other. A demon is not going to help you unravel their plans for world wide chaos, except for personal entertainment; not because they want to actually help you.

[RandomPeasant]

Now you've got the bones of a more well-rounded character who can engage with a lot of different situations without being too pigeonholed into 'I use murder' while still maintaining a theme of martial study and expertise.

You've also got a character that is not doing anything even a mid-level caster can't do better. Yes, you can have a lot of skills as a martial, but outside of some abusive applications of Diplomacy, using UMD to pretend to be a caster, some obscure stuff like Lucid Dreaming, or a few Epic DCs, even having +20 or +40 to a skill doesn't get you more than a 2nd or 3rd level spell.


This is very much YMMV. The iconic wizards that I automatically think of are Gandalf, Sparrowhawk, and those from Eddings, of whom this isn't true. Being a better fighter didn't make them better at non-fightery things either.

The idea that "spell guy" and "sword guy" are opposed concepts, or even really distinct concepts, is very much a D&Dism. Goddamn Harry Potter gets a sword when he needs one. Part of the reason "I use a sword" is a bad character concept is that the broader genre barely treats "uses a sword" as a character trait. Even for someone like Kaladin, who is very explicitly a master spearman who is especially skilled at using a spear, it's hard to argue that's the even one of the top three most important abilities his character has.


The fighter is constrained because it exists to serve the people who want to keep things very simple more than any other class.

I think this is true, but there are two issues. The first is that the Fighter isn't simple. Every Fighter gets eleven different bonus feats, which can be draw from a list spread across almost every book in the game, and which have various prerequisites that have to be planned and managed. It's not as complicated as a Wizard or even a Sorcerer, but I think you can reasonably argue that building a Fighter is more complicated than building a Cleric or Druid. Certainly it is more complicated than building a Barbarian, a class that offers you exactly zero build choices in its whole PHB progression. The second is that the implication you seem to be making that such a simple class would necessarily be underpowered is inaccurate. D&D has a lot of classes at different levels of complexity and simplicity, and there's not any kind of universal correlation between complexity and power. The Artificer is way more complicated than the Fighter, and substantially better, but the Beguiler is a lot better than the Fighter too, and not too much more complicated. If you compare the latter to an Incarnate, I would say that it is both simpler and more powerful.


I suspect I haven't come across correctly here. The only thing a "Pyromancer" template adds to the level 0 commoner is the ability to create (and maybe manipulate) fire. And their Pyromancer growth only adds Pyromancer things, not the ability to plane shift "because flames", or the ability to control fate "because flames".

I mean, the dictionary definition of "pyromancy" is "divination by means of fire or flames (https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/pyromancy)". I suppose that's not controlling fate, but it does seem unfair to insist that a class cannot do the thing their class is named after doing because you personally think "pyromancy" means "only blasting".


Yes, "Soldier" is a subset of "Fighter" (a kit for "Fighter" in 2e parlance). As is "Knight" (the mundane, not holy version). And "Pirate/Buccaneer". And "Swashbuckler". And "Pugilist". And "Monk", IMO, although 2e made it a Cleric sub-class, and 3e made it its own class. And oh so very many more words we'd put to things, all map to what a Fighter class should be able to represent.

Again, this is just replacing "martial" with "fighter", not defending Fighter as a class. Yes, there's a category of characters who primarily do some kind of weapon-based or fist-based combat as their combat deal (though, of course, plenty of those characters end up with magic in fantasy). But in terms of the classes that exist in D&D as it has been constituted any time in the past two decades, I can't think of -- and you don't seem to be able to propose -- any that are best understood as "Fighters".


Similarly, when I say "pyromancer", I don't mean "fire-themed wizard", I mean someone who creates (and manipulate) fire. Period. No other magical abilities implied.

So is Zoku, a fire-bender, a multi-class Pyromancer/Electromancer because he also gets the ability to control lighting? Are the furycrafters from the Codex Alera not Pyromancers because they can summon up their fire furies or use their abilities to stir up the emotions of others? Where are all the Pyromancers of fiction who get so narrowly the ability to control fire and only fire and nothing else?

If you want to build a Pyromancer who takes only the Fire Blasts and Fire Bolts and Fire Waves on the class's list, and not Step Through Flames or Burning Insight or Fires of Passion, that's fine. But it doesn't mean "Pyromancer" doesn't have those other abilities any more than a guy who takes only summon monster spells as a Sorcerer makes that class into only a summoner.


Not something that's possible to determine independent from the setting, IMO.

I mean, that's sort of a cop-out. Any concept is going to be influenced by the setting that it's in. A Soldier who served in the Malazan army (where they have all kinds of crazy magic and alchemical grenades) is going to have different abilities than one than served in the Gondorian army (which is most a standard medieval army), but that doesn't mean you can't have a Soldier class. It just means that class is going to be customizable enough to represent people from different military traditions that have different capabilities.



"see the Influencing NPC Attitudes sidebar, below, for basic DCs." (https://www.d20srd.org/srd/skills/diplomacy.htm)

Now, I'm not the guy you were arguing with, but it doesn't really look to me like his substantive objection was with you using the word "basic" so much as it was with you asserting that there was anything in the rules that described Diplomacy DCs changing as you suggest they would. Yes, of course you can chance the DCs if that's a thing you want to do. But you can do that regardless of what is written in the books or whether the DCs are described as "basic" or "standard" or "exact" or without any adjective at all.

[Darg]

Now, I'm not the guy you were arguing with, but it doesn't really look to me like his substantive objection was with you using the word "basic" so much as it was with you asserting that there was anything in the rules that described Diplomacy DCs changing as you suggest they would. Yes, of course you can chance the DCs if that's a thing you want to do. But you can do that regardless of what is written in the books or whether the DCs are described as "basic" or "standard" or "exact" or without any adjective at all.

It is what the meaning of basic is though. All of the tables for skills' DCs are just guidelines for the DM.


Some checks are made against a Difficulty Class (DC). The DC is a number set by the DM (using the skill rules as a guideline) that you must score as a result on your skill check in order to succeed.

Point being, diplomancy using the table for a definitive rules based argument that a diplomacy modifier of 49 always brings any target to a helpful attitude is only as RAW as the DM allows. This ambiguity is different from the definitive nature of other things RAW like weapon focus definitively giving you +1 AB. The use of "basic" simply illustrates that they aren't meant to be definitive in every case during the game.

The game is designed to be flexible in some cases and inflexible in others (disregarding R0). In this case that is the point. None of the other social skills are rigid, so what precedent implies that diplomacy shouldn't get harder or easier based on the circumstances? Bribes are a perfect example of a situation where if diplomacy would fail outright, could be helped butter up the recipient depending on disposition.

[icefractal]

3.x Diplomacy, with the exception of Fanatic from the very optional ELH, isn't great but also isn't really dysfunctional, and arguably doesn't need modifiers, because all it does is set the initial attitude.

"I got a 35, now the king gives me his castle". No, wrong. You got a 35 and the king is now Helpful, like a good friend. But would you give your good friend your house? Probably not. What will the king give you? Depends on the situation (including what you say) and the GM.

It's a weird blend of exact rules and freeform arbitration, which often makes people swing to either one side (making the DC means they do what I say) or the other (the DC is entirely up to the GM), but those are both house-rules.

[NichG]

You've also got a character that is not doing anything even a mid-level caster can't do better. Yes, you can have a lot of skills as a martial, but outside of some abusive applications of Diplomacy, using UMD to pretend to be a caster, some obscure stuff like Lucid Dreaming, or a few Epic DCs, even having +20 or +40 to a skill doesn't get you more than a 2nd or 3rd level spell.

Eh, viability and dominance are different goalposts. Once the player is willing to see their 'martial' as being deserving of acting in the role of, say, a negotiator, a spy, a leader, an advisor, etc, then that opens up a lot of pathways for agency that don't necessarily even require a mechanical button to be pressed. Not to mention that as the system evolves, it can then grow into a role of supporting those sorts of activities, versus having the double-standard of 'martials get limits, casters get possibilities' baked into the design ethos.

I'd play that Factotum/Swordsage in a no-combat campaign. But I wouldn't play a character who is told 'no, you can't do talky stuff because that belongs to the face; you can't do stealthy stuff because that belongs to the rogue; you can't be wise because that belongs to the cleric' etc.

[Peat]

The idea that "spell guy" and "sword guy" are opposed concepts, or even really distinct concepts, is very much a D&Dism. Goddamn Harry Potter gets a sword when he needs one. Part of the reason "I use a sword" is a bad character concept is that the broader genre barely treats "uses a sword" as a character trait. Even for someone like Kaladin, who is very explicitly a master spearman who is especially skilled at using a spear, it's hard to argue that's the even one of the top three most important abilities his character has.

I think this is true, but there are two issues. The first is that the Fighter isn't simple. Every Fighter gets eleven different bonus feats, which can be draw from a list spread across almost every book in the game, and which have various prerequisites that have to be planned and managed. It's not as complicated as a Wizard or even a Sorcerer, but I think you can reasonably argue that building a Fighter is more complicated than building a Cleric or Druid. Certainly it is more complicated than building a Barbarian, a class that offers you exactly zero build choices in its whole PHB progression. The second is that the implication you seem to be making that such a simple class would necessarily be underpowered is inaccurate. D&D has a lot of classes at different levels of complexity and simplicity, and there's not any kind of universal correlation between complexity and power. The Artificer is way more complicated than the Fighter, and substantially better, but the Beguiler is a lot better than the Fighter too, and not too much more complicated. If you compare the latter to an Incarnate, I would say that it is both simpler and more powerful.


I meant simple to play more than simple to build. My impression is this if you've got someone who wants to sit at the table, be part of the story, tell some jokes, and put zero effort into mechanics, you give them a pre-built Fighter that's simplified to big numbers and have someone next to them whisper "don't forgot to power attack". They've been built to function that way and mostly starved of having lots of powerful choices to compensate.

And I think that yes, once you start pushing the game, simple to play and underpowered amount to much the same thing most of the time.

Finally the split between characters who primarily execute their strategies through physical and martial prowess, and those primarily execute through magical prowess is... well, again, YMMV. The reality is that the field of everything that can be considered fantasy is so vast that everyone's going to have their own impressions based on what they met first. But I don't think it's difficult to find bits of the genre beyond, and before, D&D that have that.

[Seward]

Pyromancer....a digression.

3.x Pyromancer - could be a sorcerer with nothing but fire or fire adjacent spells (such as pyrotechnics, but also perhaps light spells, stinking cloud defined as choking smoke, abjurations useful against fire or cold etc). Or could be a wizard or perhaps a specialist like evoker or conjurere who is a full batman wizard that just knows and often prepares/uses a lot of fire spells. Or something else that is skill based but has enough casting to imitate one or the other. Earlier or later editions of D&D and Pathfinder pretty much fall under one of these categories too.

Ars Magica pyromancer - A lot of Ignum with Creo, Rego, Intellgo and Muto but probably not Perdo (that does cold effects, destroys fire/heat/light) unless fire destruction fits your theme. Maybe be good at other stuff, depending on what they like to burn (setting an animal on fire requires different forms than setting a plant or human on fire, but if you aren't igniting them or changing them into fire, you can just attack them with a fire creation such as ball of abyssal flame and they're just as dead, without needing to know the various living critter magical forms). Such a wizard will still likely have plenty of corpus to make their longevity potion and vim for lab work, no Hermetic wizard is allowed to exit apprenticeship without at least minimal mastery of the 5 techniques and 10 forms.

Mage the Ascension Pyromancer - as noted above, a forces specialist with fire affinity who probably works fire into most of the other spheres they know. eg, spirit will interact with fire spirits, matter might transmute wood into charcoal, life might keep body temp constant regardless of external heat or cold, you get the idea. Of course they can ALSO do all the other stuff any spheres they paid for can do, they just likely won't barring a dire emergency because their very personal understanding of what magic is defined as will impact their overall power and even risk paradox if they violate their own theme too greatly, or if they do something too blatant in a realm hostile to magic (such as the default setting, Earth). Those from traditions that value generalists will be more likely to use magic of other types than fire, if only for mundane utility and convenience, those who see the magic as an expression of their essential self will be more likely to try to shove "fire" into any spheres they actually master and use.

Codex Alera (Jim Butcher book series, not a RPG) - they have a fire "Fury" attached to them and are good with it. They can take on aspects of fire - generally fear/courage effects, can stay warm on a cold day and do a variety of fire effects, or just manifest their "fury" to fight as a fire creature. A pyromancer would probably be seen as a dude with only one Fury. Nobles have furies of all elements, so you're a mid-lister even if your fire fury is exceptionally powerful. I adapted this setting to FATE system once, it worked pretty well.

Dresden Files (RPG based on FATE system and book series) Pyromancer is probably what the snooty Wizards (who are generalists) call a Sorcerer (someone who can only access a narrow band of what magic can do, but is often exceptionally good in that single sphere). Such sorcerers might also have the education/training to work with rituals anybody can do, and probably can access other magics at weaker levels if they get someone to help train them. Calling a full wizard such as Harry Dresden a pyromancer would be an insult, in spite of the fact that he favors fire in combat magic and is known for the inordinate number of buildings that seem to burn when he's involved.

Generic Hero Games/Champions superhero named Pyromancer - possibly magic fueled, possibly just an energy projector who thinks "mancer" is a cool thing to add to their name, they create and perhaps control fire. In some settings they might gain aspects of fire (such as a hot temper or all consuming hunger) or perhaps turin into living fire such as the Human Torch. Some settings will distinguish between a Fire Projector (who is a living battery to generate fire effects) a Fire Controller (who can take control of any fire effect on the battlefield and will often own a flamethrower or at least lighter to get things started) or a Fire Shifter (someone who becomes fire and may or may not also get projector or controller abilities). Another might actually have the ability to oxidize stuff (set them on fire, but also cause rust etc) but still call themselves Pyromancer to confuse their enemies, especially if there ARE magic based supercritters but their ability is mutant or alien or some such.

Any or all of these might have a full suite of noncombat skills and abilities unrelated to their primary combat form that gets them called "Pyromancer" although in D&D 3.5, wizards have more skill points but the wrong attributes for social utility, and sorcerers have the right attributes for social utility but few skill points and fewer class skills that support social utility. In most of these systems (barring stricter superhero settings where you get only one ability + mundane tech to work with) there is nothing stopping a Pyromancer from picking up magic outside their speciality because it is so freaking useful that they want it in spite of it not being the easiest for them to learn or use unlike fire.