3/3.5 Core - Low magic/tons o' magic schizophrenia

[JonestheSpy]

So, a whole lot of the criticism I see of a lot of the core classes/abilities/feats etc is that their useless or not worth taking because you can just cast a spell or buy a magic itme that does it better. And for a numbers cruncher with a DM who plays by the money-per-level guidelines, I suppose this is usually true. So it begs the question - why did it get designed this way?

I can't help thinking that the problem has its roots in this totally conflicted view about magic. The core classes seem to have been designed for a low-magic universe, the sort resembling the fanstasy fiction that inspired the game originally. In such a universe, things like the monk's assortment of abilites become a lot more impressive. But then we have this asumption that pretty much ANY magic item can be made or bought if you've got the cash, and there's this whole system saying just how much cash for goodies a character should have per level. Add that to the idea that every spellcaster should have access to any spell on their class list, and all the cheese in the splatbooks, and you have this massive disparity between the the value of abilities vs magic.

Anyway, just an observation.

[Doc Roc]

The issue is that precisely half of the core classes are designed for low magic, and the other half are designed to be fun to play. :: sardonic ::

To a point, I agree with you. The issue with this argument is that it (naturally) is fraught with first-party contraindications. For example, most of the published settings are fundamentally high-magic. Faerun? Eberron? Greyhawk?

[bosssmiley]

tl;dr: the game WOTC were making wasn't the game they thought they making.

long version: The problem - if you'll excuse me going off on a tangent for a bit - probably stemmed from the way 3E was playtested. As I understand it the WOTC playtesters - on both sides of the GM screen - were quite conservative in how they tested prototype 3E. The play test players utilised their characters in a manner generally consonant with the (entirely different) assumptions of TSR-era D&D. Clerics were played as 1-2E healbots, wizards were played as blasters, rogues were hide-and-gank merchants, etc. There wasn't the systematic seeking and reporting of exploits, edge cases and flaws that the entirely new game engine actually needed; simply because there was no realisation that 3E was actually an entirely new game.

As for the chandelier o' gear. That probably arose as a misguided attempt to balance character vs monster power in the upper reaches. Back in the TSR days even 3-4 substantive magic items on mid/high level characters was a noteworthy thing. 3E gave us the mechanically necessary (as in: "you fall off the RNG if you don't have them") 'big ticket' items (stat adder, weapon, armour, save booster, etc.), and the rest of the Xmas Tree palaver on top of that.

Net result: characters lurching around like Teppic in "Pyramids", or the character in Moorcock's self-parody of hero-with-significant-paraphernalia fantasy "The Stone Thing".

It simply boils down to WOTC lacking the courage to kill some of the sacred cows of 1-2E and make inherent character power for non-caster classes meaningful at high levels. (the caster *fap fap fap* issue is another bag of snakes entirely...)

[Sinfire Titan]

The issue is that precisely half of the core classes are designed for low magic, and the other half are designed to be fun to play. :: sardonic ::

To a point, I agree with you. The issue with this argument is that it (naturally) is fraught with first-party contraindications. For example, most of the published settings are fundamentally high-magic. Faerun? Eberron? Greyhawk?

Actually, half of the Core classes have the ability to rape reality as a class feature/skill, while the other half has trouble getting around killing things with sharp, pointy objects.

[Devils_Advocate]

The core classes seem to have been designed for a low-magic universe

Four of the eleven core classes are full spellcasters. Bards and paladins are also highly magical, monks and rangers less so. Half of the iconic four-person party -- fighter, rogue, wizard, cleric -- are spellcasters.

The game seems to have been designed under, and in order to support, the assumption that at least one member of the party, and ideally half, be able to cast spells. So, even leaving magic items aside, it seems weird to say that magic was intended to be a minor part of the game that is rarely seen.

3E gave us the mechanically necessary (as in: "you fall off the RNG if you don't have them") 'big ticket' items (stat adder, weapon, armour, save booster, etc.), and the rest of the Xmas Tree palaver on top of that. Net result: characters lurching around like Teppic in "Pyramids", or the character in Moorcock's self-parody of hero-with-significant-paraphernalia fantasy "The Stone Thing".

The worst part is that requiring plus-giving items was so completely unnecessary. They could have just given characters, as a part of normal level progression, the bonuses to ability scores, attack rolls, damage rolls, saving throws, armor class, etc. that they need to be "in balance". Heck, half of that stuff you get as you level up already, just at a gimped rate! So characters need to receive ridiculous amounts of wealth in order to buy level-appropriate bonuses. Even though it would have been fine to give them those bonuses in the first place and far less treasure, had they not made +ImportantModifier items so much more cost-effective than everything else.

And, as the Magic Item Compendium pretty much acknowledges, the requisite magic items take up body slots and thereby prevent the use of cool, flavorful items that do unusual things. They made particular standard-issue magic items so cost-effective that they're what you need to deck your characters out with for them not to suck. And these items usually just give "plusses", meaning that characters' immense magical power is largely invisible and without visual effect. For most purposes, there's not even the flavor of using powerful magic, just a lot of extra bookkeeping that you're required to go through to get characters' stats "right", when they should have been right in the first place.

[Jack_Simth]

So, a whole lot of the criticism I see of a lot of the core classes/abilities/feats etc is that their useless or not worth taking because you can just cast a spell or buy a magic itme that does it better. And for a numbers cruncher with a DM who plays by the money-per-level guidelines, I suppose this is usually true. So it begs the question - why did it get designed this way?

A combination of a few things.

1) Players like getting cool magical toys, so DM's WILL hand them out.
2) It's tricky to eyeball character power if you're not a fairly experienced DM.
3) All else being equal, a character with magic items is usually stronger than a character without.
4) Not all DM's are skilled at judging "power levels".

So WOTC basically had two choices:
1) They could design the game without the idea that players will be getting magic items to make them stronger, and hope the DM can successfully eyeball what monsters to use without disaster when the items are inevitably handed out.
2) They could design the game with the idea that players will be getting magic items to make them stronger, and put in some guidelines for how much and how fast the party should gain them.

Type 1 was used in all previous editions - which made it rather difficult to judge what the party could take on, and whether they were behind or ahead.

Type 2 is used in 3.X and 4.0 - assuming that all items are functionally worth exactly their list price (they're not), then if you run Wealth by Level, the party of the four iconic characters should theoretically be balanced, and should theoretically be able to successfully take on one of: four CR-matching encounters per day; two or three CR+1 encounters per day; one or two CR +2 encounters per day; one CR+3 or CR+4 encounter per day (didn't work out at most levels, but hey, it's theoretically possible to arrange with this method).

[Jayabalard]

tl;dr:

Your post is longer than his.

[Devils_Advocate]

... And so was mine, though the important point summarizes to "They stuck way more character power than they needed to or should've into wealth instead of the actual characters."

I suck at being succinct.

[T.G. Oskar]

Probably the only sacred cow they didn't wanted to kill (until 4th Ed.) was that the books drawn as inspiration for the game have wizards (of all people) in extremely high regard. In most of the books that supposedly served as inspiration for the system, spellcasters are the most powerful entities in the land, despite their apparently frailty (it doesn't help that some of them are utterly evil as well). So, they wanted to draw said point, where spellcasters trounce non-spellcasters unless the latter had some magic items.

Fast forward to 3.X, where the new designers attempted to recall the feel of the old classes while "fixing" some of the problems of the old one. Probably bosssmiley nailed it on the spot, where the playtesters simply played their characters in a way beginners did, or at least not-so-experienced players do. After those with the skill at number-crunching appeared, and the first "I Win" builds appeared, WoTC was forced to use a system that rewarded spellcasters over non-spellcasters to defeat said spellcasters. Magic items weren't limited to anyone, AC eventually was turned worthless, saving throws were given more importance, and eventually the thing turned for the worse. Meanwhile, with each new book, the number-crunchers found ways to exploit the game even more. Had they taken the new concept they're dealing with now (or the concept they should be dealing with now), most of the broken builds would have been fixed swiftly, as they would have the number-crunchers as the playtesters (along one or two roleplayers)

But mostly, it's the idea that wizards are near-omnipotent. Or the idea that wizards=nerds and fighters=jocks, with the clerics=puritans and the rogues=shady people etched nearby.

[Swordguy]

tl;dr: the game WOTC were making wasn't the game they thought they making.

The problem - if you'll excuse me going off on a tangent for a bit - probably stemmed from the way 3E was playtested. As I understand it the WOTC playtesters - on both sides of the GM screen - were quite conservative in how they tested prototype 3E. The play test players utilised their characters in a manner generally consonant with the (entirely different) assumptions of TSR-era D&D. Clerics were played as 1-2E healbots, wizards were played as blasters, rogues were hide-and-gank merchants, etc. There simply wasn't the systematic seeking and reporting of exploits, edge cases and flaws that the entirely new game engine actually needed; simply because there was no realisation that 3E was actually an entirely new game.

It's this, folks. My uncle is Jon Pickens - I've asked him directly, and that's it. When CharOp was discussed, his response was "why would anyone NOT want to do lots of hitpoints of damage? What's the fun in winning an encounter with one spell?"

That's the mindset that 3.x was playtested under. As I've posted before, if you play the game the way it was intended to be played (ie, via the older playstyle), it's actually quite balanced and all classes are more or less effective. If you don't, then it's not. You're playing a different game than what was playtested.

I'm not saying whether it's good or bad, just how it is.

[Doc Roc]

To be fair, magic is tremendously hard to make both balanced and fun. Most games fail miserably at it.

[JonestheSpy]

THis has been a very fascinating dicussion folks, thnaks for chiming in.

Just to clarify:

Four of the eleven core classes are full spellcasters. Bards and paladins are also highly magical, monks and rangers less so. Half of the iconic four-person party -- fighter, rogue, wizard, cleric -- are spellcasters.

The game seems to have been designed under, and in order to support, the assumption that at least one member of the party, and ideally half, be able to cast spells. So, even leaving magic items aside, it seems weird to say that magic was intended to be a minor part of the game that is rarely seen.

In my opinion "low magic" doesn't mean players aren't allowed spell-casting core classes - though I know some people interpret it that way - it means that magic items of every description aren't available at every village walmart, and PC's don't automatically have access to every spell in every book. Players are the exceptional ones.

I do agree that players like nice shiny things, and really, simple monetary rewards actually require more effort to make worthwhile - unless players will get into roleplaying blowing their cash on booze, courtesans, or a nice investment portfolio, the gold pieces just pile up to no purpose. In Ye Olde Dayes (TM), players might save up to build a keep, but otherwise there wasn't a whole lot to spend your money on. No easy solution there, just a constant attention to game balance by the GM, I suppose.

Net result: characters lurching around like Teppic in "Pyramids", or the character in Moorcock's self-parody of hero-with-significant-paraphernalia fantasy "The Stone Thing".

Oh, man, I loved that story - hadn't thought of it in years, but it's frighteningly appropriate in modern DND.

"But did it HAVE to be made of sandstone?"

[tyckspoon]

In my opinion "low magic" doesn't mean players aren't allowed spell-casting core classes - though I know some people interpret it that way - it means that magic items of every description aren't available at every village walmart, and PC's don't automatically have access to every spell in every book. Players are the exceptional ones.

I usually think of it on two axes- there's the frequency of magic, and then there's the power of that magic. You can have uncommon but powerful magic; this will tend to heighten the importance of spellcasting classes, as only they and the people they personally like get to play with the really good stuff. And you can weak but very common magic, which is how Eberron is built; everybody experiences magical effects almost daily and may even own a few magic trinkets for convenience, but actual high level magic is extraordinarily rare.

Discussions about 'low' and 'high' magic conditions tend to get distorted by the fact that either one can refer to an extreme on either axis, and people usually don't stop to clarify their terms (except in passing when they go " But that's not what 'High Magic' is!")

[bosssmiley]

Your post is longer than his.

My tl;dr wasn't directed at the OP. It was intended as a précis of my own post.

[Doc Roc]

I do agree that players like nice shiny things, and really, simple monetary rewards actually require more effort to make worthwhile - unless players will get into roleplaying blowing their cash on booze, courtesans, or a nice investment portfolio, the gold pieces just pile up to no purpose. In Ye Olde Dayes (TM), players might save up to build a keep, but otherwise there wasn't a whole lot to spend your money on. No easy solution there, just a constant attention to game balance by the GM, I suppose.

Thank you for starting this. I'm sorry if I was a little bit sharp, this is a very sore topic for me. So I've actually had no less than three occasions where players built either keeps or homes of some flavor just in recent history. Perhaps if you gave them a consistent hub.... It'd have to be interesting from an adventurer's very skewed perspective to settle into.. Like sigil perhaps?

[Swordguy]

Thank you for starting this. I'm sorry if I was a little bit sharp, this is a very sore topic for me. So I've actually had no less than three occasions where players built either keeps or homes of some flavor just in recent history. Perhaps if you gave them a consistent hub.... It'd have to be interesting from an adventurer's very skewed perspective to settle into.. Like sigil perhaps?

Interestingly, establishing your own keep used to be a HUGE deal. The "default" setting was originally very similar to the Iron Age, in that cities are "points of light" in the wilderness, and everything in between them was untamed. It may be "claimed" by one king or another, but it was truly wildland.

The traditional method for adventurers to get their own keep was that they went out into the unmapped wilderness, found a spot they liked, and killed everything around that spot. Once all the local threats were defeated, that's where they established their domain. The reason you don't see characters getting keeps until 8-10th level is it takes that long to get characters powerful enough that they're going to be able to go out into the wilderness and reliably defeat the vast majority of threats (since extradimensional creatures aren't going to pop up randomly, and you don't want to be anywhere near a dragon in the first place). Waiting that long also happens to give the PCs enough time to save up the money to really pimp out their castle, garrison it, and have a nice savings left over. Having to buy magical items was never really part of the equation.

Secondarily, the reason you got so much gold was that gold=XP (one of the myriad of reasons why killing dragons, and looting their attendant hoard, was so attractive and a central theme to the game). As a tangent, that's why wandering monsters are so central to the older game - it's a race to get to the BBEG and his leet loot at the bottom of the dungeon before you run out of resources. Linger too long in places and wandering monsters sap your strength, until you might not have the power left to defeat the BBEG and get your gold/XP at the end.

So, think of it as if you were a 3.x designer. Getting a keep isn't an assumed central goal of the campaign, so that reason to get lots of gold is out, and the PCs no longer get XP for finding gold. Why should they care about it? They're still getting a bunch of it from the treasure tables, but what's there to spend their huge hoards upon? Without these, there's not really any remaining point to getting gold pieces as treasure, so you come up with the crafting and "magic item store" mentality as something to soak GP away from PCs. It makes sense...but it creates, as we've seen, whole new issues.*

Interestingly, 4e goes away from the "huge civilized kingdoms" where it's TOUGH to find an unexplored place for the PCs to wipe out and establish a landhold and back to the "points of light in the darkness" idea. I haven't gotten the sense that magic items (more than moderate-level ones, anyway) are assumed to be for sale as they were in 3.x. Long-term play trends may shift back to the older methods of PCs finding their gear instead of buying it, and holding that money for an awesome base that they can be proud of. [snark]And if you think 4e is based off of video games, look at the lengths MMO players go to to make nice homes for their avatars - like in City of Heroes or Lord of the Rings. It makes sense that video game players picking up 4e would do something similar if they knew they'd eventually get an in-game home.[/snark]


*Tangent: I'm pretty sure that the crafting rules were there for "emergency" use - as in "we need X item to beat the bad guy, and so we have someone to can make the item for us. I'm positive that the craft abuses we've seen (half price assembly-line magic items for the party! W00t!) weren't the intended playstyle.

[Devils_Advocate]

Ah, so they didn't stick in ridiculous amounts of wealth so that characters could buy magic items with it. Ludicrous treasure rewards were kept because they were traditional, and magic items were made more mandatory to keep treasure relevant.

I wonder if anyone considered at any point just not littering the campaign world with tons of gold anymore.

JonestheSpy, I'm not sure I follow you. In a typical campaign, aren't magic items still rare, because most people lack the wealth needed to afford magic items? Like spellcasting, they're only common amongst a small elite that includes the PCs.

I guess the relevant idea is that magic is hard for anyone to acquire, regardless of budget? A free market economy definitely makes that problematic. There would have to be something keeping people from buying and selling magic items, thaumaturgical training, and spellcasting services.

But anyway, I'll concede that there's a difference between a high magic setting and a high magic story. A story with a spellcasting protagonist is pretty much going to have a fairly high amount of magic, but its setting may still have a generally low amount of magic.

*Tangent: I'm pretty sure that the crafting rules were there for "emergency" use - as in "we need X item to beat the bad guy, and so we have someone to can make the item for us. I'm positive that the craft abuses we've seen (half price assembly-line magic items for the party! W00t!) weren't the intended playstyle.

Just using a beneficial ability frequently isn't "abuse". If you can break the game by using something in an unexpected and clearly unintended way, that's abuse of the rules. If you can break the game just by doing something more often than expected, that just indicates that the people who made that thing weren't thinking properly when they designed it.

For example, Scry 'n' Die tactics are probably abusive, in the sense that the game designers didn't see them coming. They should have seen them coming, and this problem needs to be patched with a house rule or plentiful abjuration magic to maintain a believable fictional world, but it can legitimately be called abusive because it was unexpected.

[Sstoopidtallkid]

Just using a beneficial ability frequently isn't "abuse". If you can break the game by using something in an unexpected and clearly unintended way, that's abuse of the rules. If you can break the game just by doing something more often than expected, that just indicates that the people who made that thing weren't thinking properly when they designed it.

For example, Scry 'n' Die tactics are probably abusive, in the sense that the game designers didn't see them coming. They should have seen them coming, and this problem needs to be patched with a house rule or plentiful abjuration magic to maintain a believable fictional world, but it can legitimately be called abusive because it was unexpected.

Is it abuse, or just good roleplaying? The game's creators made Divination mandatory for Wizards, did they really think no one would go 'Hey, why not Scry this guy before busting into his house to see if we can't avoid charging through his Dragon on the way?' Information-gathering is the only smart thing to do in many cases, and if you've got a guy smarter than Einstein palling it up with someone who makes Ghandi look impulsive, one of them will take the smart route.

[JonestheSpy]

JonestheSpy, I'm not sure I follow you. In a typical campaign, aren't magic items still rare, because most people lack the wealth needed to afford magic items? Like spellcasting, they're only common amongst a small elite that includes the PCs.

Well, this thread is laregely inspired by talk on this board, where there is a very common refrain of "X class ability/feat is useless because you can just buy Y magic item which probably does it better". So while magic may be economically beyond the common peasant, there seems to be the assumption that any item in the books is available at any time to anyone who's got the money.

And honestly, most campaign settings I've seen assume that spellcasting is very common as well - every village has a temple to buy the casting of cleric spells, for instance.

And while I agree that not having loads o' treasure around is one way to deal with this issue, that leaves the problem of rewarding players for success. I mean yes, a fun game should be its own reward, but there's still the issue of motivating characters. Why are they adventuring in the first place? Treasure is often the motivation in sword and sorcery adventure stories, and in series featuring recurring characters - Conan, Fahrd & the Gray Mouser, etc - it's usually portrayed that they quickly burn through their money on high living, and are soon on to searching for the next treasure hoard.

Writing this, it occurs to me that one solution is the template of 'The Hobbit' - the big payoff is the goal of the campaign (though there are smaller rewards along the way, like Sting and the ring thingy) and once it's won and ensuing difficulties are resolved, the campaign ends and the character retires.

I guess the relevant idea is that magic is hard for anyone to acquire, regardless of budget? A free market economy definitely makes that problematic. There would have to be something keeping people from buying and selling magic items, thaumaturgical training, and spellcasting services.

But anyway, I'll concede that there's a difference between a high magic setting and a high magic story. A story with a spellcasting protagonist is pretty much going to have a fairly high amount of magic, but its setting may still have a generally low amount of magic.

Well, right. The characters seem to be designed for a world where magic is relatively rare and not availabe on every streetcorner.

I'd also like to mention a comment I saw recently on some thread or other, that monsters in 3/3.5 were "too easy". This also seems a fairly common attitude, yet few people seem to think the appropriate response is reducing the amount of magic items players carry around. I mean, if the designers think that a level A character should have x amount of magical goodies, and an encounter has to be at least 4 levels higher than the players to not be a pushover, then it seems obvious to me that dialing back the power level of their paraphernilia is the easiest solution to restore balance.

Also, I admit this is largely about an aesthetic preference on my part. Being pretty old school in my influences, I much prefer the idea of a magic sword being an awesome item that is treasured throughout one's career, not just a commonplace item that is expected, taken for granted, and traded up as soon as you've got the cash.

[Swordguy]

Ah, so they didn't stick in ridiculous amounts of wealth so that characters could buy magic items with it. Ludicrous treasure rewards were kept because they were traditional, and magic items were made more mandatory to keep treasure relevant.

I wonder if anyone considered at any point just not littering the campaign world with tons of gold anymore.

Pretty much. Although I don't envy the DM whose players killed the dragon and got 50gp and a couple of potions out of it. The huge hoards of dragons (read: Smaug) were really what got the whole mess started.

In 3.x, you do get less gold. Somebody did the math once, and figured that a CR20 dragon's gold pieces filled something like a 2x2x3 chest. Not anywhere near enough to sleep upon. The vast majority of player wealth is in magic items - if players have huge chunks of gold, it's because they've sold those items. That's a big difference between the older editions and newer ones - selling magic items that you don't want is far more prevalent in 3.x, which produces a lot of GP, which allows people to go the omnipresent magic item store.

That fastest way to shut down the "magic item store" mentality (aside from the DM saying "no") is to not allow players to sell magic items for anywhere near their purchase price. 4e has the right idea (1/5 the purchase price), as much as it pains me to say it. If the players don't routinely have enough gold to buy the magic items, then the store grinds to a halt pretty quick, and they're back to "whatever magic items we can make/find."

[Set]

The worst part is that requiring plus-giving items was so completely unnecessary. They could have just given characters, as a part of normal level progression, the bonuses to ability scores, attack rolls, damage rolls, saving throws, armor class, etc. that they need to be "in balance".

Supposedly, Iron Heroes was designed to get around this sort of thing.

The Wheel of Time RPG also gets rid of magic armor, and includes Class Defense bonuses to the fighting classes that increase by level.

These sorts of ideas seem pretty cool, and yet, the fantasy genre is loaded with items that seem to be very much +X to Y items, such as Thor (or Gawaine's) belt of strength. As long as there are spells like Bull's Strength and Cat's Grace, it follows that there would be items that granted those abilities to their wielders (although a tiny step in the less 'plusta' gear direction might be to cap stat-boosting items to +4, since they are based on spells that grant only a +4).

I never play Fighters, but if there was some Warrior core class that had full BAB, +1 weapon damage / two levels, +1 dodge bonus to AC / four levels and DR 1 / - per four levels, and could then swap between these modifiers a la Combat Expertise and Power Attack, I'd love it.

Subtract a few points from your BAB to increase your dodge bonus to AC with a 'defensive attack' action? Go for it. Go all out and subtract your dodge bonus to AC to add instead to your attack roll with a 'reckless assault' action? Banzai! Instead of the Fighter's accuracy, weapon damage, AC and DR coming entirely from item enhancements or Feats that every 'fighter' should know coming out of the gate, they would be class features (that a few items might enhance, to a degree, but never supercede or replace).

The dichotomy between spellcasting and non-spellcasting classes in D&D is annoying (and I say this as someone who plays only spellcasters). A Rogue or Warrior should be able to open a bleeding wound on a foe, strike to blind / dazzle, strike to nauseate / sicken, strike to lame, etc. They should be able to impose Conditions as readily as any Touch of Fatigue, Entangle or Stinking Cloud spell, and not just deal hit point damage.

[Swordguy]

The dichotomy between spellcasting and non-spellcasting classes in D&D is annoying (and I say this as someone who plays only spellcasters). A Rogue or Warrior should be able to open a bleeding wound on a foe, strike to blind / dazzle, strike to nauseate / sicken, strike to lame, etc. They should be able to impose Conditions as readily as any Touch of Fatigue, Entangle or Stinking Cloud spell, and not just deal hit point damage.

Agreed, but every time somebody makes a game system that allows for this, you get 1 of three responses:

1) It's too complicated! (See also: Rolemaster)
2) The conditions are so crippling that it's too powerful (see also: WFRP, Pendragon)
3) It's so hard to pull these moves off that I'm better off just hitting somebody for HP damage and killing them anyway (see also: L5R, D&D)

What I do when I run AD&D is give my players complete control over special FX done by strikes, with a severity based on the die roll. If the guy rolls a 19, and says something to the effect of "My sword slices the orc across the back of the hand - he drops his sword", I'll allow it. It also comes with the players voluntarily penalizing themselves when they roll low (I roll a 3? I overextended myself with the attack and it'll be tough to get back into position, I'll take a 4-point initiative penalty for next round). It's all at their discretion (naturally, the monsters get this benefit/penalty as well) and brings the players into the game FAR better than a set of complex rules they have to memorize and trick out to make effective characters. They have the freedom to just do it. Essentially, there ARE no rules to this - you make it up as you go along. You just have to have player who enjoy creating an overall story and aren't concerned with crazy power all the time...and you have to have mutual trust between your DM and players.


EDIT: Also, in b4 "B-b-b-but Tome of Battle!".

[Sstoopidtallkid]

Agreed, but every time somebody makes a game system that allows for this, you get 1 of three responses:

1) It's too complicated! (See also: Rolemaster)
2) The conditions are so crippling that it's too powerful (see also: WFRP, Pendragon)
3) It's so hard to pull these moves off that I'm better off just hitting somebody for HP damage and killing them anyway (see also: L5R, D&D)

...

EDIT: Also, in b4 "B-b-b-but Tome of Battle!".

You realize, of course, that ToB avoids points 1 and 2, and is much closer to balanced than standard D&D(meaning less vulnerable to 3, though the main issues of 3.5 remain[tier 1 classes]).

[Swordguy]

That's why I had the edit.

In all fairness, though, point 1 in regards to ToB is a concern, at least for the groups I've run for. People didn't want to deal with preparing "melee spell lists" (their words).

It is more complicated than the basic system - that's not a matter of opinion. Whether it's TOO complicated is.

[JonestheSpy]

Okay, getting into oft-repeated territory here, so let me suggest looking at it from another angle - would there be such a power gap between spellcasting and nonspellcasting classes if some of the "magic is always available" attitude were missing from the picture? If a wizard couldn't just assume they could buy a scroll for any spell they wanted to learn or have as backup, if metamagic rods and other spell enhancing items were likewise rare, and the DM held the line against cheese like that feat that trades cleric turning for-all day spell duration, or druids shapechanging into equipment-wielding dinosaurs?

[Yora]

[QUOTE=JonestheSpy;6195667]So, a whole lot of the criticism I see of a lot of the core classes/abilities/feats etc is that their useless or not worth taking because you can just cast a spell or buy a magic itme that does it better./QUOTE]

A wizard can do about everything.
But not at the same time!
As a low to mid-level wizard, I think I really wouldn't want to memorize Alarm, Levitation, See Invisibility, Greater Magic Weapon, Magic circle against Evil, Forcecage, Dimension Door, Tensers Floating Disk, Jump and what not ever. Because then, at the beginning of the first fight, I would have to cast Ray of Frost.
I would want to use my slots for cool spells I can be pretty certain I will use that day, like Magic Misles, Fireballs, Dispel Magic or Haste. And that's where magic items enter the game. The fighter thinks he absolutly needs to have Haste at hand all the time? Then he should get some magic boots or ring. During a magical fight, I don't want to spend one round scrambling through the enemies to get the fighter that one touch spell he absolutely needs to have right now.

A wizard can do everything on paper. But in actual action, thinks are very different.

[Swordguy]

There's would still be a power gap, yes. A large portion of the issue is that the basic class feature of the spellcasting classes (ie, spells themselves) are fundamentally broken.

In older D&D editions, spellcasters had several drawbacks:
1) limited number of spells/day
2) If they took much damage, they're down
3) You don't learn automatic spells at each level
4) If they got hit during the casting of the spell, they lost the spell
5) Spells took time to cast


The newer editions got rid of the last three weaknesses. Crazy-powerful spells were more or less OK when they had a long casting time - you had a chance to react and try to stop the mage from getting his spell off. Since mages could get their spells interrupted more often (and thus lose more spells) the number of spells available per day was far more of a limitation than it is now (where mid-to-high level casters don't really care about spells/day limits, as in any given day they're extraordinarily unlikely to cast anywhere near that many spells). Finally, the GM could control his players access to the spells he didn't want them to have, because players didn't get to cherry-pick the rulebooks every level for the "best" spells. They used what they could beg, borrow, research, or steal (usually in the form of a defeated foe's spellbook). So players weren't putting together earth-shattering spell combos anywhere near as easily.

In the absence of these weaknesses, the crazy-powerful spells that were ported forward into 3.x became consequence-free win buttons. With so few disadvantages to casting spells, and with such power in them, there's no reason not to play a caster. The real issue with the "magic is always available" mindset is that everyone wants to become a de facto caster (UMD abuse) with that mindset, or go even further into the power stratosphere if they're already a caster (metamagic items, etc).

The 3.x power gap is directly and inextricably linked to the basic lack of weaknesses for casters and spells that were originally balanced around those selfsame weaknesses. They got their Ultimate Cosmic Power, and got it without any drawbacks, while the noncaster classes stayed, effectively, the same in capabilities between editions. Of course there'd be a power gap in those circumstances!

[Devils_Advocate]

4) If they got hit during the casting of the spell, they lost the spell
5) Spells took time to cast

(4) is still possible, but it generally requires an attack of opportunity or readied action, due to lack of (5). Add to that Concentration checks...

They got their Ultimate Cosmic Power, and got it without any drawbacks, while the noncaster classes stayed, effectively, the same in capabilities between editions. Of course there'd be a power gap in those circumstances!

This is what makes it hard to believe that the designers didn't see this possibility coming. It just seems like it would be obvious, and not just in retrospect.

They also took away slower leveling to balance geometrically increasing spell power*, without reducing the rate that spell levels are learned at higher levels.

*Right? Or was that before 2E?

[Swordguy]

This is what makes it hard to believe that the designers didn't see this possibility coming. It just seems like it would be obvious, and not just in retrospect.

Well, if you're just playing casters as heavy artillery in pointy hats, not so much.


EDIT: I always think of something just as I hit the "submit" button. There was a thought process at work during the 3e design that said one of the really big draws for D&D players was the ability to do magic stuff. Thus, making magic more accessible during game play (getting rid of what legitimately made Wizard difficult to play) would increase sales. I don't know how much of an impact that had on the design process, but it probably didn't help. And, again, the lack of weaknesses don't break the game if you're playing a blaster caster, like the design staff assumed people'd be doing.

They also took away slower leveling to balance geometrically increasing spell power*, without reducing the rate that spell levels are learned at higher levels.

*Right? Or was that before 2E?

No, you're right. I had forgotten about that while I was typing. Yeah, if you've got a 20th level fighter, you'll have (IIRC) about a 17th level Wizard with the same "absolute" value of XP. Moreover, Wizards actually leveled faster at low levels, to get out of the "one spell per day" trap more quickly. They stuck around the "sweet spot" of 4th-10th level for longer than anyone else. Again, IIRC.

[Swooper]

You're forgetting an important part of the power of magic in 3E, Swordguy. Saving throws. The way they worked back in 2E, spells became less likely to work the higher level monsters you were fighting - so while a 1st level wizard had a reasonable chance of getting a Sleep spell off against a bunch of goblins, a high level wizard had a much smaller chance of successfully Dominating say, a fire giant. Neither spell level nor the wizard's level has any effect on the saving throw, it's just a static number which the monster rolls against.

This is part of the reason why blast spells were much more popular back then - even if the monster made the save, it still did something (the other reason being stuff had less hit points back then and the spells still did the same damage as in 3E).